IT Career Energizer

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 currently focusing on in your career? Sarah is currently focusing on filling in the gaps, learning more. This year, she particularly wants to secure some Linux certification. She also wants to become a more rounded person. (12.19) – What is the number one non-technical skill that has helped you the most in your IT career? Interestingly, Sarah’s secret skill is curling. She has been involved in the sport for around 20 years, now. Playing has taught her the importance of teamwork. As the captain (skip) she has to make decisions for the team. Often, these are split-second gut feeling decisions that define the game. So, you have to become a confident leader as well as be a good team member. The skills she has picked up while curling has definitely helped her to succeed in her IT career. (13.44) – Phil asks Sarah to share a final piece of career advice with the audience. Sarah’s parting piece of advice is not to be afraid to pursue your dreams. You are good enough. It is important to recognize and deal properly with imposter syndrome. BEST MOMENTS: (1.40) SARAH – "I've probably touched every technology there is." (3.20) SARAH – "Be yourself. And don't be frightened to use your voice." (5.40) SARAH – “If you enjoy your work, it's not really work, it becomes like an extension of you" (8.18) SARAH – “I pick up new technologies, methodology and meet new people with different perspectives all the time." (14.00) SARAH – "Don't be afraid to go and pursue your dreams we are all worthy of those dreams.”

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 creativity involved in most areas of technology, including in the data science field. (13.23) – What is the best career advice you have ever received? Matt says that he actually ignored the best piece of career advice he got. In 2004, he was advised to get a job at Google, but he didn’t. Fortunately, he did follow another great piece of advice, when he was told you need to network, he started doing exactly that. It is hard for a lot of programmers to network, because, by nature, many of them are introverts. In the IT world, you usually get good jobs, not because you interviewed well, but, because someone in the company knows you. So, learning to network is something everyone has to do. (14.33) – Phil points out that effective networking does not always have to happen face to face. There are plenty of online tools you can also use. Matt says that personally, he prefers face to face networking. However, he has seen people using Twitter and LinkedIn for job hunting. In fact, he tried it once and was contacted by about 40 people, so it can work. (15.43) – If you were to begin your IT career again, right now, what would you do? Matt is intrigued by the idea of taking the full-time, online immersive Computer Science courses offered by the Lambda School. They do not charge for their courses, at least not at first. Instead, you pay for your tuition once you get a job. Although, he goes on to say that he enjoyed his college experience. So, if he were to start again, he would probably still opt to attend Stanford and get a degree. His advice to someone who is just starting out would be to go and get a job at Google or somewhere similar. Work for a big company for a few years. Build up your connections and involve yourself in the community. Having a firm like Google on your resume is still something of a golden ticket. (18.40) – What are you currently focusing on in your career? For this year, Matt’s focus is growing MetaSnake. He really enjoys spending three or four days with a group of people who are motivated and excited to learn, so wants more clients. (19.53) – What is the number one non-technical skill that has helped you the most in your IT career? Matt likes to think of himself as creative. Fortunately, when it comes to machine learning and data exploration creativity is a great skill to have. (20.31) – Phil asks Matt to share a final piece of career advice with the I.T. Career Energizer audience. Matt’s advice is to look at where you are now. Then think about where you want to be a year and five years down the line. Ask yourself what you want to achieve. It could be publishing a book, speaking at conferences, or something else. Matt has found that desire and motivation have helped him to move his career forward. BEST MOMENTS: (4.30) MATT – "Get comfortable with being uncomfortable." (5.16) MATT – "The more I network and connect with people the more value I can bring to them and the more value they can bring to me." (11.46) MATT – "There is a lot of low hanging fruit that companies can take advantage of.” (13.51) MATT – "The best career advice I have seen is to network" (20.42) MATT – "Look hard at where you are and know where you want to be." CONTACT MATT: Twitter: https://twitter.com/__mharrison__ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/panela/ Website: https://www.metasnake.com/

