IT Career Energizer

GUEST BIO: Corey Quinn has been an engineering manager, a public speaker and an advocate for cloud strategies.  He now specializes in helping companies control and cost optimize their AWS cloud footprint without disrupting the engineers using it. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil’s guest on today’s show is Corey Quinn, who is a cloud economist, consultant, business owner, blogger and podcaster. His early career was spent as a system administrator. He later moved into DevOps. Today, he is a consultant who specializes in creating cost-optimized AWS cloud solutions that work efficiently, despite the fact that the cost of running them has been cut drastically. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (00.28) – So Corey, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself. Corey explains that he is a cloud economist. He started as an assistant systems administrator, which is the equivalent of an SRE, doing both individual contributor work and managing teams. But, for the last couple of years he has run his own AWS consultancy company. His main service is fixing the huge AWS bills that many companies end up with. More recently, he has become for his Last Week in AWS newsletter, which pulls together what is happening in the Amazon cloud ecosystem. At this point gives an important tip. Making fun of giant companies will make you less employable than you think. He also runs the Screaming in the Cloud podcast. (2.09) – Phil asks Corey for a unique IT career tip, one the audience probably does not already know. Corey says it is important not to lose sight of how valuable you are to the business. Being able to understand and prove your true value will really help the next time there are layoffs. So, it is wise to get into the habit of tracking that type of data. (3.16) – Phil asks how someone who cannot easily visualize their monetary value to the people they work for and how they would go about evaluating their true worth. Corey says that the best way he has found to do that is to speak to people within the company and outside about his role. Doing this has enabled him to get some perspective. He has been able to see how they think his type of role benefits a business and how it adds value. Finding a mentor helps too, they will also provide insight into this. You can also ask your boss how the company realizes the benefit of having you there. Don’t be afraid of asking this question. Doing so enables you to better understand your role and be able to fill it more effectively. It stops you from focusing on things the company does not ascribe much value to. Things they are not really interested in your taking care of for them. (4.48) – Corey is asked to share his worst career moment by Phil. Corey has a reoccurring moment. He has been “let go” several times and being fired never feels good, especially when you don’t see it coming. Over the years, Corey has been let go five or six times. Usually, because he was misaligned with what the business found valuable. He was just not focusing on what they wanted to have done. However, in some cases, it was a cultural mismatch that led to him being fired. Being let go hurts and can make you feel like you are a loser, even though you are not. But, on the flip side you usually end up feeling relieved, liberated even. (6.52) – Phil asks Corey if being fired has become any easier, over the years. Corey explains that it has gotten easier in that he knows what to do next. But, emotionally it is still hard. This is despite the fact that he knows every job comes to an end, at some point. In reality, you are either going to leave, because you are no longer a good fit, or your company is going to let you go, for the same reason. It is a fact of life. Besides which if you are no longer a good fit, continuing to work for that company is not good for you or your employer. Despite that, being told you have been fired is still painful. (7.53) - Have you ever experienced a situation where perhaps the company has moved on and the role that you're performing is no longer as valuable as it was previously? In Corey’s case, this has usually happened because the role has shifted radically. This has definitely been the case when he has joined a company during its early days. What a firm needs doing during start-up is very different from what they require once they are fully up and running. Corey enjoys fixing problems and turning things around. But, once everything is settled and he has to switch to take care of mundane day-to-day tasks he quickly gets bored. When that happens, it is best for him to move on quickly. (9.12) – Phil asks Corey what his best career moment was. For Corey that has definitely been helping a friend of his to grow her career. Over the years, she has regularly sought advice from him. Today, she credits him with some of her success. Corey gets more of a sense of achievement from having helped her than he does from saving companies large sums of money or help them to recover from problems. (10.28) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? The fact that the barrier of entry is lowering is exciting. Now, anyone with a credit card and ten bucks can implement their business idea in the cloud. They can easily set up a test lab at home. You no longer have to spend a fortune like Corey did, years ago, when setting up a simple mail server meant buying lots of expensive equipment. (11.39) – Phil agrees he is seeing more companies use the cloud as their long-term IT solution. Business owners seem to be far less concern about potential security issues. He asks Corey if he has seen the same thing happening. Corey he agrees, but explains that he occasionally comes across firms who are worried about data security. But, when he reminds them that the tax authorities, banks and other big organizations use the technology, most understand that the risk is low. Typically, they