Leading a volunteer team is something i'd massively recommend anyone who wants to be a good leader does like find some place to volunteer and go and lead some volunteers. I think the biggest challenge, especially with remote, is communication. It's how you communicate in a way that makes people feel listen to. The key thing for that really is around shed mission. It's about setting norms between people where the way people communicate is respectful, is friendly. Cokido, we talk a lot about psychological safety. So you can disagree with somebody and it doesn't feel scary,. It doesn't feel like an argument. It just feels like this is a psychologically safe environment. One of the big challenges
“You don’t know what you don’t know. So when you’re learning something, it’s very hard to identify your own knowledge gaps, especially if you’re a programmer and you’re moving from one language to another."
Jeremy Walker is the co-founder of Exercism and Kaido. In this episode, Jeremy first shared about Exercism, a not-for-profit online platform for learning different programming languages. He explained the importance of programming in the idiomatic way, the role of mentorship when learning new languages, and shared his experiences running Exercism as one of the largest open source program, such as how to get consensus and how to run remote distributed teams. Later, Jeremy then talked about Kaido, an employee culture platform for building happier, healthier, and better connected teams. He shared how companies could strive to do more to build company culture before then shared some practical tips on how we can improve our personal wellbeing.
Listen out for:
- Career Journey - [00:05:08]
- Exercism - [00:08:24]
- Programming in Idiomatic Way - [00:11:34]
- Mentorship When Learning Languages - [00:13:52]
- Inclusiveness & Equality - [00:17:04]
- Running Large Open Source - [00:21:19]
- Getting Consensus - [00:27:11]
- Running Remote Distributed Teams - [00:30:42]
- Kaido for Wellbeing and Culture - [00:37:00]
- Tips on Personal Wellbeing - [00:43:40]
- 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:49:13]
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Jeremy Walker’s Bio
Jeremy Walker is the co-founder of Exercism and Kaido. He is a software developer and entrepreneur who has been building tech businesses and not-for-profits for over 15 years. He is passionate about building great places to work and creating opportunity through education. In his space time he boulders and gets geeky about coffee.
Follow Jeremy:
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For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/87.
