IT Career Energizer

GUEST BIO: My guest on today's show is an internationally recognized author, speaker, blogger and sometimes teacher and consultant. He has been working with the web since late 1993 and is recognized as an expert on the subjects of HTML, CSS and web standards. He is currently a technical lead at non-profit organization Rebecca's Gift and is also co-founder of An Event Apart, a web design conference for UX and front-end experts. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Eric Meyer. He has worked in the IT industry for more than 25 years. Today, he is a teacher, designer and consultant who is a recognized HTML, CSS and web standards expert. He also has a working understanding of XML, XSLT, JavaScript, and related technologies. Eric is also the technical lead for the non-profit organization Rebecca's Gift and the co-founder of An Event Apart, an interactive conference targeted at designers, developers and front-end experts. He is also the author of several CSS books and the founder of the css-discuss mailing list, as well as a conference speaker. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.14) – The very first thing I wanted to ask you about really was the non-profit organization Rebecca's gifs. Could you maybe give us some background about that organization and your involvement? Eric explains that his daughter, Rebecca, died from brain cancer, at the age of 6. One of the things that helped him, his wife, and his surviving children to recover was to go on a special trip together. A few months after Rebecca's death they took a trip that the kids had kind of planned. It helped them a great deal. So, his wife decided to set up Rebecca's Gift to help other families to do something similar. They help families, who have lost a child, to take their other children on a trip. It provides them with a chance to get away from everything and reconnect with each other. Eric is the chief technical officer for the organization. His wife takes the lead and Eric looks after the website and the technical side of things. (2.23) - Where can people find out about it? The website is http://rebeccasgift.org/. Eric goes on to explain that, currently, they are US-based. But, people can still go to the website, read about the organization and make a submission. (3.07) - So in terms of your other activities, An Event Apart is something else you're very much involved in. Could you maybe give us a bit of an insight into that? Around the turn of the millennium, he and Jeffrey Zaltzman were attending and speaking at a lot of conferences. Unfortunately, the content was not that great. It did not really speak to people like Eric and Jeffrey. They were designers as well as developers who were not interested in simply slamming out websites. Instead, they wanted to create sites that were user-friendly, forward compatible and accessible. None of the conference speakers shared information that was truly relevant to the way they worked and what they produced. So, they decided to remedy that situation. Eric and Jeffrey put together a one day show and took it around a few US cities. People liked it but often said that they wished it was for more than one day. Over time, they have been able to respond to that request and turn the An Event Apart into a 3-day interactive conference. The show is designed to enable developers to explore and for designers to find out more about development. Plus, of course, for those who already do both. They cover the entire spectrum, including UX and information architecture. It is not just about the cool stuff. The essentials like CSS Grid and Flexbox are also covered. (5.26) – How many cities do you expect to be arranging events for, this year? Eric says that by the end of the year they will have done the show in 6 cities. At the time of recording, the Seattle event was behind the team and the Boston event was next on the agenda. With Washington DC, Chicago, Denver, and San Francisco still to take place before the end of the year. (6.18) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Eric explains that there really are no gatekeepers. There is nobody in IT that can make or break your career. Nobody has the power to shut you out of web development. The only person that can stop you is yourself. (7.37) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. Eric worked on the Y2K switch over. For a joke, he and another colleague decided to make the university webpage look like it was created in the 1900s when the clock struck midnight. They put together a page using typography from the era and included the message "as you can see the server thinks it is 1900." They thought it would be fun, but they did not tell anyone what they were planning to do. The page went live, the press got hold of the story and all hell broke loose. This did not go down well with the administration. Eric's boss was told to fire him. Worse his boss' manager was told to fire him, as well. Fortunately,

GUEST BIO: My guest on today's show is currently a VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research. He is a recognized industry expert on a variety of topics including digital transformation, social collaboration and online business models. And in 2015 he was identified as one of the top 20 people most mentioned by IT leaders. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Dion Hinchliffe is Phil's guest on today's show. He is an internationally recognized thought leader, enterprise architect and IT specialist. Dion is also a keynote speaker and the co-author of the best-selling books, Web 2.0 Architectures and Social Business by Design. He is currently a VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.07) – Please tell us about the things you have been up to, particularly recently. Dion explains that he has always worked on large IT projects. For example, he worked as a lead architect for the Missile Defense Agency on their advance battle manager program. At the time, it was one of the biggest IT projects in the world. As a young man, he was chief architect for Rowe Price. Dion recommends that everyone try to work on a government IT project. He explains that dealing with the red tape, bureaucracy, long lists or requirements and politics really hones your skills. It is challenging, but by the end of it you are far better able to realize change and lead. More recently, Dion has been working with the CIO audience. His main focus is on helping them to apply technology strategically to modernize and transform their businesses. He develops digital strategies, ensures they work and guides firms through the implementation of them. Dion speaks and writes extensively about this and runs CIO workshops. Importantly, he follows up with the people who are implementing his strategies to see how things went. Using their feedback he is able to understand how well each strategy works and tweak them if necessary. (4.21) – Please tell us more about your speaking, blogging and writing. Dion explains that he sees himself as a storyteller who is working to fill a gap in the industry. He likes to go into detail and share in a way that ensures people can actually take action with what they learn from him. These days, people in the industry are more willing to share what they are doing. But, in a way, they are still quite secretive. Their case studies tend to be high level. People end up hydroplaning over the top of subjects they don't really explain how they got something hard done. So, Dion has tried to break that habit. He writes long-form, detailed pieces that include diagrams to help people to fully understand what he is sharing. (5.29) presumably you get great feedback from doing that. Dion says that is the case. People especially appreciate his use of diagrams. It is something few people do. But, Dion discovered early on that the best way to sell an idea, especially an expensive one, is to use a visual. Somehow showing them a picture makes it real for them. (6.46) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? In IT your bedside manner really matters. You need to be able to put yourself in your customer's shoes and communicate with them in a way that improves their understanding. It is important to remember that this is probably the first time they have been through a technology roll-out. Or, if they have done it before, it was a long time ago. So, the whole thing is completely new and alien to them. They are relying on you to show them the way. It is up to you to help them to understand the process, manage their expectations and make them feel comfortable. Looking at the situation through their eyes will really help you to do this effectively. You will be able to help them to see how their department will run once the technology is in place. When you become more empathetic your relationship with your customers improves drastically. They find it easier to trust you. So, it is far easier for you to convince them of the direction they should take. (8.42) - Is there anything in particular that you do to enable yourself to be in their shoes, as it were? Dion tries to think about the experiences they have gone through with IT departments. Doing this gives him an insight into what the customer is expecting. (9.15) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. Dion used to run a boutique consulting firm. They specialized in performance optimization. Often, that means turning failed IT projects around. The first time they let one of their senior people to start an engagement. Unfortunately, the client called them and said they did not think things were going to work out. They did not feel they were a good fit. So, Dion had to let that person go. Basically, because they were no longer a good fit, which meant there was no work for them. It was very difficult for Dion to do this. (11.01) – What was your best career moment? While working on a large government proje

GUEST BIO: My guest on today's show is a Principal Program Manager for Mobile Developer Tools at Microsoft. He has been a .NET developer since 2005 working in a wide range of industries including game development, printer software and web services. Before becoming a Principal Program Manager he was a professional mobile developer and has been crafting apps since 2011. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: James Montemagno is Phil's guest on today's show. He is currently a Principle Program Manager for Microsoft's Mobile Developer Tools division. James started his career working as a gaming developer. But, he has also worked on printer software and web services. For several years he was a Xamarin developer evangelist and is still involved in supporting those using the platform. He is also a .NET developer. James is well known for running numerous podcasts and being a prolific conference speaker. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.20) – I want to start by talking to you about the fact that you are a prolific podcaster. Can you please start by telling us about that? James explains that quite early in his IT career he developed a passion for public speaking. He used to build home theatre PCs, which were also ideal for podcasting. So, he gave it a try. His experiment went really well and he realized that a podcast was a great way to have a long conversation with a friend. To make sure there is some structure to each podcast he calls his guest up about 30 minutes before the broadcast is due to start. They chat things through then go live for a further 30 minutes. Over the years, he has started a bunch of different podcasts, including Merge Conflict. He also does a podcast with his friend Michael out of New York called Nintendo Dispatch. There is also the Xamarin podcast and he frequently does them for Microsoft too. (2.59) – How did your interest in podcasting come about? In the beginning, it was just a technical challenge. Podcasts did not really exist, at that point in time. There was no Zencastr, no Audible, nor any podcast friendly equipment. So, he set about finding a way to make a podcast and share it. Once he figured out how to do it, he realized that he really enjoyed the podcasting process and things snowballed from there. (4.22) Do you enjoy conference speaking too? James explains that giving conference talks was a natural progression from his podcasting. The fact he became a developer advocate helped too. Public speaking became a regular part of his work life, so he quickly became good at and really comfortable with public speaking. A conference stage is a perfect platform for demonstrating what your tech can do for all kinds of people. Public speaking has enabled him to reach the world and tell them about the mobile development tools Microsoft has to offer. He also did a road show with another podcaster, visiting 10 or 15 cities together in an RV. Every other day, he delivered the same material and became very comfortable with public presentations. In the end, it did not matter if he was presenting to 10 or 10,000 people, he felt comfortable doing it. (5.59) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Two things are important. Firstly, try to do something that you love. Secondly, don't try to change the world, early in your career. There really is no need to reinvent the wheel. At the start of his career, James was tasked with developing an app. He was asked to do everything, including designing it to coding it and doing the UX and UI work. At the time, he had only ever done coding. So, instead of reinventing everything he found out was already available and used as much of it as possible. For example, he checked out the design and UX of a few of the most popular Google, Microsoft and Apple apps and used the same approach. James points out that you need to also keep an eye on what is new and roll those evolving paradigms into the design of your application. (9.06) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. Early in his career, he moved from Phoenix to Seattle to work for a startup. He worked really hard for about 7 months on their DVR management app. At times he was putting in 70 or 80 hours a week. So, when it was released he felt a great sense of relief. His boss told him not to read the reviews. He ignored that advice and was utterly crushed. Not all of the reviews were bad, but James was actually quite vulnerable at the time. He had just moved, was living in a tiny apartment, sleep-deprived and stressed out by the process of developing the app. As a result, reading some of the bad things that were said in the reviews tipped him over into a deep depression. Thankfully, his manager and friends were there for him and were able to help. Now, he does not read the reviews. (11.26) – What was your best career moment? James' career highlight actually had nothing to do with his day job. During last year's Seattle gift camp he did a mobile application workshop.

GUEST BIO: My guest on today's show is a functional programming advocate. He has worked in the IT industry for more than 15 years in a variety of roles including software support, development lead, project management and systems analysis. He is the co-founder of the Knoxville Functional Programmers group and is currently a senior consultant for Result Stack. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is a functional programming advocate called Reid Evans. He started his IT career 15 years ago, working mainly in software support. Since then he has moved on and worked as a development lead, a project manager and systems analyst. Today is a senior consultant for ResultStack. In 2017, he co-founded Functional Knox Inc. and is currently the president. The group supports a network of functional programmers by organizing meetups and via an annual conference. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.07) – So firstly, I wanted to pick up with you could you perhaps tell us a little bit about the Knoxville functional programmers group and what your involvement was with setting it up? Reid explains they have been operating as a hangout for 3 or 4 years. But, in 2018, they hosted their first conference, which was a great success. The 2019 conference was even bigger and even more successful with speakers traveling in from all over the US. (2.02) – Is this an annual event and why did you decide to set it up? Reid responds by explaining that both himself and the co-founder of the group Cameron Presley had been speaking at conferences for a while. They enjoyed doing it but found that they had to keep things fairly rudimentary to deal with the fact the audience had mixed skills. Both of them felt it would be beneficial to deliver talks that went a bit beyond the basics. So, they decided to address that gap and start their own group and conference. They wanted a place where people could come together and discuss things that were slightly outside of the mainstream. (2.54) Presumably, the focus is very much on functional programming? Yes, that is very much the case, but FuctionalKnox events are very diverse. For example, this year's conference covered Haskell, Purescript, C#, Javascript, Typescript and much more besides, across 12 sessions. (3.38) – So, are you planning future events? Reid says yes, for sure. There is a lot of demand for this kind of conference. So, they will be arranging more. But, these events are not just for speakers with decades of experience. This year, 2 of the speakers had only just completed boot camp. It is clearly a form of education that works because they had a similar level of knowledge as someone who had been programming for years would have. Something Reid finds very encouraging. Becoming a programmer is now far more attainable. New people have not had to learn how to follow the traditional object-oriented way of working. Instead, they have gone straight into functional programming and been able to learn quickly because they have not had to unlearn other ways of working. (6.00) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Reid's advice is not to let people put you into a singular box. You need to expand your horizons and learn more than one thing. If you do not, you stagnate and it is really easy for someone to replace you with another programmer who has more or less the same skill set as you. If you can move a JIRA ticket across the board, don't stop there. Learn some design and UX patterns too. He also points out that becoming a good communicator is a good way to progress your career. It is something that sets you apart. (7.06) – Is this something you have done yourself? Reid explains that his path into development was an unusual one. For a while, he was technically a vice president of a small software support company. In that role, he started to do a bit of software writing. When he started programming, he was shocked to find that he was expected to simply take the ticket and move it across the board. Adding anything or making suggestions to improve things was generally not welcome. Basically, his bosses did not want him asking questions. Now, he works as a consultant he gets to go in and actively ask questions. It is the only way to find out what the problems actually are. Reid believes that without knowing why you are doing something it is all easy to get cynical about anything you are developing. When you feel like that you do not do good work. (8.44) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. That happened when Reid joined a team that had already been working on a huge project, for 10 years. It was massive. Reid, along with everyone else, spent months in a little cubical blindly creating their bits of code. Finally, it was delivered to the customer. Unsurprisingly, it was a total disaster. Basically, they ended up delivering a system that offered the customer virtually nothing new. The old system did everything the new system

GUEST BIO: My guest on today's show has been creating software for several decades. He has trained developers around the world, led eXtreme programming projects for the US government and eBay, and introduced Lean and Agile concepts at Google, Guidewire Software and Apple. In 2017 he refocused on technical training and coaching, both in person and online. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Ted M Young. He started programming at the age of 13. As an adult, he became a software engineer, working for eBay, Google, the US government, Guidewire Software, and Apple. While working for them he led eXtreme programming projects and introduced Lean and Agile working practices. Ted's passion is coaching and training. In 2017, he refocused on this aspect of his IT career and became a technical trainer, consultant, and coding coach. Today, he teaches online as well as in person. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.08) – You have been working in software for several decades now. During that time, are there any highlights that you still draw on? Ted explains that his father was into the stock market, in particular, the technical analysis side of things. At 13, Ted wrote a program to draw his father's analytical charts. Eventually, that program got sold to Dow Jones, who was, at the time, selling software packages. (2.14) – I bet your father was pleased. Ted replies that he was. My working on his program and newsletter made things far easier for him. (3.07) – So, you've moved more into technical training and coaching. Why did you choose to go down that path? A friend got Ted involved in coaching. At the time, he had a fairly rudimentary understanding of Java but knew more than most people. So, when his friend asked him to do some Java training, he was a bit reticent to start with. But, decided to give it a go. This was despite the fact that, back then, he was still painfully shy. In an effort to address Ted's shyness his father sent him on a public speaking course. It did not help much and was an awful experience. But, when he delivered the training, he actually did really well. Mostly because of what he had learned on the course. The fact he was still learning Java himself meant that he had an innate empathy for his students. He was able to explain things in a way a total beginner could follow. After that, he was in demand as a teacher and coach. But, in 2000, he stopped his training work. Instead, he focused on working for big corporations like eBay and Google. But, 4 or 5 years ago he got involved in an intern program. While doing that he realized that he really missed teaching and mentoring. Fortunately, not long after that, a friend told him about a great job at Apple. They were looking for a consultant who was also able to carry out internal training. The role was a perfect fit for Ted and the pay was good. He enjoyed the job so much that when he decided to go independent he carried on offering training. (7.04) – How is working as an independent going for you? For Ted, it was a tricky transition. At first, he did not spend much time actively selling his services. As a result, he did not always have enough work. But, now he is marketing himself and building his brand more, things are going well. (7.53) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Ted's advice is not to be afraid of moving company's regularly. When you do that you learn faster and make more connections. A lot of the people he trains are graduates. Many of whom are working for large companies. Naturally, they ask him what they ask Ted for career advice. Things like how long should I stay here? Ted's advice is for them to continue working with a big company for a while. This gives them the chance to get used to how large corporations work. Invaluable knowledge that they can use later in their career. After about 2 years, graduates need to move to another large company, which they should also aim to leave after a couple of years. This is the case even if they love what they are doing. The idea is to get 4 years of working for large firms on their resume, learn how large corporations operate and grow as a professional. With this foundation, it is easier to go on and do other things. Including working for a small company. Usually, when you take this approach, you can easily circle back and rejoin one of the big companies you previously worked for. This is also a relatively quick way to bump your salary up. Each switch will normally lead to you earning more. Saving some money at an early stage in your career is also a good idea. This gives you the freedom to say no to roles that are not a good fit for you. (9.32) – You mentioned the dynamics of working within a larger organization. Can you elaborate a little more on how this impacts your relationship with your team, co-workers and how you interact with the company? Ted starts by explaining that when you work for a big firm you have to rely on influence a bit more. You have to convi

GUEST BIO: My guest on today's show has worked in IT for over twenty years after failing to become a writer and divides his career into three parts. The first third was spent building applications for the fast-paced online gambling industry. The second third was spent maturing that business, in the area of third line support and operations. And the remainder of his time was spent working on container technology within the highly regulated financial sector. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's IT Career Energizer podcast is Ian Miell. He is a developer, author, blogger, open source coder and conference speaker who has been working in the IT industry for nearly two decades. During that time he has held various positions at OpenBet and more recently moved into the financial sector. Working for Barclays as their Lead OpenShift Architect before moving to State Street to work as a VP, in late 2018. Ian is the co-author of Docker in Practice, Learn Bash the Hard Way and Learn Git the Hard Way. He is also a prolific blogger and international conference speaker. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.06) – First, can I ask you about why you transitioned from writing into working in IT? Ian explains that he studied history at university. As a student, he worked at The Times for a few weeks and enjoyed the experience. So, he thought he might like to be a journalist. However, he later realized that journalism wasn't for him. He enjoyed the writing side of things, but not the pressure to simply churn out words. So, he gave up on journalism and went abroad to teach English and write a novel. But, he was unable to sell it. This was in the pre-internet era and Ian had no agent or publishing contracts, so the fact he could not get it published is not really surprising. That experience got writing out of his system, at least for a while. It was then that he decided to turn to an old passion of his – computers. Ever since he was a kid he had been fascinated by them. So, he did a conversion masters at Berkley College, London and started his IT career from there. (2.46) – But, you haven't necessarily left your writing skills behind. I believe you've subsequently written books, with a technology, slant to them. Ian agrees he has come full circle by co-authoring "Docker in Practice" for Manning Publications. It was very well received. He did a video on Docker for another publisher. The combination of these two things got his name known. At that point, his blog really took off. Now, he mainly writes for fun, covering anything that he is currently interested in. He has written a couple of books and self-published them. So, the writing side of his career has finally taken off. (4.02) – So, are you writing another book? Ian has a day job but he is still able to put aside time to write and help others to learn. He is due to do some live Bash training for O'Reilly, at the end of June. Ian also does some technical writing for various businesses. As well as updating his blog. So, right now, he does not really have the time to work on another book. But, he is learning about Terraform and waiting for the next version to come out. (4.44) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the audience? Ian says that you need to realize that you are a product. This is a fact whether you like it or not. Once you accept that and start to think about what you are selling to the market, your horizons start to open up. Ian spent 14 years working at the same company and never really got out there. He stuck to his comfort zone, which really held him back. A friend of his got him to read Ten-Day MBA, specifically the first chapter, which is all about marketing. That is when he realized that he was doing nothing at all to sell himself. At that point, he had no blog, never attended meet-ups. Effectively he was invisible to anyone who was not working with him directly. When he realized this, he started blogging, giving talks and generally putting himself out there. This helped him to focus his energy in the right direction. (6.23) – When was that? Ian says it was only about 7 years ago. When he wrote his first blog post, nobody cared. It was a bit disheartening. But, Ian managed to keep things in perspective. He recognized and took pleasure from the fact that he had actually produced something he could refer back, to in the future. This realization drove him on to do it again and again. He figured he had nothing to lose by sharing what he knew in as many ways as possible. However, Ian points out that it is not always easy. He still gets nervous when he has to stand up and talk. But, doing this opens up so many opportunities. For example, after one speech someone from Barclays offered him a drink. A year later he was working for them. There are a lot of talent spotters who attend events to recruit. So, giving talks can be a good way to find work. (9.21) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. Ian explains that he was