decide to make the change and move to the cloud. (13.17) – What first attracted you to a career in IT, Corey? At one time, Corey worked as an IT recruiter. Eventually, he got tired of placing people in roles he knew he could do a better job of. So, 14 years ago, he figured he would give IT a try and significantly increase the amount he was earning. He certainly earned more, with the added bonus that he really enjoyed the work. (13.41) – What is the best career advice you have received? “Talk less, listen more”. It is something Corey still struggles with doing. But, he is working at developing this skill and is getting better at listening. After all, “nobody ever listens themselves into having to apologize.” (14.33) – What career objectives are you currently focusing on? Corey says that would be continuing to grow his business. Currently, he is focusing on marketing and sales. Unfortunately, he no longer has the time to code much. (15.18) – What is the number one non-technical skill that has helped you the most in your IT career? For Corey it is storytelling. Telling a story about something in a way that resonates with your audience is a great skill to have. That is the case whether you are trying to convince a client, one of your peers or a colleague, of something. You have to engage with them in a way that resonates. When you learn to do that, it automatically becomes easier to speak publically, put together podcasts and participate at meetups. (16.30) – Phil asks Corey to share a final piece of career advice. Every three months, pull up your resume and update it. Add what you have done for the past three months and think about what you want to add the next time you review your resume. If you find that you have nothing to add for the last three months, work out why that is. Make sure that you don’t stall your career. The last thing you need is to end up working for a company for 15years, yet only gain one year of experience. It is all easy to slip into the tap of doing the same thing year in, year out and end up stagnating. Reviewing your resume every three months will ensure that you are always intentional with your career choices. BEST MOMENTS: (1.38) COREY – “First career tip don’t make fun of giant companies. It makes you less employable than you'd think.” (2.19) COREY – “Make sure you don't lose sight of the business value that you provide to your employer” (10.12) COREY – “Saving clients, large piles of money, sort of pales in comparison to having helped someone develop in their career.” (15.20) COREY – “Regardless of what it is you're doing, you need to be able to tell a story about it in a way that resonates with the business.” (16.13) PHIL “Stories are a fantastic way to communicate ideas and really communicate the solutions as well.” CONTACT COREY: Twitter: https://twitter.com/QuinnyPig @QuinnyPig LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coquinn/ Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coquinn/

GUEST BIO: Ruth is an award-nominated digital artist, web consultant, keynote speaker and writer with 15 years of experience in the digital industry.  Ruth is a Google Development Expert, having worked for companies such as O2 and BSkyB and with clients including the BBC, NBC and Heineken. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Ruth John is Phil’s guest on today’s I.T. Energizer show. For the past 15 years, she has worked in the digital design and development field. Ruth has worked for start-ups, creative agencies and media companies as well as in the telecommunications sector. She specializes in data visualization, animation, audio and 3D. Ruth is also a technical writer and a regular conference speaker. KEY TAKEAWAYS: ­(0.57) – So Ruth, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Ruth explains that currently she is a self-employed consultant. She specializes in helping companies to build or document creative development. Usually, she ends up filling in skill gaps for her clients, especially when it comes to audio, animation and visualization. (1.32) – OK, so what led you into that particular avenue? Ruth explains that while working for agencies on front end development projects, she ended up filling a range of skill gaps. One of which was design. Despite the fact that her focus was research and development, she ended having to use her creative skills a lot. It was this that made her realize that she had a flair for design and the creative side of IT and that she enjoyed that kind of work. (1.53) – Phil asks Ruth for a unique IT career tip. Ruth’s number one tip is not to be afraid to turn work down. Sometimes it is because she sees red flags, other times it is because the job is not fully suited to her skill set. She is especially cautious if it looks like the project has not been spec’d properly or is underfunded. Phil asks her if that is something she has had to learn from experience. Ruth said yes. When you are self-employed getting the balance right is tricky because you’ve still got your bills to pay. This fact makes it harder to learn to say no and will mean that occasionally you will have to say yes even when the role is not a perfect fit for you. (3.57) – Ruth is asked to share her worst career moment. Like quite a few IT professionals, Ruth has made the classic mistake of deleting a production database. Of course, that was a serious mistake, but one that was relatively easily rectified because they had a proper backup. Throughout the early part of her career Ruth experienced sexism. In one office, every morning when she walked into the office they shouted boobs at her. A pretty awful environment for her to work in, but that job did not last long. Fortunately, things are getting better now for female IT workers. The other negative situation that sticks in Ruth’s mind was landing a very well paid job only to then discover that the working environment was toxic. Plus, the team