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 career moment? And what you learned from that experience. Guillermo says that he has had a few. Interestingly, one of his worst career moments turned out to be a positive thing, at least in the long term. Guillermo created Socket.io when he was 17 or 18 years old. What he had created was a step change. This is evidenced by the fact that so many chat applications and firms like Trello and Microsoft used it to power real-time collaboration, documents and Office365. During development, Socket.io was very well received by everyone he showed it to, especially in San Francisco. Yet, when he released it to the world, the reaction was terrible. The comments were overwhelmingly negative. For example, one guy asked him why he was creating a socket library when they already existed online. Yet, sockets did not exist in web browsers, until Guillermo found a way to do it and published Socket.io. The negative reception was not what he was expecting. But, it turned out to be a revelation for Guillermo. He realized that the moment of creation is almost always a controversial one. It helped him to develop a thick skin, which you need to be able to plow through and carry on changing the Status Quo. (18.44) – What was your best career moment? Guillermo is always opening DevOps to see how something works. He is constantly backward engineering, especially when he comes across something that he enjoys using. Recently, he was on a Finnair flight using their Wi-Fi, which worked great. So, he decided to find out what was going on behind the scenes and was chuffed to see that they were using the technology he had developed. Software has no frontiers. Once you have created something, it can pop up anywhere. It is thrilling to see the work you have done making a difference in the world. (21.48) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? As CEO, Guillermo now spends a lot of his time building his team. Being able to welcome new people to the industry is really exciting. He is seeing a stream of talented newcomers coming through, people who are passionate, talented and ready to contribute. These people are real action takers, many of whom have changed careers and retrained. The fact that there are so many great tools available is also exciting. Now you can deploy things fast. Plus, these tools enable newcomers to become really proficient in the industry very quickly. Anyone in the world can deploy a website or application to the cloud in milliseconds. He is particularly excited about the community of developers based in Africa. Particularly in Nigeria, where a lot of the people he has been working with lately are based. Guillermo welcomes the fact that the industry is becoming more open and transparent. (25.40) – What drew you to a career in IT?  Guillermo always enjoyed using computers and backward engineering things to see how they worked. His curiosity drew him to an IT career and pushed him to succeed. (26.41) – What is the best career advice you have ever received? Ignore the haters. He reads the comments but does not take them to heart. Instead, Guillermo looks at them objectively. He also does not associate his identity or ego with a particular technology or style of programming. Things are constantly changing anyway, so your identity needs to be fluid too. (27.39) – If you were to begin your IT career again, right now, what would you do? Guillermo says he would probably do it all again. Although doing that could be tricky because luck has also played a role in his career. Early on he joined a website where he got paid to do little tasks. For him, exposing his skills to the real world was a good move. He was advised to do that by a random person he met in a forum. Putting his work out there meant it got used and tested. If he had not come across that random person he would not have got into the habit of constantly testing and sharing his work, so soon. As a result, his work would not be as well known or widely used as it is today. (29.27) – What are you currently focusing on in your career? Guillermo is focusing on mentoring as a way to maximize the impact he has on the future of IT and what it can do. He is reaching out to more regions of the world enabling people by showing them his network and ensuring they can use it easily. Guillermo goes on to explain the importance of planning when it comes to success. When creating his best products the majority of his time is spent on the planning and designing stage. The actual coding rarely takes as long. Talking to customers finding out about their pain points are, discussing things with your colleagues, going for a walk to mull things over in your mind are all just as important as the actual coding is. (23.12) – What is the number one non-technical skill that has helped you the most in your IT career? By far that is his presentation skills. Guillermo explains that you need to sell what you create, in the same way a firm like Apple does. Steve Jobs once said that the best marketing is education. Teaching people about how to use your product and get the most out of it is vital if you want people to adopt it and get the most out of what you have created. People’s attention is divided, there are so many distractions. You have very little time to make an impact, which is part of the reason presentation skills are so vital. (35.06) – Phil asks Guillermo to share a final piece of career advice with the audience. Guillermo’s advice is to always think outside of the box as much as possible. Step away from Twitter, Reddit and what is going on within the IT industry. Instead, look for inspiration in other industries, in other art forms. Make sure you do not become locked into the IT world. Also, don’t become a victim of your own process, constantly adapt. BEST MOMENTS: (03.41) GUILLERMO – "Open source has been the key enabler for my career projects." (19.56) GUILLERMO – “I always reverse engineer everything.” (24.02) GUILLERMO – "I’m excited about, you know, how quickly it is to become proficient in this industry" (31.52) GUILLERMO – "The real work happens when you're talking to customers to find out about their pain points" (35.17) GUILLERMO – "Think outside of the box as much as possible."   CONTACT GUILLERMO: Twitter: https://www.rauchg.com/ @rauchg Company Website: https://zeit.co/ Personal Website: https://www.rauchg.com/    