GUEST BIO: Fran Buontempo is editor of the ACCU's (Association of C and C++ Users) Overload magazine. Fran has been programming in C++ for over a decade and also knows C# and Python. Fran has also written a book about how to program your way out of a paper bag. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Fran Buontempo. She is a C and C++ expert who is the editor of the ACCU's (Association of C and C++ Users) Overload magazine. Fran also works with C# and Python. She is a conference speaker, blogger, and author. Her first book, Genetic Algorithms and Machine Learning for Programmers (Pragmatic Programmers), has been well received. In it, she shares several ways to code your way out of a paper bag, as a fun way of providing an insight into emerging machine learning tech. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (0.53) – So firstly, I want to ask you about is your role as editor of the overload magazine? How long have you been doing that? Fran can't remember exactly but she thinks it has been between 5 and 6 years. Becoming the editor happened slowly, almost by accident. Fran got involved with code critiques, writing book reviews and writing or editing one or two articles. So, when the editor stepped down she volunteered. (1.40) - In terms of the following of the magazine, what's its reach? It reaches a worldwide audience of around a thousand people. A magazine is produced each month. One month it is the member-only version. The next month a different version is published, which anyone can read. (2.38) In terms of your book, how did learning to program your way out of a paper bag come about? Fran was involved in interviewing candidates for a job. One interviewee was so bad that one of their colleagues said that they couldn't "code their way out of a paper bag." A throwaway comment that struck a chord with Fran and inspired her to dig deeper into machine learning and improve her skill set too. This led to her writing, her book, Genetic Algorithms and Machine Learning for Programmers (Pragmatic Programmers). In the book, she goes through several AI learning techniques using the example of escaping from a paper bag to illustrate what she was sharing. It was a great way to catch people's attention and engage them. She was also able to include examples from some of the conference talks and articles she had written. (3.44) - So you're confident now that you can program your way out of a paper bag, presumably. Fran says yes, and she has the certificate to prove it. She gave her first talk at the ACCU conference on that very subject. For fun, she asked the audience to sign a certificate if they thought she had done well enough, which they did. (4.01) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Fran's advice is to start seeing imposter syndrome as a positive thing. You get the feeling you are not sure what you are talking about when you put your head above the parapet and do something that stretches you. Feeling like that helps you to identify the holes in your knowledge and fill them. So, that is a positive thing. At this stage, Phil points out that imposter syndrome is simply a different way to describe self-doubt. (5.07) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. Very early in Fran's IT career, she was in the registry at the command prompt and accidentally deleted Windows from a work laptop. She panicked, but it all worked out OK. Not long after she was working in a team of seven that was reduced to just two, overnight. The next day everything broke. Fortunately, Fran was able to sort things out fairly quickly. But, it was a bad situation to find herself in. (6.46) – What was your best career moment? For Fran, her career highlights have come about mainly from human interactions. Being able to mentor people is something she finds to be particularly exciting and fulfilling. It feels great to watch them grow. Being thanked by someone you have helped on somewhere like stack overflow also feels good. Positive feedback from conferences and book reviews, also give her a lift. Of course, the comments are not always positive. Sometimes people do not agree with you or see the value of what you are offering. When that happens, it is important to handle things in a Zen way. Use it as a learning opportunity and see if there is something you could have done better. (8.30) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? The pace of innovation is exciting. It is especially good to see a new wave of young programmers becoming interested in C++. Version 11 has made a huge difference to how popular the language is, at the moment. Fran is also fascinated by what is happening with AI and machine learning. People are now achieving things that just 10 years ago would have been impossible. As new technologies emerge and advance, this is going to continue to happen, at an even faster rate (10.01) – What drew you to a career in IT? Fran respon

GUEST BIO: My guest on today's show is the founder of Cloudskills.io, a technical advisor, author and a mentor for people ramping up on cloud technologies. He has worked for tech giants Microsoft and Amazon and has founded two consulting companies of his own. And as well as having published four books and creating multiple online courses, he is often seen speaking from the stage at events around the world. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's Career IT show is Mike Pfeiffer. He is a 20 year IT veteran and entrepreneur. Over the years, Mike has worked for large companies like Microsoft and Amazon Web Services. More recently, he founded Cloudskills.io consulting, with the aim of helping more people to take advantage of cloud technologies. Mike is passionate about teaching others and helping them to progress in their tech career. He runs his own blog and podcast, as well as providing training courses. Mike is the author of 4 tech books and a prolific conference speaker. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.07) – Can you please tell us more about your background and a bit about Cloudskills. Mike explains that he started Cloudskills.io after he left Amazon Web Services. At first, the team focused on consulting helping people to work out how to use the cloud and Azure. But, since then things have evolved and now they spend 70% of their time delivering cloud training. (1.53) - What was the attraction of cloud in particular for you? Mike saw that working in the cloud was the future, so wanted to get as deeply involved, as possible. It is important to see the big picture. To look up from the work you are doing, see what is going on and recognize when it is time to change direction. You need to give yourself the necessary leverage to be able to pivot when you want to. (31.14) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Mike's main tip is to look at your career as a business or as some people do as a sport. There is a difference between your job and your career. Your job belongs to your employer, but your career belongs to you. Spending a little time off the job ramping up your knowledge and getting yourself known will always pay dividends. But, you have to work at it, so you can leverage the opportunities in the job market. (4.39) Do you think that is something that has changed in the job market? Or do you just think more of us have become aware of the need to do that? The fact that the lifespan of jobs is much smaller has lead to people having to be ready to change roles more often. So, being, open-minded, agile and moving with the times is essential. (5.29) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. In the past, Mike was a bit over ambitious. He had a tendency to take on too much. Once, due to pressure, he took on a development project for which he did not have enough time. His plan was to work on it over the weekends and in the evenings. That project burned up a lot of his time and energy. It turned out to be one of the worst career decisions he had ever made. (6.55) - Did you feel sort of obligated almost to say yes? It was early in Mike's career, so he felt he could not turn down an opportunity. Plus, he did not fully appreciate how much work would be involved. (7.58) – What was your best career moment? About 10 years into his career, Mike started networking and working collaboratively. That change in approach that had a positive impact on his career. He began speaking at conferences, blogging and building up his social media profiles. Eventually, this led to book deals, paid speaking gigs, online courses and a much higher profile for Mike. Helping people who were coming up behind him has also been very beneficial. It was the catalyst for him starting his own business. (9.05) – Please tell us about the books you have written. Mike has already published 4 books. He is currently co-authoring a 5th. The first 4 books were all about shell scripting, specifically PowerShell. The one he is working on, at the moment, is related to Azure architecture and some of the certifications revolving around that. They are all available from Amazon. (9.49) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? The fact that the possibilities and opportunities are endless is exciting. Cloud computing, has been and, will continue to be a great enabler. At the click of a button, any company can get the infrastructure they need for any project or idea, in place. So, all kinds of interesting business and job opportunities can now come to fruition. Mike is excited to see young people going straight into the IT business. Boot camps have made this possible for so many more people. (11.49) – What first attracted you to a career in IT? Mike says that he kind of stumbled into it backward. Around 1998, he met up with an ex-colleague he knew from when he worked in the sales department, at a call center. She invited him to join her in tech support.

GUEST BIO: Michal Spacek is a developer who builds breaks and tests web applications. He has a specific interest in web application security and likes to pass on his knowledge and experience to others, having spoken at more than 100 conferences and events to date. Michal says that he is on a mission to teach web developers why and how to build secure and fast web applications. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Michal Spacek. He has been working in the IT industry for nearly two decades. Michal started his career as a web developer. But, has since taken on engineering roles in particular those related to web application security. He believes in sharing his knowledge with anyone who wants to listen. Over the years he has become a well-known conference speaker, teacher and mentor. Michal is passionate about turning the internet into a safer place. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.05) – So Michal, can you perhaps expand on that intro and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Michal explains that he works mainly from home. Right now he is combining freelancing with working on Report URI with Troy Hunt and Scott Helme. He is also breaking some sites. (2.10) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Michal's unique tip is – if you want to learn something, go teach it to others. It sounds a bit weird, but, works surprisingly well. The act of preparing for presentations and classes forces you to do your research, dig deep and learn. Having to present something makes you structure things logically, so you are less likely to skim over or miss something that is important. It also makes you think about it from several different perspectives. This is because you have to come up with the answers to the questions you are likely to be asked. Preparing for a presentation or class switches you from work to creative mode. This subtle change in perspective leads to you uncovering lots of little details that you would have otherwise missed. Putting yourself under this sort of pressure is a great way to learn. Plus, anyone can do it. You do not have to be a trained teacher to pass your knowledge on to others. (3.28) Phil asks Michal if the fact that you have to put yourself into the mindset of your audience has an impact on the way you learn. Michal agrees that does happen. About 10 years ago, he became very active on a Czech development forum. During his time on there, he wrote about 20,000 emails and a similar number of replies. Doing this taught home to solve problems he did not have, at the time. Michal found that this really opened up his mind. People kept coming up with interesting questions that he had never thought to ask. Plus, of course, in the process, he learned how to use all kinds of tools he would not have otherwise touched. Later in his IT career, he found the knowledge that he had built up during his time on the forum to be invaluable. Often, if he had a problem he would be able to quickly find the solution using something he had uncovered while helping others. (4.56) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. The incident that Michal feels the worst about occurred when he had the perfect job. Everything about the work was perfect, the team, the project, the way the company operated, the money...absolutely everything. Unfortunately, he had become distracted and started dropping the ball in. He would turn up late, not finish things and could not be relied upon. Michal had kind of drifted into these bad habits. So, did not realize there was an issue until a friend pointed out he had become reliable and asked if he was OK. That conversation opened Michal's eyes to what he had been doing. The next day he quit the job he loved. It felt bad, but he wanted to make things right and to preserve some of the friendships he had with people who worked there. Now, every now and again, Michal pauses and does a reality check. He finds that doing this stops him from getting complacent and drifting into bad habits. (7.36) – What was your best career moment? For Michal that was when Scott Helme the founder of securityheaders.com and Report URI called him and asked him to work on a project. Scott is one of the world's top security experts and researchers. So, getting asked to work with him was a big deal. (9.03) Phil asks Michal how he ended up being in a position to work for such an important IT figure. Michal explains that he started by following Scott on Twitter. Over time, he built up a rapport with him and made it clear that he would love to work with him on making the world a safer place, which is exactly what happened. (9.42) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? The fact that you can change the lives of millions of people just by writing code is very exciting. Your skin color, sex, religion education or world view does not matter. Regardless, of who you are you can bring about change. (10.26

GUEST BIO: Sarah Withee is a polyglot software engineer, public speaker, teacher and mentor, and hardware and robot tinkerer. She has a passion for technology and has had ever since she wrote her first computer programs in elementary school. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Sarah Withee. She has been programming all of her life, which has turned her into an accomplished polyglot software engineer. Sarah is a well-known conference speaker, mentor and teacher who is also a volunteer Girls Who Code instructor. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.01) – So, Sarah can I ask you to expand on that intro and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Sarah explains that she got into programming at a very early age. It was a passion that she pursued throughout her entire education, so it is not surprising that she ended up becoming a developer. Over the years, she has had many jobs, which has given her the chance to learn numerous programming languages. She loves learning new things, and working with a language she has never used does not faze her. (2.17) – How did you get into teaching and mentoring? and why did you choose to go down that path? Sarah did not plan to start teaching or mentoring. It kind of happened by accident. When she was an undergraduate in college, they split the C++ class into a lab and asked if she would act as a lab assistant. Sarah said yes, thinking she would be working alongside a teacher. Only to discover, too late, that she had to stand up there alone and deliver the class. At the time, she was very nervous and struggled with talking in front of people. But, she knew the language, had passed the classes and was actively using it. So, once she got past her initial nerves, things went well. Sarah found that she actually enjoyed sharing what she knew. In fact, she turned out to be a good teacher. If someone could not understand the book or the lecture, usually, she could come up with a way of explaining things. She ended up with some of the highest evaluations in the department. Her success in the classroom is what ultimately turned her into a conference speaker. Now speaking in public comes naturally to her. (4.30) – So, is your mentoring always one on one? A lot of the time it is, but, she also engages with people via social media platforms, like Twitter. She is especially keen to help others to develop the necessary confidence to be able to speak at conferences, to overcome their nerves, as she has. (5.14) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Sarah's advice is to always be ready to try something new. Taking this approach is the main reason Sarah has been able to achieve so much. For example, she joined the robotics team at college without knowing anything about the subject. Pretty quickly, she figured things out and was able to start to contribute. (6.20) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? That happened when Sarah was still an intern. She wrote a piece of code and sent it up to her teammate to be checked. By then, she had been programming for a while, so it looked good and he told her to send it up. Sarah did that, but inadvertently pushed up a clip that her manager had not actually looked over. Unfortunately, one of the files was not attached, an oversight that ended up breaking the build. Whenever something failed, all 200+ developers were automatically sent an email to explain what had happened and whose code was involved. So, when the build Sarah was working on broke, naturally, one of these emails went out. Understandably, Sarah was deeply embarrassed, when this happened. Her teammates told her that it was something to be proud of. But, Sarah could not look at things in that way. It really sapped her confidence and she was not sure if a career in IT was for her. She felt even worse when the build broke again while she was in the process of fixing her original issue. (8.31) - What did you learn from that experience? It helped her to understand how important code reviews are. She goes through everything with a fine toothcomb, asking herself if anything is missing and making sure she has not left any redundant code in, by accident. Sarah also likes to get other people to review her code too. (9.12) – What was your best career moment? Sarah has had quite a few highlights. For example, this year, she spoke at an international conference for the first time, sharing how to work with the open source home assistant Mycroft. Sarah has already built up a reputation for learning new tech really quickly. So, today, she regularly gets approached to try out all kinds of interesting and new stuff. (10.31) How much of your success do you put down to the contribution you have made to the industry in terms of teaching, mentoring and sharing what you have learned? Sarah says that putting herself out there and being willing to help other people has definitely helped. (10.58) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and car

GUEST BIO: Dave is a Software Developer who has been building web applications since using HTML tables for layout started to go out of style. A background in classical design and computer systems technology has enabled him to roam between the worlds of design and development. Dave hails from Ottawa, Canada where he works remotely for Test Double. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Dave Mosher. He has a background in classic design and computer systems technology. Today, he works remotely for Test Double as a Software Developer. Dave has also held this position at Shopify and Pillar Technology. For several years, he ran his own consulting company DAVEMO. He specializes in producing high-performance front-end web architecture and is currently working on getting more deeply involved in coaching and mentoring. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.04) – So Dave, can I ask you to expand on that intro and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Dave started his IT career working as a designer. He started out just working with HTML and CSS. At first, he did a lot of desktop publishing work. But, he soon moved on to development, working with databases. (2.27) - How did you get into Test Double? When did that come about? Dave spent a few years working at a start-up in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, doing Python app development on Google App Engine. During that time, he grew a lot and learned to wear lots of hats. That role ended and Dave found himself at a loose end. Around the same time, Kevin Baribeau, a fellow test dabbler, was also under-occupied. He got a job at a consultancy called Pillar Technology. So, Dave applied for a role there too and was hired as a remote consultant. During much of his time with Pillar Technology he worked directly with the guy who hired him, Justin Searls. He also came across Ted Kaufmann while working there. Within about two years, Justin and Ted left Pillar Technology and set up Test Double. Dave ended up working for them as a consultant and later as a full-time employee. It was Justin that helped him to learn TDD, how to write tests and introduced him to the realm of Agile software development. Dave says he learned more in the nine months he worked directly with Justin than he had in the previous five years. (4.53) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Dave's advice is not to chase technology if you are not happy in your current role. In all likeliness a shiny new piece of technology is not going to solve your problems. If you start chasing after shiny tech it usually ends in disappointment. Ultimately, technology is not really the source of the challenge you are looking for. Solving people's problems is what brings job satisfaction. You don't need to be using the latest technology to do that. Phil asks if he is saying that you need to avoid the shiny penny syndrome. Dave confirms that is the case. Chasing after the latest tech is a trap that a lot of newcomers fall into. They tend to underestimate the human factors of software development. (7.09) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. Before joining Double Test full time, Dave took a job with Shopify. He wanted to get away from using JavaScript and learn to use Ruby on Rails. Overall, it was a good move. He learned a lot while working there. But, it was also where his worst career moment took place. At the time, he was refactoring their asset pipeline. It was really slow, taking five minutes to run, so Dave re-tooled it. He did a good job and got the run time down to about 20 seconds. So, they rushed his enhancement out to production. That was a mistake, a big one. They ended up taking down the whole of Shopify for about 15 minutes. At the time, there were around 80,000 websites running on the platform, so it was a big deal. This incident taught Dave that if you are making a change to a big platform you need to be especially careful before proceeding. You have to slow things down a bit and vet everything in every possible environment. It is also important to keep your QA and production environments as closely aligned as possible. At the time, Shopify had not succeeded in doing that. Dave and the people he was working with had been lured into a false sense of security. When the enhancement test went green in the QA environment they, understandably, assumed it would work in production. Unfortunately, that is not what happened. (11.10) – What was your best career moment? For Dave, that was when he first started working for Double Test. At the time they were working on a contract for a very large firm. Like most large corporations, the work environment was incredibly restrictive and inflexible. They had lots of standards in place and hoops to jump through. It was impossible to work fast because Dave and his colleagues had virtually no autonomy. However, they did find a way around this. Working with one of the firm's developers, who did a lot of API wor

GUEST BIO: Charity is CEO at honeycomb.io. She is a former systems engineer and manager at Facebook, Parse and Linden Lab always seeming to end up responsible for databases. Charity is also the co-author of O'Reilly's Database Reliability Engineering and a regular conference speaker. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Charity Majors. She started her career working as a systems engineer and manager for Linden Lab then Shopkick and Cloudmark Inc. Charity was the Infrastructure Tech Lead at Parse when they were taken over by Facebook. At that point, she became a Production Engineering Manager at Facebook. In 2016, she co-founded honeycomb.io. Today, she is CEO of this multi-node debugging tool provider. Charity is also the co-author of O'Reilly's Database Reliability Engineering. She is also a prolific and well-known conference speaker. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.02) – So Charity, can I ask you to expand on that brief intro and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Charity explains that she is a classical piano performance major dropout. She grew up without a computer. But, she ended up spending a lot of time in the computer lab while at university because she had a crush on a boy. It was then that she realized that an IT career was well paid while most music majors did not make a lot of money. Charity has worked in Silicon Valley since she was 17. She built her career primarily by building the first incarnation of infrastructure for systems that are just gaining traction. When she gets bored she moves on and finds something else that is fresh and new to get to grips with. (2.07) – It sounds to me like your passion is to be at the beginning of the start-up. Charity describes herself as the person who comes in and makes everything regular and boring. She enjoys having some chaos to tame, which is why she likes being an early adopter. (2.36) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Charity's advice is not to get fixated on following a traditional hierarchical career climbing path. Becoming a manager is not the only way to be successful in the IT field. If you want to simply carry on building things and progressively working on bigger and more complex projects, do that. Not everyone enjoys management. If you are one of those people, don't let yourself be forced along that career path. Progressing along a technical route is just as valid as climbing the management ladder. (4.22) Phil agrees and comments that, in the past, climbing the management ladder was the only way to be seen as successful. But, that is starting to change with the technical path being recognized, as well. Charity agrees, but she thinks everyone needs to play a role in making sure both paths are valued. For example, when someone becomes a manager congratulate them on their career change instead of their promotion. Over the years, Charity has noticed that the most successful managers are those that see themselves as being in a supportive position rather than a dominating one. (5.24) – Phil says that is interesting given that you are now a CEO yourself. But, it sounds like you prefer to be hands on. Charity agrees that is true, up to a point. But, she does not spend as much time as she would like sat at a terminal doing stuff. This is because Charity deliberately took a step back to make sure she fulfils her role in full. When she was managing engineers, she was close enough to the code to be able to work productively alongside them. Now she is at the point where she is managing the managers she is just too far removed to carry on coding as well as managing. If she were to carry on doing that it would just be too disruptive for everyone. At the point she is at, straddling two different worlds rarely works. (6.49) – Can you share with us your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. Charity's worst moment came when Parse was acquired by Facebook. The announcement was made at an all-hands meeting where she burst into tears. Other members of the team did the same or greeted the news with stony silence. Everyone was in shock, nobody had seen it coming. Charity realized immediately that working for Facebook would change her life drastically. For example, her walk to work was about to become a 3 to 4-hour commute some days. Plus, at the time, she was not a big fan of Facebook and the way they worked. She nearly quit straightaway, but stuck it out and was able to buy herself a house. (8.44) - In terms of what you learned from that, is there anything you would do differently, now? Or do you have a different perspective on things? That situation did have a big effect on her. For example, she and Christina now run honeycomb with a lot more transparency. What happened at Parse came as a huge shock to everyone. There was no time to adjust to or prepare for this massive change. After that experience here and Christina decided to take the opposite approach. They are as open as possible. To da

GUEST BIO: Jessica Ivins is a user experience (UX) designer and faculty member at Center Centre, the UX design school in Chattanooga, TN, where she prepares students to be industry-ready, junior UX designers. Jessica dedicates much of her time to the UX community. She founded the Chattanooga UX Design Meetup. She publishes UX articles on her blog and on Medium. She also speaks internationally at conferences such as SXSW, Midwest UX, IA Summit, and UX Cambridge (UK). EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Jessica Ivins. She started her IT career working as a web developer using mainly HTML and CSS. But, soon became interested in the UX field. Her design school prepares students to become truly industry-ready, junior UX designers. Jessica is the founder of the Chattanooga UX Design Meetup as well as a prolific international conference speaker. She also spends quite a lot of time sharing her knowledge via her blog, social media, and tech articles via the Medium platform. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.06) – So Jessica, can I ask you to expand on that brief intro and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Jessica explains that, by trade, she is a UX designer. But, these days, her focus is teaching others to become industry-ready designers. To achieve this, she takes her students through an intensive two-year course. Once they have completed it, they are fully ready for the workplace. (2.00) - How long have you been focused on UX itself and how long have you been teaching other people? Her answer is since 2007, but Jessica explains that, before that, she was a front end web developer. A skill she still uses from time to time. She has been focusing on teaching since 2011/12. However, Jessica has been running regular workshops and attending meetups for far longer. (3.10) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Jessica's advice is to always be preparing yourself for your next job search, even if you are happy in your current role. That does not mean applying for jobs before you are ready to move on. Jessica's advice is to constantly improve your reputation. It is important to portray yourself as a professional, at all times. That way when you need to find a new job, you will be in a good position to land the role you really want. Making a name for yourself within the industry makes any job search far easier. (4.10) - Do you have any examples of what you might do to get your profile out there? Jessica says you can dive deep and begin blogging. That works well. So, does writing a book or public speaking. For Jessica, it was speaking at conferences that gave her career a real boost. Attending networking events helps too. As does, maintaining a strong presence on social media. You just need to hang out and be active where others who work in your field spend time. For example, if you are a designer Dribble is a particularly good platform to participate in. You can also listen to podcasts or read articles written by experts who work in your field and reach to and thank them. Plus, maybe ask a question or share something with them. Do that regularly and you will stay on people's radar. LinkedIn has great feeds that make it really easy to do this. If you do a few of these things you will end up with a good online presence. So, when an employer Googles your name they will be able to find up to date information about you. Someone who is known in the industry and has a good reputation will find it easier to land a good job. Phil particularly likes the suggestion that you provide positive feedback for articles and podcasts. He knows this is effective, especially when you submit your comment not long after the article or podcast has been published. (6.50) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. At one point, despite being inexperienced and in a junior position, Jessica was expected to complete senior level work. As a result, she ended up working on some high profile and demanding projects. Unfortunately, she did not have enough experience to do everything that was expected of her. It was a very unfair position to be in. Several other people who were involved in the project were in a similar situation. Unsurprisingly, fairly quickly, everyone involved became very frustrated. However, it did make her realize that she needed to become a better facilitator. She had to develop the skill to lead individuals and teams toward consensus. It helped her to realize that being able to rally the team was an essential skill. The difficult experience she had, early on in her career, taught her a skill she still relies on heavily, today. In the end, that experience is one of the things that ended up pushing her career forward. (9.00) – What was your best career moment? For Jessica, getting into public speaking has been a highlight of her career. But, it was not something she wanted to do. She resisted, but her boss pushed her to do it. At the time, her pr