was not great. That was a very low point for Ruth. Sadly, it meant that her best career moment was rolled up with her worst one. (5.09) – Can you explain how your worst career experience rolled into your best moment. Ruth said that she left that job. It was a difficult decision for her to leave such a well-paid role, but doing so was extremely liberating. (5.45) – So, have you learned anything from that particular experience in terms of who you choose to work with? Ruth explained that it gave her a better understanding of when to say no and when to say yes to a project. For example, she recently took on a project that was slightly underfunded. She did so because it gave her the chance to work with someone she already knew and trusted. It turned out to be a great decision. (7.28) – Do you see the trend of applying multiple technologies to one problem continuing? Or do you think that it is going to go the other way? Ruth said that she hopes multiple technologies will continue to be used. Having options helps people to be innovative, dig deeper and come up with interesting solutions. (6.44) – Ok, Ruth what is it about the future of the IT industry and careers that excites you, in particular. Ruth is excited by how creative IT is getting, especially at the front end where she works. You can now build anything using CSS or JavaScript, even something quite abstract. (8.48) – What first attracted you to IT, Ruth? Ruth confesses that when she first left university she was not attracted to a career in IT, at all. Her entertainment technology degree was similar to media studies, but, with the focus being on technology. For example, music technology, 3D and film animation. During her course, she did a year of Java programming and hated it. But, despite that, she applied for and landed a job as a web developer and ended up enjoying it. (9.38) – So, there must have been something that kept you going in terms of wanting to continue to work in the industry? Ruth agrees and thinks that it was seeing 3D artists and video editors at work. That made her realize that they were stuck in a dark room all day. Whereas as a developer, she got to move around, experience more and get involved in all kinds of projects. (10.34) – What is the best career advice you’ve ever received? Ruth has recently read Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg and found it refreshing to hear someone recognize the fact that “having it all” is not really possible. Currently, Ruth is focused on her career, but definitely feels the social pressure to get married and have children. (11.38) – If you were to begin your IT career again, now, what would you do? Ruth says she would have more confidence in her own abilities. She really wishes she had worked an environment that had instilled that in her. (12.18) – What career objectives are you currently focusing on? Because this is Ruth’s 2nd year as a consultant, this year’s target is to make more money. In 2018, she has not quite hit most of her targets. She does not really set goals as such. Instead she has people she wants to work with and projects she wants to be involved in. (13.27) – What is the number one non-technical skill that has helped you the most in your IT career? Ruth teaches coding to adults. In that role, patience is an essential skill. The course is an intensive one, so there is a lot for the students to take in. Naturally, most of them struggle with various aspects of what they are learning. Getting students through this phase requires a lot of patience, so you get good at it. In time, you realize that this skill is actually very helpful in all aspects of your life. (14.13) – Phil says that he has also noticed that everyone learns in a different way. Something that has helped him to realize the importance of adapting what you say and how you say it to suit the person or people you are speaking to. Ruth agrees, and comments that in every class you end up with different kinds of learners. So, you have to think on your feet and adapt the way you teach to enable them to complete the course successfully. (14.50) – Do you incorporate all of those into the way you teach? Ruth does, she also takes advice from her mother and sister. Both of them are ex-teachers. (15.19) – Phil asks Ruth to share a final piece of career advice. Her advice is to find likeminded people. A while back Ruth was nominated for an award for an article she wrote. It was about a really random subject – doing audio video visualizations using web technologies. Not long after the nomination, a guy who was doing something similar got in touch with her. They collaborated for a while. In the end they formed a bit of a collective of people doing using similar technology to create music, control lighting rigs and that sort of thing. Over the years, these people have been really helpful, in many different ways. BEST MOMENTS: (2.20) RUTH – “I actually turn a lot of work back or just say no, off the bat, just because I see a lot of red flags.” (6.59) RUTH – “Front end technologies, like CSS and JavaScript have exploded so much over the past 5 to 10 years that you can quite easily build anything you want with them now.” (13.20) RUTH – “I like to think about projects that I would like to work on, or people that I'd like to work with.” (15.26) RUTH – “Find like-minded people.”   CONTACT RUTH:   Twitter: https://twitter.com/Rumyra LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruthjohn/ Website: https://www.ruthjohn.com

David Linthicum, Chief Cloud Strategy Officer at Deloitte Consulting and #1 cloud influencer, shares insights on predicting tech trends and solving upcoming problems. Emphasizes self-learning, motivation, and career growth in IT. Discusses market trends, automation, AI, and the role of IT in enterprises. Highlights the importance of communication skills and overcoming challenges. Promotes his platforms and podcast for further engagement.