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 that would have had to have been planned in detail, well in advance. You would have needed a guide book, reservations and a stack of maps. Today, all you need is your Smartphone. Plus, GPS means you can’t really get lost. The fact that everything you do in IT potentially has a huge impact on people’s lives is part of the reason it is so interesting. (15.36) – What drew you to a career in IT? Since Richard was a kid, he has been interested in the way things work. His theory is that a lot of people who are working in software development played with Lego bricks as kids. Richard was attracted to the fact that coding allows you to create things while tinkering around, playing and experimenting. Of course, this is true of other fields too, for example, engineering. But, computers had always fascinated him. Partly because what you can do with them is so varied, almost unlimited. So, that is the career path he followed. (17.00) – What is the best career advice you have ever received? Richard says for him it was not advice, as such, that helped him the most. He found that encouragement was what moved him forward. For example, a guy called Ben Evans encouraged him to speak at software conferences. Public speaking has played a big role in moving his career forward. For a long time, he regularly ran training to help people to code better using Java. He was heavily involved in meetups and workshops. Doing all of this has really helped to open doors for him. But, to do it, he needed a bit of encouragement. (18.45) – If you were to begin your IT career again, right now, what would you do? Right now, artificial intelligence is hot, so he would probably get involved with that. It is certainly an interesting and challenging field. (19.41) – What are you currently focusing on in your career? Right now, it is a business objective that Richard is focusing on. He wants to really grow his company and hire more people. So, he is currently honing some of the skills he already has and learning new ones. Including marketing skills, so he can better engage with the market place and share and explain what Opsian.com has to offer. (21.22) – What is the number one non-technical skill that has helped you the most in your IT career? Richard says public speaking has proved to be a very useful non-technical skill. It has put him in contact with a lot of people and helped him when he wanted to write, publish and market his book. (21.55) – Phil asks Richard to share a final piece of career advice with the audience. Richard’s advice is to practice your writing skills. Written communication is still very important. You can’t achieve much on your own. So, you need to be able to communicate effectively. Written communication is still the main way we share complex information, so you need to be good at it. BEST MOMENTS: (3.32) RICHARD– "I've always been really keen on trying to find areas where you do get to push the envelope, technology wise" (3.52) RICHARD– "Try and work with people who you can learn things from.” (13.59) RICHARD– "It’s a scary time to be living through. But it's an amazing time to be living through if you're working in the IT industry." (15.58) RICHARD– “I have a big theory that a lot of people who are working in software played with Lego bricks when they were a kid." (23.01) RICHARD– "In order to achieve things with other people, you always need to be able to communicate with them. Written communication is such an underrated part of that skill” CONTACT RICHARD: Twitter: https://twitter.com/RichardWarburto LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-warburton-5b03613/ Website: https://www.opsian.com/  

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 large crowd, she nearly passed out. But, today getting up in front of people, in large or small groups is much easier, something she has learned to enjoy doing. Plus, importantly it enables her to stand up and show others that look like her that working in IT is possible for them. Overcoming her fear has benefited her and others in many different ways. (18.04) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? Not knowing what is going to happen next, keeps Ruth on the edge of her seat. Currently, she is particularly excited by what is happening in the field of AI. This tech is having an impact in so many interesting ways. For example, some firms are starting to use it to help them to make internal business decisions. There are more intelligent applications coming out in the form of bots and apps. We are getting to the stage where these apps can learn about you and what you need, then intuitively point out things that will help you in so many different ways. They are enhancing our lives and will do so far more in the future. (20.15) – What drew you to a career in IT? Ruth explained that she was supposed to work in the medical field. But, that was her parent's dream, not hers. Especially because she was good at computer science. When she saw her what her older brother was able to do using code she knew a career in IT was for her too. The problem was that, at the time, there were virtually no women working in the IT field. But, Ruth decided to just take a leap of faith and fight for what she wanted. (21.44) – What is the best career advice you have ever received? Ruth’s favorite piece of advice was given to her by her mentor at Accenture who told her to go back and try new things. At first, she hated doing this. But, as the years progressed, she built up a huge pool of knowledge because she had pushed herself to try new things. (22.31) – If you were to begin your IT career again, right now, what would you do? Ruth says she would trust her instincts and step out more. When she first started out she let the feeling that she was not quite good enough get in her way. If she were to start again, she would step out and find things she loved doing on her own rather than waiting