In this conversation, Fable and Ben dig deep on building a technical career that balances programming and company leadership. Fable shares their experience working at Stripe and the different roles they have held, including being a technical advisor to the CTO. They also discuss Fable's career move from being a hands-on programmer to role where less hands-on coding is required, Fable's take on "code crimes", and how to find enjoyment and fulfillment in solving complex problems.

Links

Tuple.app - The best app for pair programming
Stripe - The company Fable works at
Ruby Kaigi - An annual conference dedicated to the Ruby programming language.
Sidekiq - A simple, efficient background processing library for Ruby
Sorbet - A fast, powerful type checker designed for Ruby.
YubiKey - A hardware device designed for high-security two-factor authentication.

Key Takeaways

Making connections and friendships at conferences can be valuable in the programming community.
Debugging and problem-solving skills are crucial for software engineers.
Being willing to learn and work with different programming languages can enhance your skills.
Prototyping and spiking can be effective ways to test and develop new ideas.

Chapters

(00:00) - Introduction and Conference Interaction
(00:38) - Making Friends at Conferences
(04:13) - Work at Stripe
(06:17) - Becoming a Staff Engineer
(06:53) - Getting Good at Programming
(08:46) - Debugging and Problem Solving
(11:22) - Working with C and C++
(13:13) - Debugging with Print Statements and Debuggers
(17:06) - Prototyping and Spiking
(24:11) - Technical Advisor to the CTO
(27:26) - Coding Hill to Die On
(29:52) - Workflow Optimization
(36:53) - Coding vs Non-Coding Time
(39:08) - Transition to Leadership
(41:07) - Motivation and Impact
(42:13) - Love for Programming
(44:14) - Coding Style: Short Methods and Small Classes
(48:48) - Personal Style and Code Crimes
(52:18) - Commercial Open Source
(56:08) - Getting Involved in Open Source
(01:04:52) - Wrap-up

Fable Tales, Staff Engineer at Stripe