GUEST BIO: Dan is a software test engineer and founder of The Test Doctor.  Dan enjoys running workshops and speaking, especially in the technical testing and security space and likes to help others to become better testers by attending events, blogging and giving training. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil’s guest today is Dan Billing. He has been involved in the IT testing sector, for much of his career, specialising in security. Dan is the founder of The Test Doctor and a leading member of the testing community. His workshops are well-attended and he is a popular conference speaker. KEY TAKEAWAYS: ­(0.58) – So, Dan, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Dan says he is now based in the southeast of England. Initially, he trained to be a teacher, but changed his mind and after briefly working in an AOL call centre, he kind of floated into testing. But, the foundations for his career were really laid when he was a child. He started out by programming his ZX Spectrum and Commodore Omega. Dan has always been fascinated by how people use and interact with applications and products. (3.15) – Phil asks Dan for a unique IT career tip. Dan says his biggest tip is to learn to understand and alleviate risk. Understanding what your clients and members of your team feel the risks are is a good way to do this. However, it is not just the technical risks that you need to understand. It is important to keep an eye on the well-being of your team too. First, check that it is a healthy team. Identify any blockers and manage them to negate the negative impact they tend to have. Also, look out for anything that may affect your team’s ability to work efficiently. For example, does your team have enough room to work in? Can they work flexibly enough to be able to take care of family responsibilities and maintain a good work life balance? Asking yourself these sorts of questions will help you to see where things could go wrong. Looking out for the wellbeing of your team, being empathetic and communicating effectively all reduce the risk of the team not being able to gel or burning out. (5.49) – Dan is asked to share his worst career moment by Phil. Dan explained that happened very early in his testing career. Basically, he lost his temper with a member of his team. At the time, he was not familiar with Agile working practices and was not good at communicating. Plus, the software was not sufficiently developed to allow him to test it properly. All of this led to him becoming increasingly frustrated, until, eventually he lost his temper with one of the developers. Clearly, that was not good for anyone. However, that event taught him to own up to mistakes, learn from them and not let them stop him from moving forward. By its very nature the tester role is one that can lead to conflict. After all, a big part of their role is to be a professional critic. So, for testers, learning how to highlight the issues in a way that is positive is important. Testers need to ask the right questions at the right time and in the right way and do so without being rude. That early negative incident taught Dan to take a more empathetic approach to his work. When he is testing, he thinks about the various software engineers. How they work and what they are trying to achieve, so that he can tailor his feedback to be as useful to them as possible. Naturally, he is also thinking about the product owner, the customer, and the end users. The system needs to meet the customer’s spec and be user-friendly. However, at this point, Dan points out that quality assurance and testing are not the same things. (11.04) – Phil asks Dan to tell him about his career highlight. Dan says that the most rewarding work he has done is when the team he has been a part of has achieved something good. For example, on a recent project the team had struggled to deliver on two or three sprints. So, when they did gel, hit their stride and achieve they were elated, Dan included. For him those moments where everyone successfully pulls together and achieves are his career highlights. From a project point of view, the naval charting systems job he worked on, when he first started working as a freelancer, was a highlight. Being part of a team delivering charts that keep people safe at sea was a great feeling. Landing his first keynote speech also felt great. (14.46) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? Dan is excited by the challenges, in particular, the ones that are unique to the UK. With Brexit nearly upon us the IT industry is potentially facing having to operate in a very different environment. The UK IT community is going to have to adapt quickly to the changes that Brexit brings, whatever they may be. In all likelihood, their customer base will change significantly. For example, it is highly likely that UK firms will find themselves with more non-EU clients. These clients will likely approach things differently, something UK-based developers will have to adapt to. Drastic change always brings big challenges, which makes for an interesting work environment. At a global level, one of the biggest challenges facing the IT community is recruitment. To deliver products that work, you need the