for others to tell her what to pursue. She would also learn more languages. It is important not to be closed minded. To always be broadening your horizons. (23.50) – What are you currently focusing on in your career? Right now, her main aim is to help women involved in the STEM industries. The graduation rate of women in computer science has gone down. In 2015, 30% of graduates were women, but in 2017 only 16% were. Something Ruth finds very troubling. When she graduated only 5 women were on the stage. There were no females out there to vote count her graduation class. These two facts are pushing her to play a part in changing things for the better. She learned a huge amount from her start-up journey. So, she is also very focused on sharing that knowledge and advocating for entrepreneurs, so they can succeed. (23.57) – What is the number one non-technical skill that has helped you the most in your IT career? Ruth’s secret weapon is humor and being easy going.  She has always cherished her teams and tried to get along with everyone, which she finds keeps things positive. She also treats everyone with respect regardless of how significant their role is perceived to be by others. (26.20) – Phil asks Ruth to share a final piece of career advice with the audience. Ruth says it is important to remember that IT touches and impacts the lives of everyone. So, whatever you are working on always do it for the good. BEST MOMENTS: (5.46) RUTH – "Our goal is to help you build things right the first time and stay competitive" (8.15) RUTH – "You have to adapt and learn new things" (13.25) RUTH – "There are a lot of factors that you need to take into consideration, not just money when you're embarking on a new career." (16.17) RUTH – “The more you face your fears, and you conquer them, the better, once you’ve eliminated one handicap you can move on to conquer another one" (27.23) RUTH – “Enjoy the ride but always use IT for the good." CONTACT RUTH: Twitter: https://twitter.com/ruthieyakubu LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruthyakubu/ Website: http://www.poshbeauty.com/

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 going to pick “Don’t be afraid of saying no.” If something is not possible, you have to say so as soon as possible. It does not matter who that person is or where they sit in an organization you must not be afraid to speak up. (14.34) – If you were to begin your IT career again, right now, what would you do? Fernando does not think he would do much differently. He would still start out by writing code. (15.14) – What are you currently focusing on in your career? Right now, he is focused on helping to solve people’s problems. He enjoys the fact that people are complex and are not predictable like computers are. The challenge of interacting with others and solving their problems is something he enjoys, so that is his focus. (15.41) – What is the number one non-technical skill that has helped you the most in your IT career? Because Fernando likes sitting down and working through issues with people he thinks that patience is his number one non-technical skill. He knows that non-technical skills like being honest, respecting others, communicating effectively and being humble are all invaluable when you work in the IT sector. (16.59) – Phil asks Fernando to share a final piece of career advice with the audience. Fernando’s advice is not to be shy. Speak up and ask questions even if you think they may be a bit dumb. He also believes you should prioritize human values over technical knowledge. After all, computers are only a means to reach out to other people. BEST MOMENTS: (3.02) PHIL - "It is better to learn from other people's mistakes. So you don't make them yourself."  (7.43) FERNANDO – "Automate all things, manual steps should be avoided." (8.20) FERNANDO – "There was no finger pointing, we acted as a team here" (13.51) FERNANDO – "Don’t be afraid of saying no." (16.42) FERNANDO – "Respect, communication, honesty, and humility, I think those things are key." (17.43) FERNANDO – "Computers are only a means you reach out to people." CONTACT FERNANDO: Twitter: https://twitter.com/fernando_cejas LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fernandocejas/ Website: https://fernandocejas.com/  

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 working on small local business sites in his bedroom to working for an agency. His first job was to improve a firm’s website. To enable him to do that, he was given FTP access to the production server. So, he did as he had always done, signed in, identified the bugs fixed them and made some improvements. The problem was that there was a big difference between the way he worked with his direct local business clients and the way the agency did things. Differences he was not aware of at all. His previous clients paid him then simply trusted him to do what was needed. Basically, he had a free hand. Whereas, the agencies had a workflow process, that included apprising the client of the changes, prior to implementation. Plus, there were no backups for the site Jono had changed. Everything he had done had gone live without the site owner being aware of what was about to happen. Fortunately, the site owner did not go mad. However, he did have to put the site back to the way it was, which, oddly meant coding the bugs back in. For Jono, this was a huge learning moment. It taught him that you need to bring the client along with you. It is vital to build a strong relationship with them and use good storytelling skills to enable them to see what you see and agree to travel in the direction you are suggesting. You have to manage the people as much as the work.      (10.22) – Phil had a friend who ended his career overnight by rewriting the front end of something that was shared by multiple applications, without prior permission. Worse, this product was being worked on by about 100 other developers, at the time. (10.54) – What was your best career moment? Jono says that actually, he is living it right now. Working at Yoast is an absolute joy. Prior to this, he has done all kinds of other types of work and all of it has felt flawed. This is particularly the case with agency work, where you are always falling foul of the classic prioritization triangle. At Yoast, they are defining standards where none currently exist. Leading the way on things that impact a significant proportion of the web, in many cases solving problems nobody even knew existed. Plus, generally speaking, he can pick and choose what he works on. So, he is able to work on incredibly cool things. For example, right now, he is working on a way to enable any website developer to effectively implement schema.org markup.  (14.44) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? The fact that there is no barrier to entry is very exciting. Plus, there is something new to learn, every day. Jono is proud of the way he has grown in the industry and knows that potentially anyone can do something similar. He dropped out of college and started out small by creating websites. Today, he can come up with an idea and develop it 100%, sorting out everything from the architecture and databases to the front end. Despite this, sometimes he still feels like he is falling behind. There is just so much to learn. Things like new workflow tools and CSS he wants to adopt. He knows that things are only going to get more interesting as IoT and digital assistants gather momentum. Consumer behavior is set to change drastically and do so at a global level. The possibilities are endless. (17.29) – What first attracted you to a career in IT? Jono says the fact that the things he coded were tangible, inspired him to learn and do more within IT. For him, it has been a great way to create. In fact, the only way he can really do so because he cannot draw or paint to create physical art or make things with his hands. But, he can create something using his coding skills. (18.09) – What is the best career advice you have ever received? Unfortunately, Jono can’t remember who gave him this advice. But, nonetheless, it has proved invaluable for him. He was taught to think in terms of “distance to perfect”. So, instead of doing what most firms do, which is to think in terms of what is the minimal viable product you first draw up plans for your perfect product. Taking this approach ensures that you always aim high.  Resources may mean that you cannot reach that level. But, thinking like this forces you to push beyond MVP. Inevitably, you end up creating better stuff and stretching yourself.  (19.29) – If you were to begin your IT career again, right now, what would you do? Jono says his approach would probably not be radically different, although he does wish that he had got more formal training. He describes his coding as a bit sloppy and he would also have collaborated more with others. Jono feels that he would have progressed much faster if he had done so. (20.47) – What are you currently focusing on in your career? Jono says that he is atoning for many years of reinventing the wheel for businesses that are not necessarily having a meaningful impact on the world. So, he is focused on being involved in projects that are going to make a significant difference. To really make the world a better place. (21.46) – What is the number one non-technical skill that has helped you the most in your IT career? Being a voracious reader of science fiction book helps Jono to recharge his batteries. But, more than that, they feed his imagination and help him to think differently, to think outside the box. This habit feeds into his work and has a positive effect. (22.43) – Phil asks Jono to share a final piece of career advice with the audience. Jono’s advice is not to settle for mediocrity. Conventional wisdom limits you far more than you realize. You are constantly told not to chase the shiny thing or expect perfection. In fact, you should be doing both of those things. When you do you will start to shape the landscape around you. You will have to win some arguments to get there and be patient. But, because you are pushing beyond what everyone else is doing you will be the one that makes a significant difference. Getting involved in Open Source is great for pushing you to come up with ideas and work collaboratively to make real change. Plus, of course, it is a great way to demonstrate your capabilities. To prove what you can do. There really is nothing stopping anyone from doing that. BEST MOMENTS: (3.26) JONO– "You don’t’ have to ask permission to do better stuff." (4.58) JONO– "These days, it is surprisingly easy to become a thought leader or a pioneer, an engineer who is shaping tomorrow." (9.36) JONO- "Storytelling and relationships with stakeholders and influencers is just as critical as the work itself." (11.46) JONO– "We’re defining standards at the cutting edge where no standards currently exist." (17.57) JONO– " Web development, SEO, CSS, PHP suddenly became my canvas." (23.59) JONO– "I'm relatively new to the open source space. But I've been astounded at just how it easy it is to contribute. " CONTACT JONO: Twitter: https://twitter.com/jonoalderson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonoalderson/ Website: https://www.jonoalderson.com/