GUEST BIO: Ryan Levick is a developer advocate working in Berlin. Ryan joined Microsoft as a result of its acquisition of Wunderlist in 2015. Ryan has spent his career building apps on both the server and client side and exploring a wide range of open source technologies with a particular focus on functional programming. Ryan has a passion for the Rust programming language, which he often writes about on Twitter and on his blog, and speaks about at conferences. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Ryan Levick. He came late to programming, having worked in marketing, communications, and business. Despite this, after just a few years of programming, Microsoft asked them to join them as a senior engineer. They did so when they acquired 6Wunderkinder, which included Wunderlist, which Ryan was working as a backend engineer. Today, he is a Principal Cloud Developer Advocate. Over the years, he has used numerous languages, including, Ruby, Rails, Scala, Elixir, JavaScript and many others. He is currently learning and working with Rust. As well as working in the Cloud. Primarily, using Azure but he is also learning other competing cloud platforms. Ryan is also a conference speaker. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.11) – So Ryan, can I ask you to expand on that brief intro and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Ryan explains that he studied marketing, so that is the sector he began working in, when he left university. Around that time, he moved to Berlin and joined a start-up called 6Wunderkinder. That was when he first started to learn to programme. In time, he became a full-time programmer for them working on their Wunderlist project. (1.41) - I don't know anything about 6Wunderkinder or Wunderlist, can you give us an overview of what they're about? It is a small company that focuses on building productivity software. In 2015, it was acquired by Microsoft, which is when Ryan secured the first of the 3 jobs he has had with Microsoft. (2.02) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Learn as much as you can and spread out in weird and strange directions. Even if what you are learning is not immediately useful, it may be one day. This will push you to explore areas of computer science and programming you would not have otherwise looked at. (2.45) – Is this something you do yourself? Yes, all the time. (3.04) – Do you focus on the strange and unusual? If yes, how do you do that? Ryan explains that he picks up on new trends all sorts of people are talking about, then explores as many of them as possible. Usually, even if something is not ready for real-time use there are still lessons to be learned from that technology. The trick is to learn about something, then generalize that knowledge. Doing this enables you to apply it elsewhere. He always stops and asks himself how he can apply what he has learned to real-time applications and his job. (4.31) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. Ryan says he hesitates to say worst because his worst career moment actually turned out to be an amazing experience. Recently, he became the manager of a small team. A role he really enjoyed, but the problem was that running his team did not leave him enough time to be hands-on and continue to learn. As a result, he feels he can categorize this experience as his worst career moment. (5.29) – So, stepping away and being more managerial is not necessarily something you want in the future? Ryan explains that he was continuing to learn new skills. About people management, career growth and things like that. But, he found that he was not waking up in the morning wanting to rush to the office like he used to. Ryan thinks it is important to find things that make you feel enthusiastic and stick to doing them. (6.08) – What was your best career moment? Ryan says he has been lucky enough to have had quite a few career highlights. For example, it felt great when Microsoft took over 6Wunderkinder and offered him a job straight away. He had only been programming for a few years, yet was still asked to become a senior engineer for Microsoft. It proves that, in this industry, if you work hard you do not necessarily need a computer science degree to be able to succeed. (7.04) - So presumably, you were able to demonstrate your value to Microsoft? Ryan explains that he was able to do exactly that primarily by showing them that he looked for and recognized new angles. He did this primarily by not being afraid to ask the so-called dumb questions, the ones nobody else wanted to ask. It turns out that, most of the time, dumb questions are the right questions, (7.51) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? The fact that things can change almost literally overnight is something that Ryan finds exciting about working in the IT industry. A few months ago he started a new job as a Developer Advocate. Even in that short period o

Melissa Perri is a Product Management coach and consultant, and founder & CEO of Produx Labs. She has trained organizations and teams on Product Management best practices and has spoken at more than 30 conferences in 14 different countries. Melissa is also author of "Escaping the Build Trap" as well as launching her own school, Product Institute, in 2016. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Melissa Perri. She is the CEO of Produx Labs, a Product Management consultancy, training, and coaching firm. In 2016, she started the Product Institute, which is a 10-week online course, which anyone can take. She also developed and taught the product management section for generalassemb.ly. Over the years, she has spoken at numerous conferences, including Mind the Product, QCon and Lean UX NYC. In 2018, her book "Escaping the Build Trap: How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value" was published. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.09) – So Melissa, can I ask you to expand on that brief intro and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Melissa starts out by explaining that she works pretty much on a daily basis with the C suite of growth stage companies, mostly CEOs, Chief Product Officers, and CTOs. Her primary role is to help them to work out how to scale their organizations. It is a very fast paced environment, with new people are joining them every day. So, they need to standardize their procedures as much as possible. Melissa's company, Produx Labs, also has a partnership with Insight Partners, a venture capitalist company. The rest of the time Melissa works with larger organizations helping them to transform the way they work. Her company works with the executive management team then moves on to training their product managers. This gives her the chance to get involved in solving interesting problems at all levels. (2.37) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Melissa's advice is to always go somewhere you can find someone to teach you. Joining Google as an intern is much better than taking on the role of product manager at a startup. If you work for a well-established firm, they will be in a position to take you under their wing and teach you. (3.23) – So, do you have any specific advice for anybody who may be looking to get into product management? Getting into the field is still tricky. Right now, there is no clear path. If you have been working with an organization for a while you will likely be offered the role. Or a startup will be desperate to fill the position, so will hire you even if you have relatively little experience. Until now, that has been the fastest way into that particular role. Moving forwards, Melissa and a number of her colleagues, are trying to change that situation. They are working on setting up an apprenticeship path or associate pm model. But, right now, her recommendation is to find and follow one of the great product leaders. Choose someone you really admire, reach out to them and learn from them. The other route is to work in an adjacent field, for example, user research or UX. Once you are established, make it known that you want to learn more about the product side of things and take it from there. (4.35) - In terms of the evolution that's going on around product delivery, is the area of product management growing as well? Yes, it is probably one of the most in-demand jobs there is, at the moment. Yet, it is still hard to figure out how to break into this very well paid field of technology. (5.20) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. A few years ago, Melissa became the product manager for a marketing platform. She had some experience and had just started to teach others about the field. So, she was pretty confident she knew the right way of doing things. Unfortunately, her CEO did not see things her way. Like most founders, the CEO wanted things done their way. At the time, Melissa did not really have the skills to explain things in a way that would enable her to "bring them along on the journey". She just butted heads with everyone and got upset when nobody appeared to be listening to the customers. It was a pretty awful experience. But, after 6 months she started to learn how to change her approach. Today, she always tries to see things from the other person's perspective and adjust her approach accordingly. These days, she works hard to take people with her rather than try to push them down a certain path. She sells to them instead of using brute force. (7.49) – What was your best career moment? For Melissa that was when she had an epiphany moment, fairly early in her career. At the time she was working in a traditional work environment. The CEO would come up with an idea and ask the development team to build it, which, naturally is exactly what they would do. Nobody would stop and ask if that is really what the customer wanted. At the time, Melissa was learning about how to exper

GUEST BIO: Maaret Pyhajarvi is an Engineering Manager for F-Secure leading a team while continuing with hands-on testing and programming. In 2016, Maaret was awarded Most Influential Agile Testing Professional Person and she has spoken at events in 25 countries delivering close to 400 sessions. Maaret is also author of two books, Mob Programming Guidebook and Exploratory Testing. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Maaret Pyhajarvi. She is an Eng Manager, Tester, Polyglot Programmer, Conference Designer, Speaker and Author. For the past 25 years she has mainly worked in the testing field and has written two books on the subject. Her Mob Programming Guidebook and Exploratory Testing books are both very well regarded. Maaret received the Most Influential Agile Testing Professional Person award, in 2016. She is a well-known conference speaker, who has delivered close to 400 sessions, in 25 countries. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.10) – So Maaret, can I ask you to expand on that brief intro and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Maaret explains that she has been working in the IT testing field, for about 25 years. But, it is only in the past couple of years that she has thought about and started to understand what motivates her and the role she is fulfilling in this industry. After someone who did not work in the industry asked her what she did for a living she realized that she is actually a feedback fairy. In other words, she finds problems and shares them with the developers in a way that enables them to fix the issue. Something that end-users cannot do, they can only really highlight problems, but do not have the tech knowledge to come up with possible solutions. (2.14) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Maaret's advice is to remember that you can craft any job you are given into the job you want. Over the years, she has been crafting the way she works to better suit each of the companies she works with. Maaret likes to over deliver, to push the boundaries. People are often surprised by the tasks she carries out. They do not identify some of these things as being tester related. This is evidence that Maaret has been crafting her role into something that better suits her and provides the firms she works for with extra benefits. Phil asks her if she brings her personal values to her work. Maaret agrees that this is very much the case. In fact, she has changed the way she works so much that when she took on a management job just 6 months ago, she realized she had been basically filling that role for some time. If there is a job to do that she knows she is going to enjoy Maaret will usually volunteer or take the initiative and just get it done. It is not always necessary to ask for permission. You just need to be ready to apologize later if you misinterpret what needs to be done. But, usually, you get it right, so apologies are not needed. (4.08) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. That happened about 10 years ago. She was working as a contractor on the customer organization side and had overall responsibility for a multi-million euro project. Normally, she would have taken a hands-on approach. But, her then manager asked her to do things differently. They wanted her to focus on the metrics. She was assigned with tracking, preparing and explaining the progress of testing, at boardroom level. Helping the board to understand where the quality was bad, basically, preparing for these discussions. Naturally, that is what she did, barely touching the application itself. The system they were developing and testing had multiple customers. So, usually there were two other big contractors, representing two other user clients in the boardroom with her. One day, when a big decision was about to be made, at the door of the meeting room, these two people told her they could not come into the meeting. They said they were working for other clients who were considered to be direct competitors of this board's firm. So, because of a conflict of interest they had to stay outside. This left Maaret handling the meeting. At the time, there were serious quality issues and a key decision had to be made. Naturally, Maaret struggled to explain things to the board at what was a critical point for the project. She had very little hands-on knowledge of the system and was thrown in at the deep end, at the very last moment. Unsurprisingly, the outcome of that meeting was not good. She was unable to win the argument, which resulted in her company losing a huge amount of money. For Maaret this was a real career low. (7.18) – What was your best career moment? Maaret is lucky enough to work in a fast-moving field, which provides her with career highlights on a regular basis. But, one of her biggest highlights was helping one of the companies she worked for to reduce their end-user problem rate. When she joined them their issue rate was 18%,

GUEST BIO: Beau is a technology Strategy Consultant and has been a professional polyglot programmer since 1998. He hosts Astrocasts and is co-host of That Podcast. Beau is an active open-sourcer, creator of Sculpin and helped to create Stack PHP. He is also a serving Core Committee member for the PHP Framework Interoperability Group. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Beau Simensen who is currently working as a freelance Strategy Consultant. His main professional language is PHP, but he is actually a polyglot programmer. Beau is well known for being the host of the Astrocasts podcast and the co-host of the That podcast. He is also an experienced conference speaker and a serving Core Committee member for the PHP Framework Interoperability Group. Since 2012, he has been an active member of the Open Soured community. Beau is the creator Sculpin and played an important role in creating Stack PHP. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (00.48) – So Beau, can I ask you to expand on that brief intro and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Beau explains that since 2012 he has been involved with the PHP community and working on open source projects. During that time he has spoken at many conferences and had a lot of fun doing so. PHP is his main professional language and Dev Ops his field. (1.49) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Beau wishes he had found people who encouraged and pushed him at an earlier stage in his career. Before 2012, he was basically working alone without any outside validation, guidance or encouragement. At times it was hard going. (2.31) - How would you encourage other people to go about doing that? There are lots of ways to do it but attending conferences and meetups is a particularly good approach. On occasion, coworkers will also be able to help out. But generally speaking people who you do not work directly with will be able to help you more effectively. (3.10) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. Before he started programming, Beau worked for an ISP in a relatively big town in North Dakota. He was trying to solve a problem, possibly trying to stop a zombie process. Using some documentation he had found Beau ended up typing kill space dash one into the system. Unfortunately, he did that. At which point the entire bank of 100 modems went completely silent. His heart sank; he knew he had just crashed the entire system. It was a tough way to be reminded that actions have consequences. You have to be 100% sure you know what you are doing before taking action, especially when you are going to impact other people's lives so much. (5.05) – What was your best career moment? For Beau that was the demo he did at wearables Dev Con in 2014. At the time he was involved in a project that was developing sensors in shoes. They wanted to integrate their sensors with Google Glass. That meant getting them to speak to each other via Bluetooth. But, the Bluetooth connection didn't have the necessary networking stack to do so. You couldn't actually get to an IP address. But, in the end, Beau did manage to figure things out and tether them together. He was sitting in the Google Glass meetup at the conference and on the spot decided to put together a short presentation about this little project. He spent just 15 minutes putting it together. Naturally, he was nervous, but he still delivered his demo and presentation. For a change, the demo actually worked and he was very well received, which felt great. It was a real career highlight for Beau. (7.48) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? The fact that there is always stuff Beau does not know is something he finds exciting about the industry. He loves the fact he is constantly learning new things. Beau is especially excited to hear about new developers putting together amazing things simply by mashing their own code with existing stuff. In under a year, some people are already capable of creating great things. For example, the person who has just put together an American Sign Language translator. They have just made it possible to play a video and have it translated and visually signed for the user. All of this without the program having to understand what the content is about, to begin with. (9.19) - Are there any particular technologies that are of interest to you? Beau explains that he is getting to a point where he is not as curious about the technologies anymore. He is more interested in everything else that goes around it, more the business side of things. Beau really likes figuring out what kind of outcomes people are looking for. Whether the solution is built using Rails, PHP or Node JS is not that important. What matters is that the outcome is right for the end users. Finding different ways to deploy code is what he is focused on, right now. (11.26) – What drew you to a career in IT? The fact that he could make money

GUEST BIO: Nader Dabit is a Developer Advocate for Amazon Web Services. He specializes in helping teams to build and implement cross-platform applications more efficiently. Nader is also author of the book "React Native in Action" and host of the "React Native Radio" podcast. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Nader Dabit. He is currently a Developer Advocate at AWS. Nader started his career as a front end web and software developer. Later, he moved into the field of consulting, focusing on providing in house training for clients like Amazon, American Express, Indeed and ClassPass. Over the years, he has worked with numerous languages and platforms. But, his specialist area is React Native. Nader is the creator of Reach Native Elements, the Host of React Native Radio and the author of React Native in Action. He is also an international speaker and an active open source contributor. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (00.54) – So Nader, can I ask you to expand on that brief intro and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Nader responds by explaining that he has been a Developer Advocate with AWS for a little over a year. Before that, he worked on the front end. He then moved into consulting and training, working directly with the client. He is best known for his work with React Native. But, he is specifically interested in cross-platform application development. In particular, things like Ionic, Flutter and React Native. (2.13) – What drew you to Amazon? Nader explained that he liked their philosophy and was impressed with some of the products they were due to roll out. So, he was keen to jump on board. He was especially interested in the benefits of being able to build cross-platform using a single language. Plus, he realized that React Native was going to be important. So, he really wanted to get involved with that, as soon as possible. Taking the position he was offered with AWS was almost a no brainer. (3.00) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. Energizer career audience? Nader says that consistently creating and sharing new and original things has really helped him with his IT career. That can be in the form of blog posts, working on open source projects or building on something other people have done. Taking this approach draws attention to you as a developer. Positive attention, plus, it pushes you to learn at a faster rate. It forces you to dig deep. Phil concurs, he has noticed that the more you create the easier the creative process becomes. It is like exercising a muscle. (4.30) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. That happened when Nader started his programming career. He took a job in LA without meeting anyone from the company and moved there with his family. Unfortunately, just one month later they fired him. By then, Nader had sold the family home, moved all of their stuff to LA and taken on a lease. (5.30) – Are you able to go into why you felt it didn't work? Nader thinks that, without realizing it, he had taken a job that he did not have the right level of experience for. It was his first IT job, so he misjudged what he was capable of, at that stage of his career. He was working with a phenomenal team, the best he had ever come across, so keeping up was just impossible. On the plus side, he learned a huge amount in the month he spent working with them. Applying what he had learned there helped him to find another job. He was working again within a month of being fired. (6.34) – I assume it changed your approach in terms of the way you look for and evaluate opportunities. Nader says it has. Now that he has a better understanding of his skill set, it is far easier for him to work out if he is a good fit for a particular role. (7.38) – What was your best career moment? Getting deeply involved in React Native from an early stage has been great for his career. He made sure he became well known in that field. Mostly, through blog posts, Nader demonstrated his in-depth knowledge of React Native and helped others to learn it. So, when a couple of years later it went mainstream and demand for training soared, Nader was in the perfect position to land some huge contracts. His first big contract was for Amazon. They bought his time for several weeks. It paid well and gave his career a big boost. If Nader had not dedicated himself to learning React Native and sharing his knowledge, he would not have been able to enjoy working in the very lucrative sector of consulting training. He went on to work with companies like Microsoft, American Express and Salesforce. (9.30) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? The fact that the industry is now building things that are easy to scale means we can potentially reach millions, sometimes billions, of people with our tech. AWS is particularly good at doing this. Importantly, they are building tools that enable others to also scale what they ar

GUEST BIO: Rhia is a software engineer for a data-driven tech company where she creates backend software applications using C#, .NET, Python, AWS and a variety of other tech. Rhia is an active member of Kansas City Women in Technology and she is passionate about encouraging underrepresented and underexposed communities to take advantage of the opportunities available in tech. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Rhia Dixon. She is a young software engineer, who is just starting her IT career. Yet, she has already done a lot within the industry. Rhia has already worked with C#, .NET, Python, AWS and several other languages and tech platforms. Recently, she delivered her first tech conference speech. She is also an active member of the Kansas City Women in Technology group. Rhia is passionate about encouraging underexposed communities to become more involved in the IT sector, so is actively looking for more ways to do that. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.06) – So Rhia, can I ask you to expand on that brief intro and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Rhia explained that she put herself through a boot camp to get started in the tech industry. She completed a full stack coding program to be able to start her career as a software engineer. Rhia did well and found her current position, while she was still studying. That job has her working mainly at the backend using C#, which has been a great way for her to cement and hone her skills. Importantly, this role has also enabled her to quickly branch out and work with other languages and platforms. (2.03) – Is there anything in particular that you enjoy about this role? The fact that she gets to touch all kinds of tech is something Rhia loves about her work. She really enjoys the fact that the team she works with has the autonomy to try out all kinds of new things. (2.51) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Rhia's main tip is to learn to communicate well. Networking was how she landed her current role. It is also how she became more involved with Kansas City (KC) Women in Technology. Her advice is to put yourself out there and ask plenty of questions. It is the best way to get to understand what people do and how things fit together. (3.30) In terms of networking, how did you go about doing that? Attending meetups was encouraged in the boot camp, something Rhia took note of and did, right from the start. That is how she came across KC Women in Tech. In class, she was learning to code using React. But, the KC women were using Angular to do HTML, CSS and JavaScript. This opened her eyes to the fact that there are a lot of different techs and pushed her to try out new things. Through these meetups, she met business analysts, product owners, and people in dev adjacent roles. These experiences and connections sparked her interest in all kinds of other things. Rhia also started talking more to people she already knew and began to network with them and learn as much as she could from them too. (5.10) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. Rhia has only been working in IT for about a year. As a result, her worst career moment is connected to missing out on a fantastic opportunity rather than a mistake she has made. At the boot camp, all students were required to research the IT industry in the city. During this process, Rhia came across a firm she really liked. They provided a fun work environment, had an ethos she liked and were offering work she would be qualified to do once she had finished boot camp. They even had an opening for a JavaScript developer. But, she still had 3 months to go at boot camp. So, despite the fact career services encouraged her to apply, she didn't. Mostly because she just did not have the confidence to do so. Now, she realizes she should have just applied. After all, the worst thing that could have happened was that she did not get the job. (7.40) – So, I assume you would do things differently now. Rhia says that if she came across something she was only 20% qualified for, she would still apply. Often a lack of a certain skill is not a deal breaker. It is an approach that has already worked well for Rhia, although she is aware of the fact that she has a big personality helps too. She tends to stand out and be memorable, which seems to lead to people being very willing to give her a chance. (8.29) Phil asks Rhia if she is making the point that it is not always about technical skills. Often, it is also about what else you bring. Rhia says yes that's it exactly. (8.47) – Please share a couple of your career highlights with the I.T. Career Energizer audience. About two months into her current role, a third party site did something and broke their system. It was a high-stress situation, but, it gave Rhia the chance to dig deep and see how stuff actually worked. For the first time, she had a high-level view. Unfortunately, everything had to be built up