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 horse.js has a huge Twitter following. Jasmine and her co-worker used a combination of machine learning, data statistics and other methods to work out who horse.js is. At the latest JSConf they gave a presentation that explained how they did it. At the end, there was a pre-planned piece of pantomime, where the organizers would shoo them off of the stage before they could reveal who it was. Clearly, some in the audience thought they were going to uncover horse.js, which they definitely were not. They actually got booed off and ended up leaving the conference venue through the back entrance. Despite this, the project and speech were great fun for Jasmine. It gave her the chance to work collaboratively with her team using JavaScript. A language she rarely gets to work in. Plus, they produced a website about the process and the person they had concluded was horse.js agreed to having his name revealed on the site. Although he has still not confirmed or denied being horse.js. Basically, it was a fun project, that stretched Jasmine, helped her to gel with her team and become better known in the community. So, it has been a career highlight on many different levels. (14.00) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? The fact that if she wanted to try something else in the industry there are so many different paths she could take excites Jasmine. Her background is mostly software engineering, but she also now has her developer advocate and relations work to add into the mix. Jasmine especially enjoys being a part of a “choose your own adventure” style of team. If you are good at speaking, that can be your focus, while someone else might write a lot of code or seek out feedback from product teams. Jasmine is also excited by the fact that working for Microsoft automatically opens up all kinds of possibilities. She can easily move internally to try something different or take up an opportunity outside the business. She also enjoys the fact that the information you need to learn something new is now freely available. You just need to find a tutorial or blog post and get started.  (15.54) – What drew you to a career in IT? For Jasmine, her journey into IT started when she wanted to customize her GeoCities, Neopets and MySpace accounts. Making little sites for herself was the spark. The fact that she wanted to be a meteorologist also pusher her into the IT world. It was part of the reason she decided to minor in computer science. She liked it so much that she ended up switching her major. (16.52) – What is the best career advice you have ever received? Don’t be afraid to ask questions. If you don’t you are not doing your job properly. Asking questions is tricky because you have to admit you don’t know something. But, it is essential. You end up feeling so much worse if you get things wrong because you did not seek clarification.  (17.21) – If you were to begin your IT career again, right now, what would you do? Jasmine says she would probably get involved in the IT security field. Probably as a white hat hacker, right now, it is a really interesting sector to work in. (17.55) – What clear objective are you currently focusing on? Jasmine is now part of a fresh team that is focused on reaching out to the education community. Currently, she is looking for ways in which she can shine in this role. She is looking for ways to self-advocate and progress the team's objectives at the same time. (19.12) – What is the number one non-technical skill that has helped you the most in your IT career, so far? Being an effective communicator has been essential for Jasmine. She mostly works remotely, so has to be particularly careful to communicate well. It is essential to tailor what you are saying to take account of the audience you are speaking to. You have to adapt your approach to ensure that what you are saying is easy to digest and understand. Jasmine has found that getting involved in things like hobby channels has helped her with this. Sharing tips, suggestions, jokes and things in a casual setting has helped her to hone her communication skills. (20.58) – Phil asks Jasmine to share a final piece of career advice with the audience. She says it is the same as the advice she received – Don’t be afraid to ask questions. It is the only way to get the clarification you need to be able to move forward. If you do not get into this habit you will very likely stall. At first, you may feel embarrassed doing it. But, it is like a muscle. The more you do it the easier it gets. Phil says that he has also found this to be true. He has noticed that the more questions you ask the more confident you become, which is the opposite of what you might expect. BEST MOMENTS: (6.22) JASMINE – "Sometimes it's just, you know, one little thing that they just need to clear the air on to get them to where they need to be." (7.23) PHIL – "break down that objective into smaller chunks, so that it becomes easier to understand.” (14.23) JASMINE – "If I wanted to try something else in the industry, there are so many paths I can take." (16.54) JASMINE – "If you’re not asking questions, you’re not doing your job." (21.55) PHIL – "The more you ask questions, the more confident you get.”   CONTACT JASMINE: Twitter: https://twitter.com/paladique LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasminegreenaway Github: https://github.com/paladique  

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 anything back. Just help them because they are fantastic. Doing that has led to some really great things for Keith. Through this habit, he has developed several important personal and business relationships.  (10.02) – If you were to begin your IT career again, right now, what would you do? Keith says that he would probably go deeper into security, especially now that IoT is so big. For this to succeed, better security is essential. (10.32) – What are you currently focusing on in your career? Actually, that is connected to what he was saying earlier about building up people around you.  He is currently working with an international startup accelerator program called TechStars. (11.00) – So, what sort of projects are involved in that? Keith explains it could be anything. But, he particularly likes getting involved with the ones that are for industries where the use of tech is still a fairly new thing. His focus tends to be on product market fit, especially for more technical products. (11.51) – What is the number one non-technical skill that has helped you the most in your IT career? Being able to get up on stage and explain a concept from beginning to end has proved to be very useful. If you can do that, you will win 80% of all conversations, simply because most other people cannot explain in such an effective way. Plus the fact that you are a public speaker means that you automatically get a certain level of respect. Interestingly, Keith learned his presentation skills largely as a result of being a theatre geek. (12.25) – Is that a skill that has evolved and developed over time? Keith explains that he still actively works at it. In particular, he studies the old school comics like Richard Pryor and Steve Martin. They do the same thing again and again, yet still manage to keep their audiences engaged. (13.09) – Phil asks Keith to share a final piece of career advice with the audience. Keith’s advice is not to be afraid to experiment. You do not necessarily have to restrict yourself to only learning things for which there is a pressing need.  Also, Keith says it is a good idea to learn through other people’s experience. BEST MOMENTS: (2.43) KEITH - "Treat your career as an investment." (3.25) PHIL –“I think there can be too much short-termism in terms of what people look out." (8.26) KEITH - "You don't have to just be behind a screen 24 seven, figuring how to build things.” (9.37) KEITH – “Help good people around you. You'll cross paths with fantastic people.” (13.33) KEITH - "Just go and learn things you will never be hurt by knowing more.” CONTACT KEITH: Twitter: https://twitter.com/caseysoftware LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caseysoftware/

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 year and take a finance degree. Unfortunately, again, when it was time to find a job he struggled. There was work, but the pay was not very good. Around the same time, his friend who was doing a computer science degree was getting amazing offers. Three times what he was could land. So, Matt switched his focus to IT. (11.37) – Do you think that is still true, today? Matt says things are changing. When it comes to the finance industry, if you excel, you can actually get paid a lot more than you would working in the tech industry. The cool thing is that if you are curious, you can carry on learning and add to your skills. In time, you will end up earning even more and staying gainfully employed becomes very easy.  (12.18) – What is the best career advice you have ever received? Around 2005, Matt was working as a consultant for a startup that was shutting down. While discussing what Matt was going to do next the CEO advised him to double his rate. That is exactly what he did, that year. Each year after that, he added 20% to it. (13.04) - Phil asked Matt if he was saying that you should make sure that you get paid what you are worth. Matt replies that you should always ask for more, because often you will discover that people are actually prepared to pay a much higher rate. (13.09) – If you were to begin your IT career again, right now, what would you do? Matt says that he would not change a thing. His career has enabled him to fulfill his dream of restoring his old Volkswagen bus, which has taken nearly 10 years. He has big plans for that bus.  (14.26) – What are you currently focusing on in your career? Right now, Matt is where he wants to be with his career. But, he is working at getting better at drawing, so he can add more hand drawings to his blog. He is also planning to do more videos, screencasts and to get into recording meetups. (15.02) – What is the number one non-technical skill that has helped you the most in your IT career? For Matt, the ability to speak publically has proved invaluable. (15.10) – How did you get into that? In 2004, a friend suggested he speak at ApacheCon. He decided to give it a go. Surprisingly, within 15-minutes of being on stage, his nerves evaporated and he felt at home. Even today, he gets very nervous before each talk, but once he gets started he feels comfortable, fairly quickly. The other non-technical thing that helps Matt is being an outdoorsman. Most days, he takes a walk or rides his bike. During these activities, he finds that he automatically settles a lot of things in his mind. Phil agrees that being outdoors is quite therapeutic. (16.32) – Phil asks Matt to share a final piece of career advice with the audience. Matt says – “If you really want to get something done close off your email, you slack. Turn on some music and write some code.” Once you have eliminated distractions, you will be far more productive. BEST MOMENTS: (1.29) MATT – "I started developing web pages in HTML before Netscape even existed" (2.48) MATT – “Create a six-week plan of the things that you want to accomplish" (7.44) MATT – "If I'm not utilizing my skills, then maybe it's time finding another job." (12.10) MATT – "If you're curious, you can keep learning and keep improving yourself and keep gainfully employed." (13.15) MATT – “I wouldn't change a thing.”   (16.34) MATT – "Close your email, close your Slack, turn on some music and write some code." CONTACT MATT : Twitter: https://twitter.com/mraible @mraible LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mraible/ Website: https://raibledesigns.com