GUEST BIO: Kyle Shevlin is a front end web developer and software engineer who specializes in JavaScript and React. Kyle is also host of the Second Career Devs podcast where he talks to guests who became software engineers after a previous career. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Kyle Shevlin. Kyle specializes in working with JavaScript, React, Redux, GraphQL, Noda, Webpack, D3 and several others at the front end. Currently, he is working as a Senior Software Engineer for Webflow. Kyle is an Egghead.io instructor and is about to release a new JavaScript related course. He is also the host for the very popular Second Career Devs podcast, which is targeted at IT professionals who have previously worked in other industries. Kyle also speaks at conferences, meetups and regularly live streams on Twitch. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (00.57) – So Kyle, can I ask you to expand on that brief intro and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Kyle explains that he is a software engineer at WebFlow. There he is working on democratizing software as well as expanding the world of visual development and website building. He also makes podcasts and enjoys spending too long on Twitter. Kyle is a good scratch golfer and at one time he was going to turn professional. But, things did not work out, which he is actually now quite glad about. Playing sport is a tough way to make a living, especially if you are not in the top 100. He jokes that he much prefers his cushy IT career. (2.28) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. Career Energizers audience? Kyle says it is important to be open to opportunity. Over the years, Kyle has taken advantage of opportunities that he was not really looking for. Taking chances has had a very positive impact on his life. However, Kyle is not suggesting you go into things blind. You still need to do a bit of research to make sure it is a genuine opportunity and is right for you. (3.22) – Phil comments that a lot of people are reluctant to take risks, so is interested to know how Kyle overcomes that tendency. Kyle responds by admitting that he is more risk averse than he would like to be. However, when his gut reaction is to hold back, he actively pauses and fully evaluates the situation. This helps him to respond differently, if it is appropriate to do so. A lot of the time it turns out to be fear that he does not have the ability that holds him back. Every time he has pushed himself to get past that fear, he succeeds. (4.24) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. A few years ago, when he was first hired his manager tasked him with stirring things up a bit. His manager wanted to mix things as a way of driving change, with the long term goal of producing a positive result for everyone. Unfortunately, a few weeks into the job Kyle's manager was moved on. So, he no longer had their support. However, Kyle carried on with the task he had been given. Unfortunately, things did not work out well. He tried to push change without gaining trust and getting consensus first. This experience taught him that you need to pick the right time to make changes. If something needs changing, Kyle now pauses, takes stock, appraises the situation properly, identifies the priorities, and then proceeds. Most importantly of all, he builds trust before trying to implement change. (6.48) – What was your best career moment? For Kyle, this is a tricky question because he automatically thinks of the latest thing he has achieved as a highlight. Each new achievement still gives him a bit of a rush. Career-wise this is a good thing because it keeps him chasing the next accomplishment. Kyle believes that the fact he is always chasing that high is partly responsible for his success. For example, he is about to release a new course as a way of building on the work he has been doing with egghead.io. He knows from all of the feedback that what people have learned from him has made a positive difference to their lives. That great feeling has driven him on to produce more tutorials. (8.19) – Phil comments on the fact that feedback is great because it gives your energy levels a boost, feeds your passion and enthusiasm. This ends up pushing you towards your goals. Kyle agrees that this positive feedback loop is very beneficial. When people tell you your work is good, it pushes you on to produce something even better. (8.41) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? The fact that something new is always happening is one of the things Kyle finds exciting about the IT industry. In particular, how much the JavaScript ecosystem has grown and is still growing. It is particularly good to see the language being updated more frequently. Kyle is also excited to see more people getting involved in web development and software engineering through JavaScript. Code schools are attracting people from all walks of life. They bring lots

GUEST BIO: Sarah is a Cloud Solution Architect for Microsoft where she helps organizations with their Data Centre Transformations. In recent years Sarah has started to focus and specialize in all things Cloud, especially Microsoft Azure. Sarah is also a STEM Ambassador and likes to share her story in the hope that it will inspire the next generation to start a STEM career. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Sarah Lean, who has spent 15 years working as an IT professional. She is a Cloud Solution Architect for Microsoft, specifically working on Data Center Transformations. Sarah specializes in Microsoft, VMware, Veeam and Azure, but she has many other skills and is always adding more. She is a STEM Ambassador and founded the Glasgow Azure user group. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.08) – So Sarah, can I ask you to expand on that brief intro and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Sarah starts by sharing the fact that she has been working in IT for about 15 years. She began her career working on a helpdesk doing really basic tasks like resetting passwords. From there, she worked up through more complex tasks. Over the years, she has touched virtually every technology. Currently, she is moving into working with the Cloud, specializing in helping companies to migrate their data across. (2.10) – Sarah started working for Microsoft about a year ago. Phil asked her what inspired that move. She says that she had always wanted to work for Microsoft and jokes that is her inner geek showing. Now that she has the right skill set she has been able to fulfill her ambition. (2.33) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Sarah's advice is to "be authentic and learn to speak up". It is important to share your opinion. That after all is why you have been invited to meetings or asked to work on projects. (3.40) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. Sarah explains that, a while back, she was working with a manager she just did not get along with. They were polar opposites. This situation pushed her to change jobs for the wrong reasons and she ended up working for a company that was not a good fit for her. Basically, she found herself in an even worse situation than the one she had just left. But, it forced her to be proactive and turn the situation around. She learned to handle thing differently whenever she was struggling to work with someone. In the end, that negative episode turned out to be a growing experience for her. (4.56) – Phil asks Sarah what she now looks for when moving jobs. Sarah likes to work for supportive managers that inspire her. She also prefers flexible working and needs to be doing the type of work she enjoys. Phil understands this completely. He once made the mistake of accepting a job despite the fact that the interview went badly. That experience taught him to never ignore red flags. (6.29) – What was your best career moment? For Sarah that has been joining Microsoft. Something she has wanted to do from the moment she started using computers. Her skill enabled her to land her dream job. But, there was also an element of luck involved. She was referred by someone she met through the Glasgow Azure user group, that she founded 2 years ago. He worked for Microsoft. (7.16) – Where are you based? Sarah explains that she works mostly from home or customer sites, often, in Scotland and England. She loves the flexibility the job gives her. (7.46) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? The fact that no two days are the same is something Sarah finds exciting. This is especially the case now. The whole cloud first mentality has turned things on their head. Everything is evolving and progressing very quickly. Sarah really enjoys being able to continuously learn and try out new things. (8.43) – Clearly your focus is the Cloud, but is there any other area that particularly interests you? Sarah describes herself as a server hugger, but she is now getting more involved in DevOps. She is focusing on understanding the infrastructure as code and how to automate. (10.00) – What drew you to a career in IT? Sarah has always enjoyed computers. The fact that she can help people and share her knowledge is something she also enjoys. Her career in IT allows her to combine all of these passions, so, for her, it is the ideal career. (10.36) – What is the best career advice you have ever received? Sarah says that is – "be yourself". When she was younger she tried to follow in the footsteps of some of the people she worked with and admired. Unfortunately, that strategy led to her working in roles that she was not really suited for. (11.09) – If you were to begin your IT career again, right now, what would you do? Sarah would spend more time learning about networking. She has a good grasp of infrastructure, but often wishes her networking knowledge was even better. (11.53) – What are you curr

GUEST BIO: My guest on today's show is Matt Harrison. Matt is an instructor on Python and Data Science material. He has been co-chair of the Utah Python user group and has presented at conferences including PyCon, OSCon and OpenWest. Matt is also an author of a number of books about Python, including the Treading on Python Series. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Matt Harrison is Phil's guest on today's show. He is a Python and Data Science Consultant who offers customized training to corporations and startups as well as consulting services through his company MetaSnake. Over the years, he has worked with a range of languages and platforms, including Pandas, Pylons, Django, CherryPy, Postgres, AWS, SQLAlchemy, SciKit Learn, and Matplotlib. Matt was the co-chair of the Utah Python user group as well as an author and public speaker. In 2012, he published his first Python book Treading on Python Volume 1: Foundations of Python. Since then, he has published several other books and is currently busy writing more. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.02) – So Matt, can I ask you to expand on that brief intro and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Matt explains that he runs a small consulting and training company called MetaSnake. He works with businesses big and small and spends half his time speaking to very technical people teaching them Python and data science. Right now, he is working on three more books. (2.09) – Python is quite a theme, in your career, what made you choose that, in particular? The first language Matt learned was Perl. He used it for his first summer job, so became very comfortable with it. Matt was lucky enough to work with a really smart guy. At the time, he was building on a model to pull out relevant terms for their corpus of text. The guy he was working with wanted to use Tcl to get the task done and Matt thought Perl would do a better job. So, they agreed to meet in the middle and use Python instead. At that time, it was a relatively new language. Within 3 days they had the proof of concept working. Python just gelled with him, unlike, Perl, C and Java, which he had mostly been using up to that point. (3.42) – Phil asks Matt to tell the audience more about his books, which Phil understands are mainly about Python. Matt explains that his book "Illustrated guide to Python 3" is for beginners. He has also written an intermediate book, one that covers the Pandas library and a few others. All of which are available on Amazon. (4.14) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Matt says his advice is to – get comfortable with being uncomfortable. When he was just starting out, his local Python meetup took place a couple of miles away from where he lived. But, he didn't attend partly because it would take him outside of his comfort zone. A decision he regrets to this day. At the time, it was a very tight-knit group. Not attending meant that he ended up missing out on a lot of important interactions. Plus, he eventually ended up meeting everyone anyway. At the time he did not understand the power of interacting with others. If you want to further your career, you need to get away from your computer sometimes and mix with other people. (6.00) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. For Matt that was when he started his small vertical niche software company. A lot of firms let them liked the software. But very few of them decided to buy. In a surprising number of cases, this was because using the software would mean they would have to fire someone. A lot of the firms were small and employed family members, so they really did not want a piece of software to replace them. When Matt heard this he just said OK and moved on instead of trying another sales tactic. He knew he had a good product, but his lack of sales skills meant he could not close the deal. (8.20) – What was your best career moment? For Matt, that was when he wrote his first book in 2010. He wanted to reach more people with his training and realized he could do that as an author. His self-published book was a great success and opened a lot of doors for him. (10.00) – Phil asks if the process of writing books gets easier. Matt says yes, to a certain extent it does. Things do move faster once you have created a process that works for you. He now finds it easier to start typing and get in the flow. (10.59) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? The fact that a lot of companies are now waking up to the power of their data is exciting. There is a lot of low hanging fruit. As a result, you can make a huge difference and do so very quickly. (12.14) – What first attracted you to a career in IT? Matt always enjoyed creating things. When he was younger, he attended a lot of art classes and thought he might end up being an artist. But, a family member encouraged him to take a programming course. Once he did, he realized that there is a lot of

GUEST BIO: Guillermo Rauch is the CEO and co-founder of ZEIT, a San Francisco company whose mission is to make cloud computing as easy and accessible as mobile computing. Prior to ZEIT, Guillermo was the CTO and co-founder of LearnBoost and Cloudup. He's also the creator of several popular Node.JS libraries. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Guillermo Rauch. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (00.59) – So Guillermo, can I ask you to expand on that brief intro and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Guillermo starts by explaining that, for many years, he has been working in the open source space, creating libraries and projects. Some of which the audience will have used in one form or another. For example, a framework called MuTools, which laid the foundations for a component system. It later became deeply embedded in Facebook's own JS initiatives. A lot of the MuTools team went on to work on React. People the audience probably sees every day on Twitter. After MuTools, Guillermo moved onto Node.js and started working with JavaScript. He used Node.js to create a universal platform of sorts. Today his company maintains Next.js, which is one of the most popular frameworks for universal React applications. It is what some of the largest internet properties, now utilize. For example, Tencent news in China, one of the most highly trafficked sites in the world, is powered by Next.js. Open source has been Guillermo's key enabler for his career projects. He used it for Socket.io, mongoose and later for Next.js. When you create a project with Next.js you can deploy it to the cloud using just one command. Guillermo's company provides you with a platform to host and scale any website or application server. You can innovate, create features, ship products and look after your customers without getting bogged down in anything else like configuring the server, leaving you free to grow your business. (4.19) – So, is this way of working gaining momentum? Or has it sort of evolved? How do you see it? Yes, cloud computing is definitely gaining momentum. With services like ZEIT you no longer have to understand the low-level details, like how virtual machines work, SSL or DNS. That is all taken care of for you. All users need to do is to focus on the code. It is far more user-friendly than the primitive cloud platforms are. (6.21) Phil says, over the last decade, this is an area that has evolved to the point where it is almost unrecognizable. Guillermo agrees and he thinks we are on the brink of a step change when it comes to the Cloud. He compares it to what happened with Blackberry and iPhone. For many years, it was only the business world that was using these devices to their full potential and recognizing the power of the apps. But, today, these devices are used by absolutely everyone. The same is happening with the cloud. As it becomes easier to use, more people are getting on board with it. (7.37) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Guillermo says he cares deeply about his end user, the customer. He wants them to have the best possible experience. Over the years, he has developed a way of ensuring that he does not lose focus on the end customer, during the development process. His advice is to know your latencies. Be aware of how fast data can be transferred and determine and choose the fastest route for the customer. You want them to have a great experience regardless of where they are in the world. Think about where your database, your code and your customers are. The information needs to travel at the fastest possible rate. If you look at the world through this lens you will end up building amazing things. The other latency figures you need to think about are the ones that relate to attention. Everything needs to appear to happen in real time. Things need to flow smoothly. You do not want a user to think that something has gone wrong and start pressing buttons. For example, if there is some avoidable lag, don't put up a blank screen, use animation instead. (12.08) Phil asks if knowing these latencies can also help you to benchmark your application. To know for sure how efficient it is. Guillermo says using latencies ensures that you naturally think about things from the viewpoint of your customer. So, you may for example think that it is a good idea to get users to give you their email address or card details as quickly as possible. After all you want to be able to contact them again and make the sales transaction fast and seamless. But, asking them to do these things before you have explained the value of your product could be a bad idea. From their point of view, the act of keying in their email or credit card details slows them down and is super annoying when what they really need is more information from you. The chances are they will go elsewhere. Always see things from the end users perspective and deliver what they really want. (13.33) – Can you tell us about your worst c

GUEST BIO: Richard Warburton is the co-founder of Opsian.com and maintainer of the Artio FIX Engine. He's worked as a developer in different areas including Developer Tools, HFT and Network Protocols. Richard wrote the book "Java 8 Lambdas" for O'Reilly and is also an experienced conference speaker, having spoken at dozens of events and sat on conference committees for some of the biggest conferences in Europe and the USA. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Richard Warburton. He is best known for his book "Java 8 Lambdas", which was published by O'Reilly Media. Over the years, he has also spoken and numerous big tech conferences and sat on several conference committees. He is the co-founder of Opsian.com and maintainer of the Artio FIX Engine. His mainly freelance career has led to him working with numerous companies, in various roles. Richard has worked on HFT, Developer Tools and Network Protocols. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.03) – So Richard, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Richard starts by explaining that unlike most IT professionals he has always worked for himself or as a contractor. He enjoys the fact that working this way gives him more control over what he does and usually the direction of the projects he works on. For example, it has enabled him to run a company called Opsian with a friend. Their company helps people to understand and solve their performance problems by showing them what their software is actually doing. At the same time, he continues to work on various consulting engagements. Right now, a lot of his work is related to financial trading systems. (2.45) – Phil asks Richard what drew him to that particular area. Richard said that he had always been interested in working in sectors where he could push the technology envelope. That is certainly necessary for the financial trading sector. (3.48) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Richard's advice is to always try to work with people who you can learn from. He has always tried to do that and has been lucky enough to work with and learn a lot from people like Martin Thompson, Martin Burgberg and Kirk Pepperdine. If you can't work with great people you can learn from in your day job, just do it in the open source community instead. There are plenty of opportunities there. Richard has worked on a bunch of open source projects, which have really helped his career. Collaborating with others improves your habits, develops your philosophy and enables you to pick up new ways of working. You really grow as a professional when you work collaboratively. Phil agrees surrounding yourself with people who offer something different from you can be leveraged to move your career forward. (6.07) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. For Richard, that happened on the first day he started working for j.clarity. He wrote a piece of code, which looked fine and worked. But, when the CTO pulled it down and ran it on his laptop he got the blue screen of death, or at least the Mac OS equivalent. Not the first impression Richard had wanted to make. Fortunately, his CTO was very understanding about the situation. It was laughed off, solved and soon forgotten. That incident taught Richard how important it is to be working with supportive colleagues when things go wrong. They make sure that you are not overwhelmed by the problem, help you to resolve it, learn from it and move on to the next challenge. It also reminded him to bear in mind that code that works in one environment can easily fail in another one. You have to fully consider the other environments it may be run in before releasing it. Try to think about what can go wrong. Doing this enables you to produce a more robust piece of code. (10.56) – What was your best career moment? For Richard, getting his book published was definitely a highlight. Writing a book is a long-term project especially when you do it while working full-time as he did. At points, you lose sight of the light at the end of the tunnel. So, when you finally get it done it feels fantastic. (12.20) – Do people contact you a lot about your book? Richard says that when it was first published he did receive a fair amount of feedback both positive and negative. It always felt good when he heard from someone who had been able to use what they learned to solve a problem. (13.25) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? The fact that there are so many opportunities in the IT sector is something Richard enjoys. Someone once said "software is eating the world", and they were right. In one way it is a scary time to be living in. But, if you are working in the IT industry, it is also an amazing time to live through. Things change fast, often without us realizing it. For example, recently he visited Vienna with his family. Just 10 years ago, a trip like t

GUEST BIO: Ruth Yakubu is a Senior Cloud Developer Advocate at Microsoft and founder of PoshBeauty.com. Ruth specializes in Java, Artificial Intelligence, Advanced Analytics, Data Platform and Cloud and has worked for companies such as Accenture, Warner Brothers and TicketMaster in software architectural design and programming. Ruth has also been a speaker at several conferences including Devoxx, DeveloperWeek and TechSummit. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Ruth Yakubu. She is a Senior Cloud Developer at Microsoft and founded PoshBeauty.com. Ruth started her IT career in 2001 as a Software Engineer for UNISYS, moving on to become a Manager and Software Engineer with Accenture before setting up PoshBeauty.com. Over the years, she has become a specialist in Java, AI, Advanced Analytics, Data Platform and the Cloud. She is also a well-known speaker who has spoken at large conferences including Devoxx, DeveloperWeek and TechSummit. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.11) – So Ruth, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Ruth thanks Phil for his introduction and explains that he has summarized her career well. But, she goes on to speak a litter about her public speaking role. Her main aim with much of her public speaking is to get everyone energized about Azure technologies. To help people to see how to use it to solve their problems. Ruth also explains that she now works with a lot of startups. Helping them to solve their technology issues regardless of where they are on their journey to success. Microsoft has a lot to offer start-ups. For example, they can get up to 120,000 credits in the Agile cloud. Providing start-ups with somewhere to do their proof of concept work and build their businesses. There is a growing demand from startups for this type of help. They really benefit from and appreciate the fact that the Microsoft team circles back to check in and see how they are doing. A lot of entrepreneurs are not tech savvy, so having someone who can lead them through the options that are available is invaluable. They also need help in hiring developers and working out if they are actually using the best architecture. It is not uncommon for what is built originally not to be right for the business in the long-term, which means it has to be stripped down and re-built using the correct architecture. Ruth helps entrepreneurs to build things right the first time and avoid this costly mistake. Ruth and her team enable firms to identify the best tech option for them. This prevents them from wasting time and money trying to find their way while their competitors surge ahead. In many cases, they can also help B2B startups find new customers. Microsoft helping in this way results in more consumption, by the startups, of Microsoft's products. So, it is very much in everyone's interests for the startups to find clients and do well. (7.45) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? After 15 years in the industry, Ruth knows that it is vital to keep on learning. You have to keep up and stay relevant. Everyone has to do this, companies as well as individuals. For example, Amazon, with its AWS offering, is now moving from being a physical product seller to being a service provider. Microsoft is also constantly transforming itself. Today, they are one of the leading cloud providers. Very quickly Microsoft has gone from being mainly a software provider to offering a long list of IT services. To be able to stay relevant, you need to learn to track the market trends. If you don't do that you will soon be left behind. (10.55) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. Despite some warning signs during the interview, Ruth took a job mostly because it was well-paid. Inevitably, she quickly realized that she hated the job and had taken a wrong turn in her career. Up until that point she had followed her professor's advice to only take job's she loved and not to be tempted by the money. Fortunately, that happened early in her career, so she was soon able to get things back on track. (13.32) – What was your best career moment? Ruth has been lucky enough to experience several great moments in her career. But for her, founding PoshBeauty.com proved to be her pivotal moment. She was full of trepidation while she was building the business. But, she plowed forward and proved that the idea was sound. Building her own startup opened many doors for her and she uncovered talents and abilities she had no idea she possessed. She ran the company for 5 years, before stepping away and joining Microsoft. The whole experience taught her not to be afraid of stepping outside of her comfort zone. Facing your fears is the only way to move forward. When Ruth joined Microsoft, she had to push herself to conquer her fear of public speaking, so she could become a more effective Developer Advocate. The first time she spoke to a l

GUEST BIO: Fernando Cejas is a Developer Advocate at IBM having previously worked at SoundCloud and at Tuenti. Over the past decade, Fernando has mainly worked as a Core Engineer and Tech Lead focused on Mobile Development. Fernando describes himself as a nerdy geek and a strong believer of sharing, which he does by speaking at conferences, participating in communities and through his blog. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Fernando Cejas. Fernando is a Developer Advocate who is currently working at IBM. He has also spent time working at SoundCloud as a Mobile Core Engineer and, prior to that, at Flomio and Tuenti as a Mobile Software Engineer. Fernando is a huge fan of agile methodologies, programming, and tech in general. He enjoys sharing his knowledge with others and putting it to use by helping people to solve their problems. His urge to share what he knows has turned him into a prolific public speaker. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.10) – So Fernando, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Fernando said that Phil's intro was a good summary of his career. He also explained that he is also taking the time to share his knowledge. Mostly by giving talks at conferences, which he really enjoys. It provides him with the chance to help people to avoid some of the mistakes he has made. (2.16) – Can you share a unique IT tip with the career IT audience? Fernando says that it is important to share your knowledge. He knows that his sharing what he has learned, including as a result of failures, can help others from hitting their head against a brick wall. From experience, he has found that it is your failures that teach you the most. Phil agrees with the saying "you learn from your own mistakes." But, he also says that it is better to learn from other people's mistakes. So, you don't make them yourself. (3.39) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? Interestingly, that happened only five or six years ago when he was working for SoundCloud as an Android Developer. When he was asked to be the release captain for a project, during his first week, he said yes. In those days, there was no continuous integration environment. Releases were not automated they were done manually. By that time SoundCloud had about a hundred million users. Unfortunately, when Fernando shipped the release, he forgot to change the input. The application had worked on his phone, so he shipped it. But, he was in the development environment, not the production one. That environment consisted of two Mac minis serving the API in the content. Unsurprisingly, in the far bigger scale live environment, there were issues. This led to a 2-hour outage that affected millions of users. The CEO even rang him and asked why their core functionality – playing a song – was not working. Fortunately, the fix was easy. DevOps increased the instances of the development API, did some forwarding for the APIs and a few more technical things and it was fixed. But, the outage was a big deal. (7.37) – What did you learn from that experience? Avoid having manual steps in a process. Automate as much as you can. Fortunately, there was no finger pointing at SoundCloud. Something that Fernando was grateful for and thinks was very beneficial. They recognized that a weakness in the process was uncovered. Then they worked to fix that issue, so something similar could not happen again. The no blame culture allowed everyone to be totally honest and uncover the real issues. (9.16) – What was your best career moment? For Fernando that was the first time he gave a talk. He feels that is when he crossed the line from being introverted to being extroverted. After that, he was no longer afraid of starting a conversation. (10.50) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? The fact that tech is changing at such a rapid pace is something that excites Fernando. Recently, he has been doing some work on quantum computing and he believes that is going to change the world. This field has so much potential, they are so fast, which means any problem is solvable. Quantum computers are not likely to replace traditional computers, but they will be ready to complement them, in about five or six year's time. These are the computers that will solve exponential problems. However, we will still need classical computers to feed the quantum ones. (12.41) – What drew you to a career in IT? Basically, it was curiosity that drew Fernando into the world of IT. He first started working with tech when he was 16 and was spending time at his local hospital gaining work experience. While there, he got sucked into creating and maintaining Ethernet networks. From there, he just kept trying things out starting with small things like hacking microprocessors to play games. (13.48) – What is the best career advice you have ever received? Over the years, he has received lots of great career advice. But, for now, he is

GUEST BIO: Jono is a digital strategist, marketing technologist and full-stack developer who currently manages special projects at Yoast. He has nearly twenty years' of experience in web development, SEO, analytics, brand and campaign strategy and much more. Jono has worked with startups, agencies and international brands to fix websites, implement growth strategies, prepare for the future and win markets. His previous roles have included principal consultant at Distilled, Head of SEO at twentysix and global head of digital and head of insight at Linkdex. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Jono Alderson is Phil's guest on today's show. He is a full-stack developer, marketing technologist and digital strategists who manages special projects at Yoast. Jono began his career, 20 years ago, building small websites using HTML. For several years, he applied his coding skills to the world of SEO. He educated himself to the point where he landed key roles at Uninid, Distilled, twentysix and became the head of insight, then head of digital at Lindex. Today, he codes in numerous languages, is an SEO and analytics specialist as well as a brand and campaign strategist. He is a passionate advocate and participant within the open source community. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (00.57) – So Jono, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Jono explains that he started his IT career working out of his bedroom. There he built little websites using HTML. Over the following years, he dabbled and worked in a lot of different fields. He worked as a developer, got involved in SEO analytics and a lot more besides. Today, he still wears many hats. Right now, a significant percentage of his work focuses on optimizing for speed across all platforms, including the web, apps and more. He comments that recently, much of what he has been doing feels more like consultancy than web development. (2.24) – Why do you think you have ended up moving from a technical role into more of a consultancy role? Jono comments that he has actively tried to blend things together. He continues to code, mostly on personal projects, picking up a new skill or language as he goes. (2.54) – So, does that mean you are deliberately keeping your hand in? Jono says, yes absolutely. He wants to avoid becoming the disconnected marketer who knows just enough to be dangerous, but, not enough to be useful. (3.22) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. Career Energizer audience? Jono's unique tip is to remember that you don't have to ask permission to do better stuff. This is especially the case in areas like web development and SEO, which are both evolving at a phenomenal pace In those fields, it is open season for anybody and everybody. Basically, anybody can make a contribution. Nobody has created the next JavaScript library yet, but someone will, for sure. It could be virtually anyone that does it. Some areas like performance optimization, data and, privacy management are still in their infancy. They are examples of areas where nobody really cares about your background or job title. If you can contribute and are passionate about these things you can work in those areas knowing you will be welcomed. When you take that passion to the open source market you have a big impact. You can actually affect change, sometimes in a big way. Through this community, Jono has affected change on some huge platforms and technologies. These are tools that are used by tens of thousands, every day. In virtually every area, the industry is crying out for smart people to get involved. Jono points out that this is particularly the case right now in the WordPress world. There is a huge amount happening there, around technologies like AMP. Google is heavily involved in, and interested in, providing a faster web experience. So are very active in seeking ways to do so. But, there are not enough people involved in this field that have the right knowledge. This means that there is a huge opportunity for anyone who is prepared to study a little and acquire the necessary skills. (5.48) – Are there any ways you would recommend that people start thinking about what they might be able to do? Jono explained that his journey started by looking for the unknowns, the edges. For example, his involvement in technical SEO began with him being curious about what the best HTML practices were for search engine optimization. He started by digging around in places like Stack Overflow to see what others were doing and better understand what was already happening. Naturally, this led to him getting involved in the discussion and trying things out. He also started sharing his findings and his take on the situation. Without setting out to do so he had become involved in affecting change. Developing things that would, in time, become the standard. (7.24) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. This happened when Jono went from worki

GUEST BIO: Jasmine Greenaway is a Cloud Developer Advocate for Microsoft. She has been working as a .NET developer since late 2009 which has given her the opportunity to travel the world and make use of Visual Studio's extensibility framework in an open source environment. Jasmine also teaches at a local community college and co-organises BrooklynJS. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Jasmine Greenaway. She has evolved her career as a web developer into an exciting life, full of opportunities and interest. Jasmine rarely says no to a chance to take her IT career in a new direction. As a result, today, she is a well-known public speaker, mentor and teacher. All of this is in addition to working as a Cloud Developer Advocate at Microsoft. She also co-organises BrooklynJS. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (00.57) – So Jasmine, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Jasmine explains that after leaving university, she decided to move to New York. This was a good move for her because it helped grow her confidence and get past being shy. She started public speaking, while in New York. First, she gave really short, lightning talks. In time, she graduated to making 30-minute presentations. Today, she regularly speaks at IT conferences. After joining the GitHub team she was asked to speak at a conference about the GitHub Visual Studio project she was working on. That led to someone from Microsoft reaching out to her and offering her the Advocate position. Despite not being very familiar with Azure, at the time, she took the plunge, which turned out to be a great decision for everyone involved. When someone asked her to teach web development in a local Queens' community college she said yes to that too. She has been doing it for 2 years now and really enjoys seeing her students grow. Her work there combined with her speaking and meetups have helped her to build up a great network of friends, colleagues and collaborators. (4.00) – What have you learned working in what must be quite an interesting environment? Jasmine said that often she is dealing with students who have never opened a text editor or seen an ID. In those situations, she has learned to go slow and recap regularly. Going from nothing to doing a full project in just four months is a big task, which can be overwhelming. So, students need to be led along the path to success carefully. Phil asks if her students feel a sense of accomplishment once they have completed the course. Jasmine, says yes that is definitely the case. In the end, a lot of her students thank her for taking the time to go back over things they were struggling with. She often sits down with students for one to ones, even as they start their IT careers. Often, they are really close to achieving their goals. All they need is a little advice or encouragement to get there. (6.28) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Jasmine says that it is important to be comfortable with what you know. Don't let what you do not know, overwhelm you. Use what you have and recognize that you can easily learn the rest of what you need. It is all too easy to become overwhelmed and be too hard on yourself. Phil agrees that is very good advice and adds that breaking an objective down into smaller chunks makes things easier to understand. When you do that the task becomes far easier to achieve. Jasmine says that is the exact approach she uses when programming, especially if she has to learn something new to be able to complete the project. (8.07) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? Jasmine explained that at one point in her career she let imposter syndrome overwhelm her. At the time, she was working on a team where everyone, except her, was a senior developer. Fairly quickly, she began to feel she was not contributing and could not get anything right. Fortunately, someone took her aside and told her she was doing a good job. They also told her not to be afraid to ask for help. Once she started doing that everything was OK. To this day, she is thankful for that team for picking up on the fact that she was struggling and reaching out to her to let her know they were there to help. (9.25) – What did you learn from that experience? It taught Jasmine to believe in herself and her capabilities. In that situation, the only person that thought she was not capable was herself. Once she was convinced otherwise by the team Jasmine was able to make rapid progress. (10.14) – What was your best career moment? Jasmine said that was the talk she gave in August 2018 with a co-worker. For fun, they decided to see if they could uncover the identity of the famous, but anonymous, horse.js using machine learning. The person who runs that Twitter account takes web development tweets and copies a sentence from them and tweets that back out again. Weirdly, this simple process produces some very amusing results. Because it is funny and quirky h

GUEST BIO: Keith is currently a member of the Platform Team at Okta working on Identity and Authentication APIs. Previously he was an early Developer Evangelist at Twilio and before that he worked on the Ultimate Geek Question at the Library of Congress. Keith's underlying goal is to get good technology into the hands of good people to do great things. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Keith Casey. For nearly two decades, he has been working in the IT industry. During that time, he has worked as a systems developer, IT architect, technology officer, principal advisor and senior developer evangelist. He is now working for Okta as a member of their Platform Team, specifically on Identity and Authentication APIs. Keith is also a well-known public speaker. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (00.57) – So Keith, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Keith explains that his first job, after leaving college, was working at the Library of Congress, helping them to digitize everything. The lengths they go to capture every element of a piece of information is amazing. So, when people ask him how much data is held in the Library of Congress, he finds it impossible to give an accurate answer. Naturally, at this point, Phil asks him for the figure. Keith's response is to explain, that when he got started there were no blogs, iTunes or any of the platforms that churn out a huge amount of information every day. Yet, it was estimated that the librarians would have had to catalog around 200 terabytes a day to have been able to keep pace with what was being produced, even back then. (2.28) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Keith's top tip is to treat your career as an investment. Think about the long term, in the same way you would if you were investing in shares. So, when deciding if it is worth learning how to use a tool, think about how it will help you in both the short and the long term. By all means learn the tools you need to be able to do the job you are doing right now. But, make sure that you also pick up skills that you will be able to use for the next 5 to 10 years. (3.23) Phil agrees. He thinks there is too much short-termism, especially when it comes to learning programming languages. People tend to just learn what they need to get by on their current projects. But, fail to learn and understand the underlying principles. (3.59) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. For Keith that was when he accidentally corrupted a huge news article database while working on an App for Associated Press, about 15 years ago. Fortunately, there was a backup. Unfortunately, it was 8 hours old. News happens continuously. So, even after the restoration, there were around 64,000 updates still missing. This was a tough way to learn not to do development work in production. (5.50) – What was your best career moment? For Keith that happened when he was working as a developer evangelist at Twilio developing the SMS API. As an evangelist, one of his key roles was to get out there and show that their stuff worked. Whenever possible, Keith and his colleagues would do a 5-minute demo in front of an audience. They would open an empty Vim file and build an application right there and then. Then use it to allow the people in the room to send them a text straight away. This demonstrated that their stuff really worked and was super quick and easy to use. For Keith these presentations gave him a huge lift. Seeing so many people's eyes light up was amazing. (7.38) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? The pervasiveness of today's tech is something that Keith finds exciting. It is everywhere and touches every aspect of our lives. No matter what your passion is, you can get involved in tech. For example, if you are interested in farming, there are self-driving tractors, data analysis, drones and all kinds of other things. Working in tech no longer means sitting behind a screen most of the time. You can go out and touch the real world and see how what you are doing affects everyone. (8.39) – What drew you to a career in IT? For Keith it was the fact that it is a great way to pay the bills. Interestingly, his desire to succeed in tech was also partly driven by the fact that he is a theatre geek. He really enjoyed the fact that IT opened up new ways for him to get things done in the theatre. (9.01) – Can you give us an example of how you used your IT skills in the theatre? Keith explained that using basic trigonometry they were able to set up microphone arrays along the edge of the stage. This enabled them to get the lighting rig to figure out where an actor was on stage and automatically follow them with a spotlight. (9.29) – What is the best career advice you have ever received? Keith says that has to be – "Help good people around you." Do it without expecting anyth

GUEST BIO: Matt Raible is a Developer Advocate at Okta and a Web Architect for Raible Designs, striving to find the best solutions for developing web applications. He also writes a lot of technical blog posts on the Okta Developer Blog as well as articles for InfoQ. Matt is a fan and developer of the JHipster project and he develops and maintains the JHipster Mini-Book and the Ionic JHipster Module. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Matt Raible. He is a skilled web developer who has been working in the industry since the early 90s. Matt is also the man behind the open source AppFuse project and the Okta Developer Blog. Currently, he is working as a Developer Advocate for Okta. He is also a well known public speaker and is deeply involved in the JHipster project. Matt maintains and develops the JHipster Mini-Book and the Ionic JHipster Module. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.02) – So Matt, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Matt explains that he has been working as a web developer since the early 90s. He had not planned to have a career in IT. In the early 2000s, he got into Java. By 2004 he was also involved in public speaking. (1.44) – So, you obviously enjoy the web aspects of development. Is that something you deliberately pursued as the internet sort of exploded and expanded? Matt says yes, it was. In the early 2000s, he realized that it was best to be the guy who wrote the UI. Simply because that is what people see and are most aware of. He enjoyed doing the demos and getting the accolades, so he ended up focusing on UI development. (2.25) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Matt's advice is to create a six-week plan of the things you want to accomplish. He has found following this advice to be very helpful, especially for his work as a developer advocate at Okta. Putting together a six-week plan keeps you on track and enables you to achieve a lot more. It is far more efficient than simply working week to week. He also finds it useful to do this for his personal life too. (3.52) – Is it a rolling six-week plan? Matt revisits his plan on a weekly basis. He and his team also summarise what they have actually done each week. This information is published in an internal newsletter. (4.35) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? Matt says that he has two he wants to share with the audience. Luckily, they are both turned into silver lining moments. In 2007, he was working for LinkedIn as a contractor. Helping them to select and set up an open source, Java web framework. Things went well and they asked him to create his own team. So, Matt asked some of his friends and former colleagues to join him. Two months after they started working together they were persuaded to go full-time. Yet, 6 months later they were all laid off. That was in 2008, just as the downturn started. That time, the silver lining was that nobody was really enjoying the work they were doing because they had been switched from the front end to non-developer roles. Luckily, within a week, they were picked up by another organization where they became front end developers again. The 2nd moment occurred 5 years ago. For 19 years, Matt had been working as a consultant. During all that time, he never had any trouble in finding full-time work, filling a 40 hour week. Suddenly, he could only find a part-time gig. He found this hard. That is until he realized what a glorious thing having 20 spare hours a week was. At that point, he started doing more with his personal life and, as a result, became a happier person. (6.47) – What did you learn from those experiences? Matt says that the LinkedIn experience taught him not to be afraid to change jobs when he finds himself in a role where he is not using his skills. He really did not enjoy his last few months at LinkedIn because his new boss had moved him away from UI development into a nonproduction position. So, when LinkedIn let him go he was actually relieved. (7.49) – What was your best career moment? Matt is lucky to have had quite a few career highlights. He particularly enjoyed seeing his open source project AppFuse take off. For about 2 years, he was spending about 30 hours a week interacting with users, learning and seeing hundreds benefit from this project. Unfortunately, there was a downside, his family life suffered as a result. (9.25) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? Matt is excited by the fact that it is possible to take a relatively small amount of knowledge and do a lot with it. Being able to take something that you have taught yourself and turn it into a good career is fantastic. With IT, you can still do that, even these days. (10.22) – What drew you to a career in IT? Matt had studied Russian and International Business. But, when he spent the summer working in Russia he realized it was not for him. So, he decided to complete a 5th

GUEST BIO: Joe is a Front End Engineer for Digital Air Strike in Scottsdale, Arizona. Before his current role, Joe had worked as a Digital Marketing Manager while he continued to learn how to code in the evenings and at weekends. Joe also creates video tutorials for egghead.io and helps to run a local meetup called Desert GraphQL. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Joe Previte. He is currently working for Digital Air Strike as a Front End Engineer. Previously, he was a Digital Marketing Manager and Web Developer. He is becoming well known for his video tutorials, which can be found on egghead.io. Joe also writes articles about coding, mainly on the subject of JavaScript. In particular, React, Node, Express, Redux and Gatsby. Recently, he has started to run a local meetup called DesertGraphQL. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.03) – So Joe, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Joe explains that when he is not busy working or creating video tutorials he writes articles about coding. For example, he has written articles for Twilio. He is a big fan of this cloud communication platform, which has a great API that enables you to build SMS, voice and messaging solutions. (1.47) – Can you please share a unique tip with the I.T. career audience? Joe's unique piece of career advice is not to forget the power of patterns. When he was in college he studied languages and was able to use patterns to help him to quickly learn several of them. For example, 80% of Portuguese grammar is very similar to Spanish. His advice is to look for patterns when you are trying to learn something new. This particular learning method works really well for programming. Phil agrees taking this approach helps you to tap into the fact that understanding the foundations or the basics of a programming language is pretty much consistent across all the different ones. When learning Redux, Joe took a piece of code and studying it. He started by changing a few things at a time. In particular, things he was familiar with and thought were likely to be similar to other programs he had already worked with. This enabled him to see how it worked and try out more things that were likely to be the same. Doing this made it easier for him to abstract away the pattern. (4.16) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. Joe has only been working in the industry for a couple of years. However, he has already been stung by taking someone's word for something instead of getting it in writing. Someone offered him a front end internship that was supposed to transition into a full-time role. It meant moving from California back to Phoenix. The guy who ran the company said he could only pay him as a contractor. They agreed he would do 20 hours of paid work and 20 hours as a freelancer. He did this for two months. But, wanted to get an idea of the salary he could expect in the longer term, so asked. His boss said about 50k, which was OK with Joe. The plan was for his boss to put it in writing when he returned from New York. But, when he got back he changed his mind and actually only offered him 30k. For Joe, that was a real low point. (7.50) – Phil asks Joe to share his career highlight with the audience. Joe is a big fan of Twilio and is active in the community. So, he was delighted when Twilio inducted him into their "Doers Hall of Fame" in 2018. It was great to be recognized by the Twilio team as someone who had made a significant contribution. His Twilio superclass which he ran at a local meetup and online boot camp was very well received by those who took it. (10.32) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? Even though he is relatively new to the industry Joe is excited by all of the new technologies and languages that are coming through. There is just so much available to learn that it can be hard to know what to study next. Joe is particularly interested in the potential of GraphQL. He has gone as far as organizing a local meetup group with his co-workers to take full advantage of this data query and manipulation language for APIs. Phil shares Joe's enthusiasm for all of these new technologies. He notes that they are providing developers and engineers with the chance to broaden their horizons. (12.41) – What drew you to a career in IT? For Joe there were two things. He has always had a passion for building things. He would regularly come up with business ideas only to realize that he needed a developer to bring his idea to life. At the time, Joe did not have the necessary skills to do so. In the end he realized that if he wanted to build any of these businesses learning to code himself was the best way to do it. But, training was expensive. So, when he came across a free code camp he jumped at the chance and began his training. (13.30) – What is the best career advice you have ever received? Joe was once told not to te

GUEST BIO: Julie Lerman is a Microsoft Regional director, Docker Captain and a long-time Microsoft MVP who now counts her years as a coder in decades. She makes her living as a coach and consultant to software teams around the world. You can find Julie presenting on Entity Framework, Domain Driven Design and other topics at user groups and conferences around the world. Julie blogs at thedatafarm.com is the author of the highly acclaimed "Programming Entity Framework" books, the MSDN Magazine Data Points column and popular videos on Pluralsight.com. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Julie Lerman. She has had a long IT career, of more than 30 years, during which she has worked as a coder and coach. Since 1989, she has worked as an independent consultant. Over the years, she has led software teams in many different countries. She specializes in guiding teams towards re-thinking their software architecture and adapting it to fit in with modern practices. Julie has worked hard to share her knowledge with a wider audience. She has created in-depth training in the Pluralsight library and has written 4 highly acclaimed books about Entity Framework. Her blog, thedatafarm is also a great source of information for developers. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (00.58) – So Julie, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Julie explains that she spent the first 4 or 5 years of her career working mainly as a programmer for employers. But, about 30 years ago, she decided to go it alone. These days, she focuses mainly on coaching, consulting and mentoring. She uses her decades of IT experience to help all kinds of IT teams to progress. (2.26) – How did you get into coaching, Julie? It is something that just evolved. For many years, she had been teaching people through her sites, books and conference speeches. After a while, people asked her to provide training for their teams. She really enjoyed the process of sitting down with companies and going through their issues and working out how to address them. It is much more effective than public training. However, she does encourage the companies to go through her PluralSight videos, first. If, after doing that, they still have problems or concerns she sits down and helps them to solve their more complex issues. (3.43) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Julie's most important piece of advice is to take responsibility for your career and further learning. Too many people get stuck in a rut. They just carry on doing the work they are familiar with. Over time, they end up being unaware of what is going on in the wider world. They have very little understanding of the new technologies and how they are being applied. You have to keep up with new developments to be able to make the most of your career. Phil reminds the audience that the company you are working for will only assist you in learning new skills, up to a point. Typically, they will only help you to take your career in a direction that suits the needs of the business. (5.14) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? For Julie her two worst career moments came when it was time for her to move on to bigger and better things. In both cases, her employers got very angry with her. They both tried to persuade her to stay by offering her a little extra money or the promotion she should have already earned, but not been given. In both cases, she felt that what they were offering was 'too little, too late'. So, she said thank you, but no. That is when they got really angry and aggressive. In both cases, she had to deal with the men who had been almost father figures to her losing their tempers and berating her just for leaving. For someone in their 20s this was an extremely unpleasant situation. (7.21) – Did you take anything away from that experience, in particular? Julie says that it taught her to trust her instincts. These experiences also made her realize that she had more gumption than she thought. She just stood there and sucked it up, did not argue back and moved peacefully on into a better role. (8.28) – Phil asks Julie about her best career moment, her greatest success. The moment Julie's first book was delivered to her home and she held it in her hands was a highlight. She felt so proud of what she had achieved. But, Julie is lucky enough to regularly experience smaller moments that also make her feel proud. For example, when she is able to help a developer to understand something they have struggled with. Another example is when she suggests a little tweak that ends up making a tremendous difference and benefiting lots of people. (9.58) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? The fact that things are so open-ended right now is something that excites Julie about the IT industry. Things are opening up in new directions all of the time. Thanks to IoT, machine learning, artificial intellig

GUEST BIO: Lauren Lee is a Technical Product Manager at Go Daddy where she gets to evangelize a platform team that optimizes the engineering process for developers. Lauren helps teams to adopt a framework that makes prioritizing Machine Learning, experimentation, personalization and mobile-first development simple. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Lauren Lee. Lauren started her IT career later than most. After spending 7 years working as a teacher she secured a place at the Ada Developers Academy. From there she has gone on to work for Amazon as a software development engineer and secure her current role at GoDaddy as a technical product manager. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (00.59) – So, Lauren, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Lauren explains that for 7 years she was a teacher. But, she quit her job and attended a coding program at Ada Developers Academy. It was an intensive tuition-free course that takes 11 months to complete. Students spend 6 months in the classroom, followed by a 5-month paid industry internship. The academy specializes in helping women and gender diverse people to start a successful career in the tech industry. From there, she became a software engineer at Amazon and has recently transitioned to a technical product management role with GoDaddy. Lauren describes her main function as being to act as a bridge between the engineer, designers, marketers and the end users. (1.52) - Phil asks Lauren how she ended up working for GoDaddy. Lauren explained that they are a sponsor company for the developer's academy. Everyone Lauren knew that worked for them said that they were excellent employers that offered a truly inclusive culture. So, when she needed a job she chose to interview with them. Right now, Lauren is working on the website building side of things, helping small business owners to succeed. (2.58) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Lauren says it is important to understand the power of communication and be an empathetic educator. Her work as a teacher demonstrated to her that people communicate in different ways. Lauren has found that bearing this in mind has also helped her to be more effective in her IT career. As a teacher, she learned to be an empathetic educator who adapted the way she taught to the needs of her students. Today, it is not hard for her to adapt her way of communicating to suit the audience she is speaking to. Getting into the mindset of the people you are talking to is a good habit. It helps you to think about things from different perspectives. (5.12) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. For Lauren that was when, during a whiteboarding interview, a tear ran down her face. It was a humbling moment, despite the fact that she did in fact land the job. So, Lauren is pleased to see companies trying to move away from relying on whiteboarding interviews. They are beginning to realize that not everyone does well when asked to explain things using a whiteboard. Some freeze up, others get flustered and virtually everyone feels nervous when put in that situation. As a result, it is very easy to dismiss someone who actually does have the talent and skills that your organization needs. Phil finds this point particularly interesting because very few people talk about the interview part of landing an IT job. He has noticed that when it comes to interviews most of us create a lot of extra stress for ourselves. We turn the interview into the be all and end all. When, in fact, it is just a one-off event. (8.05) – Phil asks Lauren what her best career moment was. For Lauren, that was getting into the Ada Developer Academy. She was particularly proud to make it through the tough selection process. The moment she pushed her first feature into production is another highlight that springs to mind. However, for her speaking at conferences has become her real passion. She started out small, but has now graduated to the larger events. Lauren particularly enjoys being involved in these collaborative learning experiences. She loves finding new ways to engage with and help these larger technical communities through her work as a presenter. (9.56) – How did you get into conference speaking? As a student, Lauren attended a Ruby conference. It was a great experience, so very quickly she decided to put herself out there and start speaking and contributing. (10.29) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? Lauren is excited by the fact that there are now so many opportunities for women within this industry. The industry is definitely becoming more inclusive and moving towards a point where everyone is represented and can be successful working in IT. But, it is important that each of us plays our part in pushing this process along. We all need to become mentors, advocates and allies. There are some g

GUEST BIO: Ali Spittel is a self-taught software engineer who has the job of teaching other people how to code at General Assembly DC's Web Development Immersive program. Before that she was a software engineer at Optimus. Ali also blogs about code and her life as a developer. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Ali Spittel is Phil's guest on today's show. In Jan 2019, she became a Software Engineer and Developer Advocate for the DEV Community. Prior to this, she spent nearly 2 years teaching others to code as a Lead Instructor for General Assembly DC. Ali started her IT career working as a software engineer. Currently, she is Director of the DC Chapter of Women Who Code. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.00) – So Ali, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Ali explains that she started her career as a software engineer, focusing on the stack. Mostly working on data visualization and processing applications. Later, she became a full-time coding teacher at General Assembly. Recently, she has taken on a new hybrid role as a software engineer developer advocate for Dev.to. (1.52) Phil asked her how she had ended up in that particular role. For Ali landing the role was a natural progression. She was already well known within the community, had experience of teaching, public speaking and writing. She had also worked as a software developer. So, when the role came up she realized that she ticked all of the boxes and tried to land the job. The fact that, for a while, she had been an active member on the platform and was good friends with some of the DEV people also helped. Interestingly, much of the material she published on Dev.to came from her blog. Cross-posting like this enabled her blog to gain traction and led to the DEV team to work on special projects with them. (1.52) – Phil asks Ali how she ended up teaching code. Ali explains that she was a guest lecturer at the General Assembly. She was also heavily involved with the coding community. Plus, even in college she had written a lot of content. A habit that gets you used to crunching down what you are learning and representing it in a way that is easier for others to understand. Basically, teaching, so for her becoming an actual teacher was natural. (3.24) Phil asks Ali how her new role came about. Again, that happened largely because she had decided to share what she was learning. She did that mainly through her blog, which she had never thought would amount to much. At one point she stumbled upon the DEV website and started to cross-post her work. Gradually, her blog posts gained traction. She also did a couple of one-off projects for DEV and some workshops. So, when a position came along she was a natural fit. (4.45) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the audience? Ali's advice is to find ways to teach others what you are learning. Doing so benefits you and others in many different ways. Firstly, you become a resource for others. You also make some great connections and really bond with those who are learning from you. Later, you are able to learn from them and ask them from advice about areas you have yet to explore. Teaching enables you to establish yourself as an expert in your field. This in turn increases the rate at which your content is shared and makes it far easier to find work. Working out how to explain something to others is also a great way to solidify your own knowledge. It was especially helpful for Ali because she was largely self-taught. She knew what to do, but, not necessarily why it had to be done that way. Repeatedly, going over the curriculum deepened her own IT knowledge. She also found that her students came up with questions that made her think about things in different ways. This drives you on and pushes you to dig deep. There are so many different ways to teach. It is not just about standing up in a classroom. These days, you end up doing it through public speaking, online, as a mentor, in the workplace and in many other ways. (7.28) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? Ali's worst moment actually happened while she was still studying. She fell in love with coding and decided to take a double major in computer science. But, for some reason, when she started taking the C++ course, things did not gel for her. It did not matter how many hours she worked at it she just could not get good results. After struggling through for a long time, she admitted defeat and gave up, which was a real low point for her. Luckily, she ended up falling back into it about six or seven months later. It turned out that taking a break was what she had needed. When she came back to coding again it all clicked and she was able to pursue a career that she really enjoys. That experience taught her that learning is a roller coaster. There are peaks and valleys, sometimes the valleys seem to go on forever. When that happens, it is important not to become disheartened. Instead, take a short break and come back to it

GUEST BIO: Chris has worked as a lead developer on some of the largest web projects and is currently a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft. He is also the author of several JavaScript books and the Developer Evangelism book as well as being a regular presenter at conferences. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Chris Heilmann. Over the years, has worked as an HTML and web developer on some of the largest web projects. He has worked for netdecisions, Agilisys, Yahoo UK and Mozilla. Today, he is a Senior Program Manager Developer and Evangelist, at Microsoft. Chris is also an author who has written mainly about JavaScript. But, he is best known for his Developer Evangelism book and for his conference speaking. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.00) – So Chris, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Chris starts off by explaining that he did not take the normal route into an IT career. He did not go to university. His IT journey started with him writing games for the Commodore 64 and other early computers. After leaving school, he became a journalist and newscaster. In 1986, he discovered the internet and was immediately hooked. Fairly quickly, he was able to bring his two passions of tech and journalism together. Almost immediately, Chris could see the internet was going to help him and his colleagues to easily publish on a worldwide. He says that he was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. (2.25) - So, presumably your background in journalism has helped you in terms of other things you have done. For example, writing your books and public speaking. Chris agrees, he says his journalism skills were a great help when he started blogging. He found that his experience of writing for radio translated particularly well when writing for an online audience. When writing for the radio you have to ensure that every sentence makes perfect sense. Usually, people are doing other things while listening to the radio, for example, driving. So, they cannot focus 100% on what you are saying. The clearer you are the more likely you are to keep their attention and really get through to them. It is the same when people are reading your stuff online. You rarely have their full attention. We all tend to skim through things, so every sentence has to clearly make its point. This ability to make a point effectively and hold the attention of the audience has also been very useful when it comes to public speaking. His work as a journalist also helped Chris to adapt his message to suit the audience. (3.14) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Chris says that being flexible is vital. He has moved to several different countries to pursue his career. If you are willing and able to be flexible there are a lot of opportunities available in the IT world. For example, You need to be prepared to work at strange hours sometimes. Doing so opens up the opportunity to collaborate with people from across the world. Being flexible enables you to put yourself in the right place at the right time, more often. Chris also thinks it is important to be prepared to physically travel so that you can work with others from across the world. Even though we have the internet you tend to get far more done when you spend time working with people face to face. (5.05) – Can you tell us what your worst career moment was? And what you learned from that experience. For Chris, his worse career moment was when the UK office of a company he was working for was shut. When that happened, basically, all of the talented people they had pulled together over 10 years were scattered to the winds. The team he was working with was very talented and worked quickly. They achieved more than the Silicon Valley team did in far less time. Yet, they still closed the office and asked everyone to move to the USA. Some people went and just stayed with the firm for the 2 years they neede for the visa. Then, naturally, they left for better offers. Chris felt that this action showed an incredible lack of insight on the part of the company. It led to all of that talent being lost just because they were geographically in the wrong place. Plus, naturally, a lot of the people were bitter. Many left in anger, which is a bad idea, especially in IT. Even today, it is quite a small world. Chris says that the best approach is to take the high ground. Don't bad mouth the company to others. The chances are you are going to come across these people again, in the future. (7.00) – Phil asks Chris about their best career moment was. Chris has had lots of great moments. He really enjoys the fact that a small change on the front end can make such a huge positive difference for users. It is also nice when you build up your reputation to the point where finding a new job becomes almost automatic. Chris also gets pleasure from seeing the careers of others he has worked with flourish. (9.18) – Can you tell us w

GUEST BIO: Jennifer Bland is a Senior Software Engineer, Speaker, Author, host and Google Developers Expert. She is on the leadership team for Women Who Code Atlanta and she runs the websites in5days.tech and codeprep.io which provide technical training on JavaScript topics. Jennifer is also the host of the CodePrep podcast. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Jennifer Bland is Phil's guest on today's show. She is one of Google's Web Technologies Developers Experts, who has had a long tech career. Over the years, she has been a developer, consultant and project manager. Now she works as a senior software engineer for Stanley Black and Decker. But, Jennifer also spends a lot of time and energy working in the community enabling under-represented groups to become successful in IT. She is a well-known speaker, podcast host and author, as well as a trainer. Via her two websites in5days.tech and codeprep.io she provides technical training for JavaScript related topics KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.06) – So Jennifer, can I ask you to expand on that brief intro and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Jennifer starts by explaining that she is, currently, a senior software engineer for Stanley Black and Decker in Atlanta. She is very proud of being a member of one of the most active Women Who Code chapters in the world. Fairly recently, Jennifer has started to provide technical training for others. (1.55) – How did you get involved with Women Who Code? Jennifer discovered them while preparing to attend her first coding boot camp. In preparation, she needed to complete 6 weeks of pre-course material. To get the work done she attended one of Women Who Code's Coding Jams. From then on she just kept attending their events and meetings. Today, she is on the Leadership Committee for Women Who Code Atlanta. (2.57) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Jenifer says that is - "create a public presence", something that is really easy to do using the internet. It could be as simple as creating your own twitter account and tweeting about tech. Blogging, Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook can all work too. Attending meetups and conferences is a good idea too. You can easily record a few videos while you are there and post them. When you do that, people will start seeking you out at these events. Normally, you will also start to be invited to speak. (4.48) – You mentioned Twitter, are there any other platforms you would recommend? – LinkedIn is an important one. It creates an opportunity for you to write articles and share them worldwide. Pinterest and Instagram can also work although they are more geared towards sharing content via pictures. YouTube is excellent too. (5.39) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. For Jennifer it was not a single moment. It was a 6-month process that she went through. Basically, she had joined a company without working out what the work environment would be first. The company had reached out to her as a result of her public presence and offered her a great salary and benefits package. Initially, she said no. But, a few months later they asked again and she said yes. That meant leaving a company she was happy working at. Unfortunately, that was a big mistake. The work environment at her new firm was incredibly poor for the entire 6 months she stayed there. (7.18) how do you go about assessing the work environment in advance? Jennifer starts simply by googling them and talking to people who are already working there. She also tries to reach out and find out what their turnover rate is like. High turnover is a big red flag. (8.09) – Phil asks Jennifer what her best career moment was. Jennifer says that it was becoming a Google Developers expert, at the end of last year. Being one of the few picked out of a field of hundreds of thousands of developers was a huge achievement. To gain the award you genuinely have to be an industry leader and someone who contributes significantly to the community. Plus, to apply someone who is already a Google Developer expert has to nominate you. Then you go through multiple layers of interviews. Here in the USA, there are only 16 Web Technologies Google Developers. So, it feels especially good to be one of them. (10.11) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? Jennifer finds the pace of change to be very exciting. She reflects on the fact that she graduated before IBM introduced the PC and got her MBA before the internet became available. So, she has seen huge changes. This frenetic pace of change means that new doors are opening, all the time. As a result, an IT career is highly rewarding. (11.20) – Phil shares her enthusiasm for the rate of change. He goes on to ask Jennifer what she feels about the way in which the devices and software we are using is evolving so much. Jennifer agrees this is exciting too. In fact, the thirst for new devices is helping to dri

GUEST BIO: Jen Bunk is a career coach for tech managers, helping them to upgrade their teams, careers, paychecks and lives. Jen is also the host of the People Stack podcast, where she interviews authors, coaches and leaders of tech companies from around the world. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Jen Bunk. Her path into the world of IT was a long one. She started out working in the academic world. Today, she helps tech managers to upgrade their careers. She teaches them how to share what they are doing and the value that adds effectively. That is in a way that quickly leads to promotion, bigger paychecks and a better work-life balance. Her advice is tailored to fit in with the career objectives of each of the people she helps. Jen is the host of the People Stack podcast for which she interviews career coaches, authors and tech leaders, for around the globe. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (0.56) – So Jen, can I ask you to expand on that brief intro and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Jen starts by saying how cool it is for her to be interviewed rather than being the one doing the interviewing. She explains that she is a career coach for technical managers. That means that she helps engineering managers, IT managers, technical project and product managers and others. Occasionally, she will work with data analytics specialists or science team leaders too. She helps these people to upgrade their careers. To get a promotion, move fields get a raise and a lot more besides. Her aim is to help them to do this without having to work ridiculously long hours to achieve this. (2.46) – Do the people you work with have different career objectives? Jen says yes, everyone has a unique story. So, they have different goals and career paths that they want to follow. But, there is one thing that ties them all together. They all feel that they are stuck in their career. Usually, they have worked hard to try to progress, but not been able to do so. Others are doing OK, but are having to work ridiculous hours to achieve what they want or stay in their roles. Most of her clients are middle management. Typically, she is working with the people who directly lead the tech teams. (4.03) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? If you want to upgrade your career, it is not enough to be excellent, and strive to be the best and continually add value. That is only part of it. You need to evangelize that excellence; essentially you have to become good at self-promotion. Jen calls it self promotion on steroids. You need to let others know what you are doing and how it is benefiting the organization you work for. (5.13) - So, do you have any specific suggestions of how people should go about doing that themselves? Jen says that this type of self-promotion has to be done carefully. First, you have to get comfortable with the fact that you are going to have to promote yourself. Self-promotion is something that makes a lot of people squirm. What you need to do to get started depends on the circumstances you are in. If you are not doing any self-promoting you need to ask yourself why that is and work out how to get started. Whereas, if you are already doing it and it is not working you would need to take a different approach. Perhaps you would need to communicate more clearly or share what you are doing in other arenas. There is no one size fits all answer. (6.29) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. Jen explains that in her former life, she was a college professor. About 10 years into her career, she applied for promotion and tenure. A move that is not uncommon, often, the two go hand in hand. The process of gaining tenure and getting promoted is a long one that typically takes about a year. It involves working with and being assessed by various departments at different levels. For example, working with the Dean of the College, as you go through each level you are assessed. This process starts at the department level. So, initially it is your colleagues, people you work with every day that consider your applications. Unfortunately, at this stage, the department committee told her they were happy to support her for tenure, but not for promotion. Naturally, Jen was shocked and angry. It was a real 'what just happened to me moment?' Getting through the meeting was a trial. She could not work out why her colleagues had made that decision. In the end, both the Dean and the provost supported and recommended her. So, ultimately she got tenure and promotion. It was not a great experience, but it was one that Jen learned from. Only then did she realize that the Dean knew what she was doing so could understand the value she was adding. But, importantly, the people she worked with every day did not. The result of that situation was nearly disastrous. (10.03) – Presumably you have taken what you learned from that experience and applied it to your coaching

GUEST BIO: Antonio Leiva is an experienced software engineer, trainer and speaker who specializes in Android development. Antonio is also the author of the book "Kotlin for Android Developers". EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Antonio Leiva. He started his IT career as a software developer. Fairly quickly he focused on Android development. When JetBrains released their Java replacement Kotlin to the open-source community, Antonio saw the potential and immersed himself in the new language. Today, he is a well known Kotlin specialist and teacher. His book "Kotlin for Android Developers" is a go-to resource for many. To date, around 7,000 copies have sold. Antonio offers certificated Kotlin training for Android developers and engineers. He is also now offering a hands-on mentoring service. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (0.45) – So Antonio, can I ask you to expand on that brief intro and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Antonio starts by explaining that he has been working as a software developer for more than 10 years. A lot of that time has been spent working with Android. For the last 4 years, he has been learning about and using Kotlin, which has been designed and developed by JetBrains and open-source contributors. This very new language enabled Android developers to overcome the issue of having to work with a very old version of Java. Antonio got involved during the very early developments stages. Once he understood the value of Kotlin, he decided to write a book about it. This was despite the fact that, at the time, it was still not clear whether the language would succeed or not. His gamble paid off. Today, Kotlin is an official language. Nowadays, his main goal is to help Android developers to boost their careers. But, he is also heavily involved in helping companies to migrate from Java to Kotlin. (2.48) – Is Kotlin a language that is growing in popularity? Antonio says yes it is. The language was designed by JetBrains who had already successfully launched dozens of other programming languages and tool, including IntelliJ IDEA. They are very successful, but they were becoming frustrated with Java. It was just no longer powerful enough to enable them to do what they needed to do and push things forward. So, they designed Kotlin, to solve this problem. The fact that Kotlin is open-source has really helped it to develop and grow in popularity fast, especially within the Android community. Plus, Google decided a couple of years ago to support it as a separate language for developing Android apps. That made a big difference to how popular it was. (4.12) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Antonio's advice is to remember that you do not necessarily follow what others are doing. You need to sit down, work out what you want, identify your values and what is important to you and make a plan that fits in with that. If you want to be close to your family, it might be beneficial to seek out employment that allows you to work from home. There is a tendency for young developers to work hard to emulate their heroes who work at places like Facebook and Google. They assume that is what they want, only to find, after a lot of hard work, that is not the case. You need to follow a career path that fits in with you and who you are. (5.51) At this point, Phil points out the importance of regularly reviewing that plan to make sure that it is a good fit. (6.11) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. So far, Antonio has not had any terrible moments in his career. He has only experienced the usual blips, the two or three things that happen to everyone, for example, releasing something that won't run. However, there was an incident that did have a negative impact on Antonio. The fact that English is not his first language has made things more difficult for him. He has missed out on some opportunities. On one occasion it got in the way of him landing a job that he was a perfect fit for. That really knocked his confidence and he began to really suffer from the imposter syndrome. He even thought about stopping the work he was doing in English and changing to only helping developers in his mother tongue, Spanish. Luckily, Antonio realized that doing that would stop him from achieving his goal of helping as many people as possible to move their careers forward. (7.45) – Phil asks Antonio what his best career moment has been, so far. Antonio thinks that was deciding to write his book. That decision has led to some amazing things. It has opened doors for him, created opportunities. Most importantly, it has helped him to build a community around himself. Publishing his book has freed him up to work on his own projects and create his own business. In addition, writing that book has exposed his knowledge to the world and given him a special place in the community. Plus, as many others have said before him, "teaching others is the bes

GUEST BIO: Dr. Sue Black is an award-winning Computer Scientist, Technology Evangelist and Digital Skills Expert. She is a professor in the department of Computer Science at Durham University, a government advisor, thought leader, writer and public speaker. Sue was awarded an OBE for services to technology in the 2016 Queen's New Year's Honours list. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Dr. Sue Black. She has worked in the IT field for nearly 25 years, primarily in education-related roles. However, she has also been heavily involved in other projects and roles. For example, she is a UK Government advisor, a technology columnist for The Guardian, the founder of techmums. Up until 2011 she ran the campaign to save Bletchley Park. Sue is currently a Professor of Computer and Technology Evangelist for Durham University. In 2016, she was awarded an OBE for services to technology and, in 2017, won the Social Impact Abie Award. She is also a well-known tech conference speaker. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.03) – So Sue, can I ask you to expand on that brief intro and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Sue explains that she left school at 16 but did not go back into education until she was 26, when she took a maths course. From there, she became a full-time student. She left university with a PhD in software engineering. From there she became a full-time lecturer at senior, then principle, level. Fairly quickly, she became the head of department at the University of Westminster. In November 2018, she became the Professor of Computer Science and Technology Evangelist at Durham University, her dream job. Sue, mentions that she has" done a few things outside of that", which is actually a bit of an understatement. She is and has been heavily involved with a wide range of tech projects and initiatives. (2.07) – What particularly excited you about working in the field of education? The fact that education changed Sue's life so much has been a big inspiration for Sue. When she took her maths course she was a 26-year-old single mum. She had realized that if she went back to work she could not even earn enough to pay for childcare. This realization led her to go back into education. Plus, she has always had a curious mind and loved learning. She loves learning and really enjoys helping people to understand the world of technology. Sue finds it to be a wonderful thing. (3.28) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience, something that perhaps they should know? Twenty-one years ago Sue set up a network for women in technology. Chairing that group taught Sue the true value of connecting with other people. She knew it was important, but, over the years has seen just how effective it is. When you talk to people you like and who you share similar or connected interests with, a whole new world opens up. Of course, you talk to each other about what you are doing, discuss ideas and get feedback. But, something else also happens. Your work starts to become known. If you are networking with people within your company as well as outside the understanding of what you do and your true value increases. Getting a promotion becomes a lot easier. Plus, importantly, networking helps you to make good friends. (4.53) – Please, tell us about your worst career moment and what you learned from that experience. When Sue was doing her PhD, she hadn't backed up things properly and ended up losing 3 months worth of work. Naturally, she was devastated. She was also too embarrassed to tell anyone. It took her close on a month to come to terms with what she had done and a further 2 months to catch up. The whole experience shook her and it was several more months before she was able to get properly up to speed. That was a harsh way to learn the importance of backing things up. Now that everything is in the cloud Sue says that you do not have to worry so much. You just have to remember to set up anything stand up like Word to save every 30 seconds or so. (6.39) – Phil asks Sue to share her greatest career moment. Winning the Social Impact Abie Award from the technical women's community at Grace Hopper Celebration was Sue's greatest moment. As a computer pioneer Grace Hopper is definitely someone to look up to, so it was a great honor to be chosen. Giving a speech to 17,000, mainly female, computer science graduates from across the world was an amazing experience. It gave Sue the chance to share a bit of her story, the struggles as well as the success. The sheer scale of the event and the fact that most of the attendees were women who were involved in tech was just amazing. (8.44) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? Sue really enjoys the way tech is becoming involved in absolutely everything we do. As a result, technology skills are going to become increasingly valuable. It frustrates her that more people do not consider an IT career. Technology careers are not just abou

GUEST BIO: Shannon is an Application Developer at Lifion by ADP. However before she became a full-time Application Developer Shannon was an actress. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Shannon Kendall is Phil's guest on today's I.T. Career Energizer show. She has taken an unusual path into the world of IT. Prior to becoming an Application Developer, 7 years ago, she was an actress. She is currently working at Lifion by ADP. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (0.45 ) – So Shannon, can I ask you to expand on that brief intro and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Shannon explains that she came from a very technical family, but did not believe that a career in IT was for her. Instead, she followed her passion and became an actress. Shannon did well and was proud of her work. But, she realised that she did not find it particularly fulfilling. At times, she had to take boring acting jobs to pay her bills. One day, while looking at Instagram she found out that a friend and fellow actress was learning to code. Very soon after that her friend posted a photo of herself giving a speech at a tech conference in Thailand. This inspired Shannon to consider a change of career too. She took a few online JavaScript tutorials and enjoyed them. Almost immediately, Shannon realised that she had some natural ability for coding. She was good at recognising patterns and solving problems in innovative ways. Even as a child, she had a creative streak and was always investigating different ways to get things done. (4.16) – Have you been able to bring anything from your acting career to your IT work? Shannon says yes, she has. As an actress, she learned to be good at taking direction and handling rejection. Plus, working collaboratively within a team was something she did every day. She has found all of those skills useful in her new IT career. (6.10) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Shannon says that it is important to get comfortable with not knowing everything and be willing to get things wrong. When you work in tech, you are never going to feel totally ready. Things move at a fast pace, so you have to be comfortable with learning as you go. In fact, if you do end up feeling totally ready you can be pretty sure that you are not pushing yourself enough. It is important not to let your fear of being wrong hold you back. You have to learn to put yourself into challenging situations. For example, not long after Shannon started her career she was put in charge of a complex project. At the time, she was worried she was not ready, but her manager persuaded her that she could do it. It turned out her manager was right. All of the team members knew that she was new to IT, so they and her manager were very supportive. As a result, she benefited from their guidance and was allowed to learn as she went. Everyone benefited from the fresh perspective and different leadership style she brought to the team. The project was a big success. Phil agrees that it is important to stretch yourself, but, pointed out that you also need to be careful not to take things too far. If you do this you will avoid getting in too much above your head and failing. (8.18) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. This is a tricky question for Shannon because she has only been working in the industry for 7 years. So, she jokes that she has not yet had the chance to fail spectacularly. However, Shannon admits that she hates those times when she gets stuck for two or three days on a bug. When that happens, she starts feeling that she is letting the team down. This is despite the fact that the more experienced developers repeatedly tell her it isn't an issue and that it happens to everyone. (10.19) – Phil asks Shannon what their best career moment was. Shannon said that happened after she had been working in the industry for around about a year. At that time, she was working with a team that came up with some new architecture. Getting the project ready in time was not easy, partly because it was so innovative. So, the team ended up having to work late into the night to get things ready for the demo. They were very tired, but incredibly proud of their work, which was really well received by the senior team. During that presentation, Shannon realized that despite being new to the industry she had already been involved in something special. The work she had done on that project was going to make a positive difference and carry on doing so for years to come. It was the first time in her working life that she had felt that way. The first time she had made a real difference. (13.13) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? Shannon is excited by the fact that the IT industry is becoming increasingly diverse. For example, everyone on her current team, apart from her project manager is a woman. She believes that this diversity will lead to the development of better products.

GUEST BIO: Anne-Marie is a software tester, trainer and coach with a reputation of excellence and passion for the craft of software testing. An electronic engineer by trade, software testing chose her when she started testing protocols against European standards. Anne-Marie has developed software testing courses and lectured at the University of Technology, Sydney. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Anne-Marie Charrett. She is currently running her own software testing, training and coaching business. By trade, she is an electronic engineer, who, early in her career became interested in testing protocols, which she has been doing for the past 20 years. Anne-Marie is also a coach, trainer and Software Test Consultant. She is also a well-known conference speaker. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.01) – So Anne-Marie, can I ask you to expand on that brief intro and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Anne-Marie explains that when she left university, it was not her intention to become involved in software testing. However, at the time, there was growing interest in protocols and making sure that they conformed to European standards, something that Anne-Marie was drawn to. Anne-Marie got used to testing each layer to make sure that it conformed to the standard. But, she soon realised that this was not an indication of quality. She recognised the fact that things had to work together properly for the system or software to be deemed as truly fit for purpose. The realisation that testers had to dive deeper and go beyond whether the software meets a standard and check that it does its job drove her to become a software tester. From there, becoming a software engineer was a natural progression. (3.17) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Over the course of her career, Anne-Marie has learned to follow the advice – "don't be nice, but do be kind." She goes on to explain what she means by that. She says that you need to work smart. To do what is right for your career and the project that you are working on. So, sometimes you have to push to get things done and stand up for what you know has to be done. But, you can still do that in a kind way. She went on to add that you need to think strategically about your career and how you get things done in the workplace. This is something Anne-Marie thinks Angie Jones does particularly well. (3.17) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. Years ago, Anne-Marie moved from managing a team of 30 testers to leading 250 engineers. For her, it was a big change. She was working in a very different environment with people who thought and worked in a different way. Her new team needed to be motivated differently. Unfortunately, Anne-Marie did not fully realize this until it was too late. Anne-Marie had taken a very similar approach as she did when she was running her testing team. Making sure that everyone understood the big picture. What the end customer wanted, how the developers worked as well as what the system needed to do. Her band of 30 loyal testers had happily followed her and thrived when she had managed them in this way. The engineers were not as comfortable with this approach. They were far more empirical. For them, it was facts and figures that motivated them. So, things did not go well. However, she learned a lot from this experience, including the fact that there is a difference between leadership and management. She also realized that you need to communicate your value, even when you have not been asked to do so directly. If you produce software you have something solid to show for your efforts. With testing, it is not as easy to demonstrate how you contribute. It also taught her to think and talk about quality engineering in terms of business outcomes. This helps the person you are speaking with to understand the contribution you are making to the company's bottom line. Anne-Marie explains that you have to adapt your message to fit in with that person's role. For example, the finance guys will be more interested in how much the new software saves the company than they would be in the fact it will make someone's job easier. (10.10) – Phil asks Anne-Marie to share her best career moment. Anne-Marie's most rewarding experience has been running her own company. She has really enjoyed creating a space in which talented people can work, thrive and discover skills that they never knew they had. Anne-Marie is also really proud of SpeakEasy, which she set up with Fiona Charles. This initiative pairs up those who want to speak at conferences with mentors. The majority of IT conference speakers are still men, something Anne-Marie and Fiona wanted to play a part in changing. As a result, most of the people they help are women or those from minority groups. It has been a huge success. Plenty of experienced speakers have come forward to be mentors and they have helped lots of people. Plus,

GUEST BIO: Nina Zakharenko is a Senior Cloud Developer Advocate at Microsoft, focusing on Python. Before joining Microsoft, she was a Software Engineer with over a decade of experience writing software for companies like Reddit, Meetup, and HBO. In her spare time, she enjoys snowboarding, hiking, and tinkering with wearable electronics from her home base in Portland, OR. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: My guest on today's show is Nina Zakharenko. She is a Senior Cloud Developer Advocate for Microsoft. Nina is also a well-known conference speaker who covers many technical subjects. Although Python is her area of expertise. Before joining Microsoft, Nina spent a decade writing software for a range of companies, including Reddit, Meetup, HBO and several PayPal subsidiaries. She has also run several JavaScript, Jquery and Git workshops for Girl Develop It. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.07) – So Nina, can I ask you to expand on that brief intro and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Nina describes herself as a "newly minted Developer Advocate". For the 10 years preceding her joining Microsoft, Nina worked as a software engineer. About 5 years ago, she started giving conference speeches, for fun. She really enjoyed it, so took things more seriously. Today, she is a regular conference speaker. (1.40) – How many conferences talks have you given? Nina says that she has lost count, but it's a lot. She has spoken in Russia, Prague, Scotland and given several keynote speeches. (2.03) Phil asks Nina if she speaks on a range of different subjects or if she mostly repeats the same speech. Nina explains that she speaks about a range of IT subjects. For example, technical debt and how to develop excellent code review processes. However, the bulk of the speeches she delivers are related to Python, which is really her area of expertise. (2.25) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Nina's ultimate career tip is to focus on doing one thing, at a time. New things in tech come and go, so keeping up with everything is very challenging. The trick is to find one thing that you feel passionate about and stick with it. If you do not, you will end up being pulled in all directions. Nina's passion is Python. As soon as she started focusing on it and getting involved in that community her career flourished and really took off. (3.23) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. Nina has found that her worst career moments occurred when she is following the money instead of her passion. For example, one of the startups she was working for was taken over. Overnight, everything changed. Nina did not feel 100% comfortable with the ethics of the new company and did not share their leadership values. So, she was no longer happy working there. But, she tried to make it through to the four year cliff period, so that she could secure her share options. This decision ended up being a big mistake. Basically, she burned out. So, she had to leave before the four years were up, without her shares. Of course, it meant that she was a bit poorer. But, it was the right decision. Overnight, she felt happier and soon landed another job, one which she really enjoyed. It is important to understand yourself. To know what you want to get out of your job. Nina's advice is to find a job that offers you the right balance for you. (5.08) – Phil asks Nina what her best career moment was. Nina says that was probably when she gave her first talk in front of a big audience of about 400, at PyCon. She was shaking throughout her speech. Despite this, she was able to deliver a great talk. After giving that first speech, Nina realized that people were really interested in her experiences and what she had to say. One of Nina's ambitions is to give the keynote speech at PyCon. (7.42) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? Nina likes the fact that in the IT field there are lots of opportunities for those who want to act as mentors, far more than in other industries. This is a good thing for everyone. It means that those that want to mentor can, while those that want to learn can do so easily, which is great for the future of the industry. (9.08) – Phil says that, over the past decade or so, he has noticed big changes in this area. The industry is far more open and inclusive than it used to be. People are now more commutative and ready to respond positively when they are asked for help or advice. (9.32) – What drew you to a career in IT? Nina has always wanted to be a software engineer. At 11 years old, she said exactly that in one of her school essays. Curiously, it was her dislike of the band Hanson that motivated her to build her first website. She learned HTML, just so she could put together her anti-Hanson site. (10.44) – What is the best career advice you have ever received? Nina says she was once told not to think of her career as being something that is atta

GUEST BIO: Ian Massingham is a Technical Evangelist at Amazon Web Services and has been working with cloud computing technologies since 2008. Ian has around 20 years' experience in the IT industry, covering operations and engineering within hosting, telecommunications and cloud service providers. Ian has a particular interest in the development of Connected Device and IoT applications. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Ian Massingham. Ian has already had a long IT career and is still enjoying getting involved in new fields and pushing the boundaries. He started his career by working for a hosting and internet company that is credited with opening up the UK market. Ian and his team used their telecommunications and coding experience to provide fast and affordable internet services to thousands of UK homeowners. Over the years, Ian has worked as an engineer, developer, manager and leader. Today, he leads Technical and Developer Evangelism for Amazon Web Services. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (0.58) – So Ian, can I ask you to expand on that brief intro and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Ian starts by elaborating on the scale, scope and reach of his AWS role. He is responsible for educating software developers and technical end users of AWS on a global scale. Plus, of course customers who are not yet users of the service. Helping them to see how they can use the platform to improve what they are currently doing and use it for new projects. (1.57) – Does that mean that you have to travel a lot? Ian responds by saying yes. He has to attend a lot of different kinds of events and provide support for team members, right across the globe. Plus, he is a prolific speaker in his own right, which also entails a lot of travel. (2.25) – Phil asks Ian to elaborate on the amount of public speaking work he does. Speaking is a big part of his role as the Director of AWS Evangelism. In fact, his whole team spends a lot of time making presentations. When they recruit new members they look for people who are capable of connecting with software developers across the full range of skill levels. (3.05) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Like many developers he went from being an individual contributor to a manager, then a leader and senior leadership roles. However, unlike most other IT professionals he has periodically taken a step back and worked as an individual contributor again. This slightly unusual approach has really borne fruit. It has helped him to develop all kinds of new skills and deepen his understanding of the latest technologies and how they are deployed. (4.09) – Phil asks if taking this approach refreshes his existing skills as well. Ian says absolutely. When he first joined Amazon Web Services, in 2013, his tech skills were getting rusty. He had just spent several years in a leadership role in which he did not really do any developing. So, when he joined AWS he took the opportunity to spend a bit of time working as an individual contributor, technology evangelist. He really enjoyed reawakening and refreshing his skills, while he got up to speed with cloud computing. It enabled him to familiarize himself with the AWS way of working and their product range. Those three and half years took him into a lot of new areas. (5.18) Phil says that it sounds like Ian enjoys keeping his hand in from a technical perspective. Ian agrees, that is true, which is one of the reasons he enjoys working for AWS so much. Recently, they invested in AI and machine learning services. Just last year, they announced some robotics services. There is also Ground Station - a service for people who want to download data from their satellite infrastructure. So, there is plenty going on within the company that enables Ian to indulge his passion for new technologies. (6.11) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? Ian says his worst moment was not a single incident, more of a challenging period in his career. Back in the 90s, he worked for a small hosting and internet access startup. They provided hosting, mainly for businesses like Channel 4 and the Dixon stores group. At the time, most companies did not have a website, so this was actually quite exciting work. In 1998, the Dixons group asked them to set up and run their new Freeserve internet service. It was an innovative service that grew at a phenomenal rate. At the time, everyone was still using dial-up. There was no cloud computing either. So, every time a customer signed up they needed server space and the company was constantly running more telecommunications links to the building. Unsurprisingly, Ian and everyone else at the company ended up working ridiculous hours. It was an exciting time that opened up all kinds of opportunities for Ian, but it was also very stressful. (9.14) Was there anything in particular that you learned from that experience? One of the things Ian learned from the experience was how to recruit. The phen

GUEST BIO: Kristina Balaam is a security intelligence engineer at Lookout where she reverse engineers mobile malware. Prior to Lookout, she worked as an application security engineer at Shopify focusing mostly on Android mobile security and is currently pursuing an MSc. in Information Security Engineering. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Kristina Balaam. Currently she is working as a security intelligence engineer for Lookout, which specializes in mobile security. Kristina's main role there is to reverse engineer malware. In the preceding years Kristina has worked for Shopify, Resolution and DropDot in a range of application development roles. She is currently studying for an MSc. in Information Security Engineering. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.03) – So, Kristina, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Kristina explains that her days are mostly spent searching out malicious apps on Android and iOS, which she then reverse engineers. At times, she is also involved in tracing them back to malicious actors and trying to work out what their motivation is and classifying malware for the industry. (1.46) – Phil asks her what happens to the information she is collating. Kristina explains that Lookout is an endpoint security company. This means that they focus on post perimeter security. So, most of what they uncover is shared with application developers, with the aim of enabling them to build secure applications. In addition, her findings are used to continually improve Lookout's range of security products, which includes Lookout for Work and the Lookout client option. (2.51) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Kristina shares something that she discovered fairly late in her career. When she started out, she did not understand just how vital being visible was when it comes to career progression. Blogging, speaking at conferences and social media are all great ways to share what you are passionate about. When you share in these ways the chances of your landing work in a field that really interests you are greatly improved. (3.53) Phil asks her how important social media has been for her in terms of engagement and whether there has been a particular platform that she benefits from more than the others. Surprisingly, Kristina is finding Instagram to be an effective social media platform. The IT community is surprisingly active there. Lots of people are sharing caption photos for their latest blog posts, so it is a great way of getting noticed. (4.38) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? Kristina's worst IT moment happened during her final year at university. Her plan was to be a game developer. So, she was thrilled when she, along with her fellow students, she was given the chance to develop a short game and present it to the board of Ubisoft. The students were split into teams and given six weeks to build their games using Unreal Engine. Unfortunately, one week before the presentation, two members of her team members dropped out. Worse, it turned out that they had not done much while they had been around. Most of the tasks they had been assigned were nowhere near being completed. The remaining members of the team had to pull 3 or 4 all-nighters to try to catch things up, so that they had something to present. In the end, Kristina's team had a game to present. But, two minutes into their presentation the game failed and they could not get it started again. For Kristina this was devastating. Basically, all of their hard work had been for nothing. (6.56) – What did you learn from that experience? At the time, Kristina thought she had blown any chance of getting hired and that her dream of becoming a game developer was in tatters. In reality this was not the case. Every member of her team ended up being offered jobs by that company, something which taught her not to dramatize this type of situation. It turned out that their failed presentation was not the big deal they all thought it was. There were no long-term negative consequences for them. It also taught her the importance of being prepared for things to go wrong. She explains that she is not suggesting that people should be pessimistic, rather that they be realistic about what can go wrong and try to be prepared for those eventualities. (8.35) – Phil asks Kristina what her best career moment was. Kristina says that landing the job that she has now has definitely been a highlight. From the moment she got involved with security work, Kristina knew that she wanted to become a malware researcher. But, she knew that landing a role like that was a long way off because she did not have the relevant qualifications. However, she worked hard to fill the skill gap. She read as much as she could about malware research. When she decided to take her masters, she made sure that she looked at courses that were strongly related to malware research. The net result is that sh

GUEST BIO: Brian Okken is a lead software engineer for Rohde & Schwarz. He is also the author of "Python Testing with pytest" from Pragmatic, host of the "Test & Code" Podcast and Co-host of the "Python Bytes" Podcast and has spoken at PNSQC and PyCon US. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: My guest on today's show is Brian Okken. He is currently the lead software engineer for Rohde & Schwarz. His background is in R&D, testing and measurement. When it comes to programming languages, he is something of a Python expert. Brian is the author of "Python Testing with pytest" and the host of the very popular "Test & Code" podcast, he also co-hosts "Python Bytes". Brian is passionate about sharing his knowledge. So, he teaches and regularly speaks publicly at conferences like PyCon and PNSQC. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.00) – So Brian, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Brian explains that he still describes himself as a software engineer. But, in reality, for the past 10 to 15 years, he has been mostly involved with automated testing. (1.21) – How did you get into automated testing? Brian explains that it was not a planned transition. It was a requirement within the test equipment industry. Those that work in that field spend a lot of time carrying out automated and regression testing on the code and instruments. (2.10) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Brian's key piece of advice is to align yourself with the goals of whoever you are working for. He also advises developers to know their value and understand what it is that they contribute to the companies they work for. Once you know that, you are in a position to make sure that you more than cover the cost of your salary. Periodically asking yourself – If this was my money, would I be happy to continue to pay my salary? is a good habit to get into. (3.21) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. Brian explains that one of the things he enjoys doing is honing processes, so that he can streamline the work, as much as possible. On one project he realized that if he could automate the byte and the register settings from an FPGA to the software he would save the team a lot of time and hassle. So, he set about working out how to do this. However, he did not tell anyone, including his manager, that he had taken on this extra task. Unfortunately, he got sucked in and ended up spending too much time on this side project. Naturally, his output fell, which made it look like he was not contributing to the team, as he should. Naturally, his manager was not happy. He felt that Brian was not doing the work he had been asked to do. On the other hand, Brian was disappointed and frustrated because nobody seemed to appreciate the importance of what he was trying to achieve. All in all it ended up being quite a negative situation. Brian's advice is not to forget about process improvement completely, because t is important. But, he said that once it starts to take up more than 10% of your time, you need to let your manager knows what you are trying to achieve and how much time it is taking up. (5.11) – Phil asks Brian what his best career moment was. The highlight of Brian's career, so far, has been his involvement in pytest and publishing his book. It was really cool getting it published. But, Brian also found that writing the book honed and deepened his skills. (5.24) – So, has that been beneficial for your career? Brian agrees that it has. While writing the book he found himself consulting and working with the core contributors. The writing process made him network more. (6.58) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and career? Brian says there are so many things that excite him that it is hard to pick one thing. But, it is probably the way in which the industry is changing how it is teaching the next generation of engineers. (7.43) – Is there a particular area that interests you, technologies you feel have a real future? Brian thinks the way in which schools are finding ways to teach programming at an earlier age is exciting. However, Brian would like to see the question - How do you know it will work and continue to work? being asked and answered more in educational settings. Developers need to have a better understanding of how things work to be able to design and build more robust applications and systems. (8.44) Phil comments that, in the UK, that is certainly still an issue. Many of the degree courses leave the subject of testing right to the end of the course and the subject is rarely covered in much depth. (9.33) – What first attracted you to a career in IT, Brian? As a child, Brian had a combination games system. It had built-in games but you could also type in some simple programs to create new games like Lunar Lander. Of course, it did not work right away, so you had to figure out where you had gone wrong. When he got i

GUEST BIO: Asim Hussain is a developer, trainer, published author and conference speaker. He has worked for companies including the European Space Agency, Google and others. In January, he became Microsoft's EMEA Lead for Regional Developer Advocacy. Asim is also Director of CodeCraft TV, providing online content, courses and training on JavaScript, Angular and general Web Development. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Asim Hussain. He is a well-known conference speaker, mentor and author, who has been working in the industry for nearly 20 years. Asim started his career working for the European Space Agency. Over the years, he has worked across many different industries using a range of languages including C++, Java, Python and JavaScript. Today, he is Microsoft's EMEA Lead for Regional Developer Advocacy. KEY TAKEAWAYS: ­­(1.05) – So Asim, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Asim explains that he has been working in the IT industry for about 19 years. Over that time, he has worked in many different sectors, using a range of languages. Right now, he is the lead developer advocate for the EMEA region, at Microsoft. This is a recent promotion that he is both excited and nervous about. Asim explains that his new role enables him to continue with his teaching and educational work. This is a passion of his, which led to the creation of CodeCraft.tv. He began teaching online about 4 years ago, when he released about 6 courses that mainly covered working with JavaScript. He is part way through open-sourcing them. Asim is now a big believer in open source education. It brings benefits to the teacher as well as the students. (3.11) – So, why did you go into advocacy and development courses? Asim explained he got the bug when he was listening to a podcast in the car. While listening to it the speaker said something that was totally wrong about a subject Asim knew a lot about. Naturally, this frustrated him, but also motivated Asim to get out there and share his knowledge. That day, the idea for his first course was born. (4.28) – Phil asks Asim to share a unique IT career tip. Asim says that it is very important to be public about what you are doing. From the very start of your IT journey, share what you are learning and your experiences. Asim believes that if, for the past 19 years, he had consistently written a blog article per week his blog would now be more valuable than his house. When you look at someone who is well-known and respected in the industry, you will usually find out that they have been blogging, for many years. For the first year, you will be writing in a vacuum, so will get very little value from doing it. But, if you persist it will become an invaluable asset. Fairly quickly, it will start to grow at a very fast rate. (5.57) – Phil asks Asim to share his worst career moment with the audience and explain what he learned from that situation. The biggest mistake Asim made was when he was working in the finance industry. At that time, he had a dual role. He was responsible for developing new systems, but, also had to keep the existing one running smoothly. To do this, he had two terminals open, one for development, the other for the production server. He would multitask. Running tests on new software on one terminal, while monitoring and maintaining the live system on the other. For the most part, this approach worked really well. However, one day, it led to near disaster. At the time, he smoked, so would regularly pop out for a cigarette. One day, he did exactly that. Before he left the office, he typed make into what he thought was his development terminal and left. Unfortunately, Asim had typed make into the wrong terminal. So, he had inadvertently started a job on the production server. That process consumed 100% of the CPU's power and left the traders unable to do their job. Worse than that, it was just as the markets were about to close. For the bank's trader's this was a disaster. Closing is always a crazy busy and critical time of the day. They were unable to close their trades. Potentially, the company could have lost tens of thousands because of Asim's simple mistake. Fortunately, the opposite happened. The trades they had been unable to close ended up making the bank money. Naturally, that episode reminded Asim of the need to be careful, at all times. (8.16) – Phil asks Asim what his best career moment has been, so far. For Asim, his biggest successes have come along recently. For example, getting involved in public speaking has been a highlight. This has led to so many other good things for Asim, including the chance to join Microsoft, in a role that he really enjoys. Writing his first book has also been a highlight. He released it for free, which was nerve-racking, especially when you consider that it took him 3 months to write. However, giving it away turned out to be a great approach. It really got him noticed and le

GUEST BIO: Charlie Gerard is a Software Developer at ThoughtWorks in Sydney. She is passionate about Creative Technologies, Creative Coding, Hardware and the Internet of Things. Charlie is also a mentor at General Assembly, building projects using Arduino and other devices and writes tutorials to share what she has learned. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Charlie Gerard. For the past few years, Charlie has been working to provide all kinds of companies with better software. She is also a mentor at the General Assembly. There, she provides support to both amateur and professional developers. In her spare time, she experiments and collaborates with others to try out new concepts, often using Arduino. Right now, she is diving deep into their VR browser and uncovering the possibilities it brings. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (0.45) – So Charlie, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Charlie explains that by day she works as a software developer building websites and applications. But, at night she likes to explore technology. So, she spends much of his free time building prototypes with Arduino and is currently experimenting with their VR browser. Basically, she is interested in anything that is going on within the IT industry. (1.42) – How long have you been doing this? Charlie explains that she has been a developer for about four and a half years. Before that, she worked in marketing as a project manager. (1.58) – Phil asks Charlie for a unique IT career tip. Charlie said she was once told not to let people know that you are good at something you do not really want to do. If you do, there is a real danger that you will be stuck doing tasks that you really don't enjoy. For example, she once made the mistake of letting people know she is good at CSS. Now, people tend to ask her to complete that part of a project. But, that is the last thing she wants. She already has a good level of competency with CSS. So, she really wants to be doing other things, so that she can grow as a developer and progress her career. (3.16) – Phil says that reminds him of learning to say no. Charlie agrees that is important too. (3.42) – Charlie is asked to share his worst career moment by Phil. Years ago, she was due to give her first conference speech. So, she worked hard to clear her desk, the night before the big day. She did that so that she would have a little time to get herself ready for her important event. So, when she woke up to find 20 fresh tasks waiting on her board, her heart sank. Her initial reaction was that she had no choice but to deal with them. However, instead she decided not to do so. Instead, she checked that none of the tasks was urgent and left them sitting there undone, for half a day. Doing this ended up empowering her. Fairly soon, after this incident, she told the company she worked for that her 70+ hours workload was not reasonable. It was this situation that taught her that sometimes you have to say no. She realized that furthering her career and making time for her life was important, as well. (5.54) – Phil asks Charlie what her best career moment was. Charlie says that it was delivering her first conference speech. Speaking at a conference was an especially big achievement for Charlie, because she is a very shy person. So, giving a speech in front of so many people was something she never expected to be able to do. (6.50) – Is it something that you would recommend that other people try? Charlie's response is, yes. The challenge of speaking publically teaches you a lot about yourself. It is scary to get on stage, but, also exciting. Once you are up there you forget your fear. Even if things are not perfect the audience usually stays with you. They want you to succeed, so they are always supportive. Public speaking is something that Charlie intends to do more of. She has learned a lot from her first conference speech, including skills that she is finding helpful in the workplace. Plus, public speaking is really good for anyone's personal brand. (8.17) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? The wealth of possibilities that new technology offers us excites Charlie the most. In particular, machine learning, it will simplify the interaction between humans and computers. In time, it will be the technology adapting to the human being, rather than the other way around. Eventually, there will be virtually no learning curve. (8.56) – Are there any particular technologies that you are finding interesting? Charlie says that the field of neurotechnology is one that fascinates her. Currently, she is at the very early stages of learning about this technology and that she is sharing what she learns as she goes. For this technology, the possibilities are huge. Phil agrees, and says that with so much new technology being available it is impossible for us to know where it is going to take us. (9.35) – What drew you to a

GUEST BIO: Scott Tolinski is a Senior Web Developer for Team Detroit and formerly a web applications developer for The University of Michigan. Additionally Scott is a freelance web designer and developer, and provides private training and consultancy on various web topics. Scott is also co-creator of Level Up Tutorials, providing free training to developers looking to learn something new. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Scott Tolinski is Phil's guest on today's I.T. Career Energizer podcast. He is a former Team Detroit developer who also worked for The University of Michigan as an applications developer. For several years he was a Senior Developer with Q LTD. Today, Scott runs his own web development teaching company. In 2012, he started Level Up Tutorials alongside Ben Schaaf. Today, Scott runs the business and has turned it into the go-to learning resource for developers. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.09) – So Scott, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Scott starts out by explaining that he actually left Team Detroit, a while ago, but has not yet updated his website to reflect that fact. He is now working full time on Level Up Tutorials. That means recording, editing, producing and coding between 20 and 25 videos per month. As well as, updating and maintaining the actual website. Scott describes his website as being - a magazine for coding tutorials. Scott also produces a twice weekly web development podcast called Syntax, with Wes Bos. They approach the subject of web development from the point of view of teachers. The podcasts offer effective web development lessons in a format that is easy for everyone to access and use anywhere. (2.34) – Phil asks Scott for a unique IT career tip. Scott's advice is to never be afraid of new opportunities. It was his dad that made him realize the benefits of trying something new and fresh. His dad had taken advantage of each new opportunity and been very successful. So, Scott decided to do the same, even if a new opportunity seems scary, he will usually say yes and dive in. Most of the time, this approach pays off. On the rare occasion that it doesn't, Scott quickly faces up to his mistake and moves on to something else. Leaving his job to become a full-time entrepreneur was scary, challenging and quite stressful. But, Scott does not regret a minute of it and would do the same again. (4.29) – Phil agrees that you should never let fear of the unknown stop you from making a change. He quoted Richard Branson who said – "Work hard, take your chances, and seize opportunities when they present themselves. Don't give in to the fear and self-doubt and instead find ways to make it happen. Those who are bold have a higher chance of being rewarded," (5.03) – Scott says that is exactly what he does. If it is a big thing, he just says yes. Later, he figures everything out. But, he points out that if it is not a big thing, you need to say no. If you do not, those little opportunities just end up getting in your way. (5.17) – At this point, Scott is asked to share his worst career moment. Scott explained that he once had the perfect job. Everything was great, the company, the work and the people he was working with, he loved it. But, he got tempted and took another job. Basically, because it was a little bit more big time and, of course, there was a pay bump. He soon realized that the grass was not greener in his new role. The projects were bad and the designers not as experienced. Plus, they were using outdated techniques and the management team did not really care much about the work. Often, Scott was getting his part of the project completed months ahead of schedule. Yet, when that happened, the management team didn't give him any meaningful work to fill in the gap. However, this situation was not all bad. Scott legitimately ended up with a lot of free time on his hands. So, he was able to learn a lot of new things. He learned Backbone, Angular and Ember. After six months, he was able to take all of that knowledge and land a really sweet gig. (7.57) – What else did you learn from that experience? Scott said that it gave him a different perspective on work in general. It made him think about the type of people he wanted to work with and the kinds of projects he wanted to be involved in. That experience taught him not to just settle. Instead, he searches out exciting projects and ensures that he will be working with a good team. (8.56) – Phil asks Scott what his best career moment was. Scott says that it was probably quitting his job and working for himself. He feels particularly good about being able to provide for his family off the back of something that he created. Interestingly, it was not his intention to earn his living from his tutorial work. At first, he just posted his work to YouTube. It came as a big surprise to learn that he could translate that into a business that paid enough for him to be able to take care of his family. Not being a born

GUEST BIO: Sonia Cuff helps companies to change business processes to successfully adopt new technologies the right way and to achieve great business results. Sonia has been awarded Most Valuable Professional by Microsoft in multiple categories and is also an online writer, trainer and speaker. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's show is Sonia Cuff. Sonia has been working in the IT industry since 1995, in various roles and was awarded the Most Valuable Professional by Microsoft. For many years, Sonia ran her own business which helped all kinds of businesses to adopt new technology. She is a conference speaker, blogger and author. Today, she works for Microsoft as a cloud advocate. KEY TAKEAWAYS: ­­ (1.02) – So Sonia, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Sonia explains that when she got started in IT, she had to learn everything on the job. In those days she was working on Office 365 and productivity and went on to get involved in virtual CIO consulting, as well. Last year, she joined Microsoft and is now one of their Cloud advocates. In that role she is involved in working with IT communities, helping them to figure out how to make their lives easier. Primarily by showing them how to run the stuff they normally do in a hybrid or cloud scenario. It is a role that she really enjoys. (2.28) –Phil asks Sonia to tell the audience more about her developer advocacy work which is a part of this role. Sonia explains that Microsoft has been running an advocacy program for some years now. They have been reaching out to developers regardless of what language they work with. Their approach is to go to wherever people are programming rather than just stick to working with Microsoft user groups. Her team focuses on interacting with these communities and getting feedback. They want to learn what's tripping developers up and how Microsoft's products can be improved. This information is then fed directly back to product engineering. It enables them to improve their products. Importantly, it also identifies new products that need to be developed. Developer advocates take feedback and inspiration from numerous sources including conferences, talks and blogs. (4.43) – Phil asks if that role has given her a new perspective on software development. Sonia says that it has and that she is noticing a lot of common threads between different areas. (5.16) – Phil asks Sonia for a unique IT career tip. Sonia comments that the further she has gotten into her career the more she has realized that the simple things are true. For her "always be learning" is the tip that sticks in her mind. She has tried to do exactly that and feels that taking that approach has really paid dividends for her career. Sonia is not a programmer, but does not let that stop her from working to understand as much as possible. Today, she still can't write code from scratch, but knows enough to be able to look at something like PowerShell script and understand what it does. Even after 20 years, Sonia still finds herself having to learn new things from scratch. But, she feels comfortable with that. In fact, that is why she loves working in the industry. She enjoys being challenged and the fact that she is always being challenged and learning. (7.00) – Sonia is asked to share her worst career moment with the audience. Sonia starts by explaining that she ended up turning her worst career moment into a talk, which she delivered at Microsoft Ignite, Florida, last year. Her worst moment happened when she was spreading herself too thin. She was so stretched that she seriously considered jumping on a plane, leaving the country and not telling anyone where she had gone, including her family. She knows that she is far from the only IT professional to find themselves reaching breaking point emotionally and mentally, like that. Sonia has also realized that talking about this experience is important because it can help the IT community as a whole. (8.15) – Phil asked what she learned from that situation. Sonia explained that, these days, she ensures that she makes her colleagues and manager aware of her workload. In the IT industry, there is a get things done, no matter what it takes culture, which can sometimes be detrimental and put people under too much pressure. She is also careful to make time for important things outside of work. For example, going to the gym or walking the dog. These two activities help her to switch off from tech, clear her head and get the beneficial endorphins flowing. Basically, doing this helps her to get the work-life balance right. Sonia does not believe you can achieve perfect work-life balance every week. But, you do need to strive to do so over the long term. Inevitably, you will find yourself under pressure some weeks. But, you must make sure that does not go on so long that you do not get time to unwind and take care of your personal life. Phil agrees he has found it to be more about i

GUEST BIO: Pamela is an astronomer, writer and science communicator focused on using new media to engage people in learning and doing science. Her most well-known project is Astronomy Cast, a podcast that she co-hosts with Fraser Cain. She is also part of numerous science programs on Twitch.tv and has made appearances on a variety of television shows including The Universe and Strange Evidence. Dr Gay also combines her astronomy and computer science background to define new approaches to astronomy that engage citizen scientists, and she leads a team chasing the holy grail of using machine learning to map other worlds. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil's guest on today's podcast is Dr Pamela Gay. She is an astronomer, who also has strong IT skills which she uses to solve all kinds of science-related problems. Her focus is on getting as many people involved with and feeling enthusiastic about astronomy. She is a citizen scientist leader, advocate and enabler. Her specialist IT areas include big data management, web design, mass communication and cloud utilization. She is also a science writer and presenter as well as a podcaster, blogger and public speaker. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.21) – So Pamela, can you expand on that introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Pamela explains that at the most fundamental level she is someone who loves astronomy and playing on the internet. Basically, she is always seeking out ways to combine those two things. Dr Gay is a member of the first PC generation. The first wave of children for whom access to a computer and the internet was a possibility. She has used a computer all of her life. Her experience of them goes right back to the days of cassette drives. She learned to type at the same time as she was learning to use crayons. Her whole life, she has been discovering new ways to use the internet and has been stealing them and using them in pursuit of astronomy. Today, she has found like-minded people and is working with them to engage as many people as possible in the field. They are finding ways to get people to chat about all kinds of things. For example, getting people to work together to map actual new worlds in player groups, using the freeware application, Discord. (2.44) – Phil asks Pamela whether she set out to combine astronomy with her interest in computers and the internet. Pamela responds by describing it as an "accident". When she started at Michigan State University she had planned to go into international science policy. Mostly because she was listening too much to people who were telling her she could not be an astrophysicist, basically, because she was a girl. In the end, she switched from taking a humanities major to astrophysics. Her international science policy goal had already led her to attend astronomy classes. While attending them she realised that astronomy was for her, so she switched her major. The fact that she had already taken so many AP classes gave her a bunch of credits. A fact that freed up enough free time for her to be able to take computer science classes as well. That is how she realised she had a natural aptitude for software development. At the time, that meant she had to get involved in the Computer Science (CS) and Computer Engineering (CE) fields to be able to put her talent to use. IT as a career was not yet a standalone thing. Over the years, she has continued to tinker in those two fields, using them to solve problems. For example, programming software to solve the math equations she did not have enough knowledge to complete herself, or to program a telescope to change position without manual intervention. (4.55) – Phil comments that it sounds as if the two passions complement, almost fuel, each other. This is something Pamela agrees with. In fact, she went on to say that is an understatement. In the field of astronomy, all of the data is digital and there are vast quantities of it. So, using software is the only way to make sense of it. As a result, most astronomers try hard to teach themselves programming. Almost inevitably they end up having to hire an undergraduate to get it done. So, Pamela finds her software abilities to be invaluable. Her computer classes thought her the fundamentals and gave her the necessary foundation to be able to continually grow her knowledge. For her programming is now a natural language. Whereas, for those who are self-taught it tends to remain a second language they continually grapple with. (6.29) – Phil asks Pamela for a unique IT career tip. "Be extremely curious." If you see a way to try something, don't wait, just do it, especially if it does not cost anything to do. If you wait someone else will figure it out and you will not get any of the credit for that new thing you just worked out how to do. (7.13) – Pamela is asked to share her worst career moment with the audience. She said that was probably when she was interviewing a student for a position on her team. He turned out not to be a