end customer, or user base, to be represented with the development team. Attracting the right people to the industry is a big challenge that must be met. A diverse workforce is essential, so the way recruitment is done has got to evolve. IT has the potential to solve a lot of the world’s most important issues. The products we develop can play a role in stopping things like climate change, famine and conflicts. Dan is hugely interested in, and excited by, the potential IT has to literally change the world. (21.59) – What first attracted you to a career in IT? When Dan was training to be a teacher, he realized that he was good at supporting his colleagues and students. In particular, when it came to anything computer related tasks. He really enjoyed that, especially when he was working on projects to make day-to-day teaching admin tasks easier. So, when he realized that teaching was not for him, he thought he would try IT instead. Right from the start, he enjoyed the work, so decided to make that his new career. (22.36) – What is the best career advice you were given? Dan said that he picked it up from a TED talk given by Karen Elazari, an Israeli born cyber security analyst. It was titled “Hackers: the Internet’s immune system”. During her speech, Karen pointed out that without hackers flaws with applications would remain in place. When hackers publish their research they let the world know about those issues, which pushes developers to solve them. Listening to this talk flipped the way Dan thought about security problems and has led to him becoming a more effective tester. (26.46) – If you were to start your IT career again, now, what would you do? Dan said he would want to gain more coding experience. He feels that doing so would help him to become a far better tester. Dan says that, right from the start, he would hone his people skills, so he would be a better colleague. (27.47) – Phil asks Dan what he is currently focusing on. Right now, Dan is working on better understanding his client’s needs and frustrations. He is also learning how to juggle the needs of several clients, at once, in a more effective way. Dan is also putting time aside, to reflect and review everything, each day. This is his way of ensuring that he stays on track and achieves his goals. He is also working on becoming a more concise communicator. Part of that process is preparing better for presentations, meetings and interviews. (29.05) – What is the number one non-technical skill that has helped you the most in your IT career? Dan has recognized that being a good communicator is crucial. Most of the problems you find in an organization are down to failures in communication. He feels that it is important to be able to recognize the non-verbal signals and learn how to be a good listener. Dan points out that a lot of IT people are on the autistic spectrum. So, you need to bear this in mind and adapt the way you communicate to take account of this. So, Dan feels that being a good communicator is his most important non-technical skill. (31.08) – Phil asks Dan to share a final piece of career advice. Dan’s advice is to pursue your passion and explore what interests you. It is all too easy to spend all of your time working. You need interests outside of your work to relieve the stress and a way to feed your curiosity, so that you carry on learning. BEST MOMENTS: (7.18) DAN – “Where we make mistakes, we need to be able to own up to them and get past them and understand them and why they happened.” (10.29) DAN – “Quality assurance and testing are related. They aren't the same thing.” (18.15) DAN – “We need to recognize that diversity is important not only in skill, but also in our workplace as well.” (31.15) DAN “Pursue your passions, do it with vigour. Take time to explore what you are interested in.” CONTACT DAN: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTestDoctor LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielbilling/ Website: https://thetestdoctor.co.uk/

GUEST BIO: Cal has worked with PHP and MySQL on Linux, OSX and Windows.  He has worked on a variety of projects ranging in size from simple web pages to multi-million dollar web applications. Cal is also a conference speaker as well as the author of several books including “Culture of Respect” and “Uncle Cal’s Career Advice To Developers”. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil’s guest on today’s show is Cal Evans. Cal has had a long and successful IT career. He started by working as a developer and programmer using PHP, MySQL, OSX and Windows. But, most of his career has been spent building and running development teams. Cal is a well-known conference speaker and the author of 11 IT career and programming related books. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.03) – So Cal, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Cal explains that he got into software development pre-internet. His first computer was a Commodore 64. So, he has been coding for 35 years now, and he loves it. (1.54) – Is there any particular thing that keeps you engaged so that you stay on top of things? Cal said that he is a creative person, yet, he often introduces himself as “a man of many skills, but few talents.” He has found success by focusing on those relatively few talents. Perhaps his strongest talent is the ability to break a problem down into its component parts. A skill that is essential for successful software development. (2.43) – Phil asks Cal to share a unique IT career tip, one that listeners may not already be aware of. This tip comes directly from Cal’s book - Uncle Cal’s Career Advice for Developers. He says that it is important to remember that the job will never love you back. These days, companies work hard to keep their developers with them, in particular startups. They do all sorts of things, regularly host parties, provide lunch at the desk and a long list of other things to keep their developers happy. But, at the end of the day, you will always find that the company is not as committed to you as you are to them. (3.44) – Phil agrees and says that you always have to “look after your own interests.” Cal agrees, he sees so many developers working themselves to death for the sake of their companies. Unfortunately, if a startup goes belly up it is the developers and workers are the ones that end up losing out the most. Typically, the founders will walk away with something while everyone else is left high and dry. Cal says, that as a result, you need to be realistic about what the relationship is. Basically, you are exchanging your time and talent for money. As soon as you run out of either of those the company will be finished with you and move on to someone else. It is OK to be committed to doing a good job, but it is not wise to overdo things and burn yourself out. (5.26) – Cal is asked to share his worst career moment by Phil. Cal explains that circa 1999 he was managing three teams. They were working on a big Oracle and Java application. At that time, most of his work was related to the medical field, big contracts that involved a lot of money. One day, he received a text message that said the production database was down. Naturally, the outage was having a huge negative impact, so Cal went in to sort out the issue. When he got there he discovered that one of his young developers has accidentally deleted the data mix. The team restored everything, within the hour, using the backup. But, it was a costly mistake. During the debrief, Cal was asked if he was going to fire the young man who was responsible. Cal said no. The ways he saw it was that he had just paid out a lot of money for that developer to learn a tough lesson. The last thing Cal wanted was for that young man to end up putting that newly acquired knowledge to use working for another employer. (7.52) – What was the most important thing you learned from that incident? Cal said it taught him the importance of being able to stand back and not interfere. He understood that as a director his main role in that situation was to keep communication flowing. He had to make sure that everyone knew what was going on, to give his team the time and space they needed to be able to work uninterrupted. Cal recognized and acknowledged that, in this situation, they had more expertise than him. So, he was willing to take care of the menial sounding task of sending out an update, every 15 minutes, via email. There was no Facebook or Twitter back then, so this was the most efficient way to keep everyone in the loop. (8.59) – Phil asks Cal what his best career moment was. To date, that would be running the Zend training and certification division. When Cal first got involved it was very early days for PHP. Yet the training material was already woefully out of date. As the scripting language, and the way it was used, changed the training had not been updated He upgraded the certification and all of the training. Very quickly, they went from the training being about 18 months out of date to everything being 100% current. Trainers would update the files each day if necessary to make sure the next session was as relevant as possible. This approach enabled the trainers to lead the way when it came to what was covered in the course. As a result, each wave of new students was learning and using best practice. It was the trainers that had the power. Cal describes himself as just the shepherd for this project. It was all about “investing in his people.” Giving them what they need and getting out of their way. (11.53) – Phil says that the last part, “getting out their way”, is absolutely key. Cal says that is definitely the case. Yet, it is still something that very few managers or directors are prepared to do. They have a tendency to overestimate their own skills. Some seem to believe that only they can do it, which is just so wrong. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan – the greatest leaders are not the ones that do the greatest things. They are the ones that enable others to do the greatest things. This is certainly important to remember when you are leading and managing an IT team. (12.47) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? Cal started out by saying that, personally, he is scared and went on to describe himself as a dinosaur. But, he is also excited for the kids that are coming up behind him. The pace of change and the tools that are available to the new generation of developers means the possibilities are endless.  (15.42) – What drew you to a career in IT, Cal? When Cal was about 14, he went for a sleepover with a friend that had a new computer. His friend showed him the code he used and Cal was hooked from that point on. (16.29) – What is the best career advice you were given? He received that advice from Marcus Whitney. Marcus was the guy who started the first PHP Podcast, in 2005. Later, it was acquired by PHP Architect. Something that Marcus now regrets. This is the case, despite the fact that he has since branched out and is now involved in other industries. Cal said that Marcus’ experience with this has made him realize the importance of hanging onto and nurturing every part of your brand. He actively works not to allow any element of his brand to die off or slip away from him. (17.16) – If you were to start your IT career again, now, what would you do? Cal said he would now focus on the back end and middleware. He said that he would start out by working with Circles. (17.48) – Phil asks Cal what he is currently focusing on in his career. Right now, Cal is concentrating on building the next generation of IT managers and leaders. This is a badly neglected area of the industry. For example, Starbucks spends more on training a barista than they do on training developers to be IT leaders. Across the industry, developers get virtually no management training. It is assumed that they will have acquired the skills they need to manage people without any formal training, which is rarely the case. (18.50) – What is the number one non-technical skill that has helped you the most in your IT career? Cal joked that it is singing, but goes on to say that it is reading. He reads or listens to 3 or 4 books a month. This habit has helped him to uncover all kinds of inspirational gems. (19.32) – Phil asks Cal to share a final piece of career advice. Cal says “the computer should be more afraid of you than you are of it”. With persistence you can solve any problem. He once spent 36 hours sorting out a file server that would not turn on or turn off properly. Much of that time was spent on the phone speaking to Dell and trying out their suggested solutions. In the end, they worked out that the processor chip had overheated, which had flicked a piece off. Installing a new one solved the problem. (21.29) Phil commented that sort of failure is a rare occurrence. Cal agreed, but commented that it just goes to show that weird things do happen. So, you have to be tenacious and learn how to learn other things quickly. You also need to have a passion for programming. If you do not, you will not last long working in the IT field. BEST MOMENTS: (2.33) CAL – “One of the talents that I seem to have is seeing a problem and being able to break it down into its components.” (3.26) CAL – “The job won't love you back. The company will never be as committed to you as they want you to be committed to them.” (4.48) CAL – “Remember that you are trading time for money, time and talent for money. As soon as you run out of time and talent, they will no longer give you money.” (11.47) – CAL – “It's all about is investing in your people, giving them the power to do what's necessary and then getting out of their way.” (19.44) – CAL - “The computer should be more afraid of you than you are of it. You will solve the problem. It just takes persistence.” CONTACT CAL: Twitter: https://twitter.com/CalEvans LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/calevans/ Website: https://blog.calevans.com/ Book: https://leanpub.com/cultureofrespect Book: https://leanpub.com/uncle-cals-career-advice

GUEST BIO: - My guest on today’s show is Emma Wedekind. She is a Software Engineer working on GoToMeeting. In February this year Emma quit her job as a Front-End Developer at IBM, sold everything, and moved from Austin, Texas to Karlsruhe, Germany. Emma enjoys blogging about her career and technology and is an avid reader. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil’s guest today is Emma Wedekind. She got her B.S. in computer science at Siena College and also studied at City University, London. Emma is a multi-discipline software engineer who also has a flair for, and experience, of design. Her career started at IBM where she worked as part of the IBM Spectrum Control and Suite teams as accessibility lead. Later, she became the front-end developer for IBM’s Quantum computing initiative and went on to design and launched that network’s website. In 2018, she joined LogMeIn as a software engineer, working out of their German office. KEY TAKEAWAYS: ­­(0.55) – Phil asks Emma to tell the audience a bit more about herself? Emma explains that she got her computer science bachelor’s degree, in 2015. During her internship for IBM, she worked on automating the installation of a web server application using z/OS in Python. This led to her working on the IBM Spectrum Control, enterprise storage system, as a full-time employee. Emma was soon invited to join the Vice President of systems and transformation’s design team. In that role she worked on numerous projects including quantum computing. For that role she worked as a developer. During that time she worked on prototyping and created the quantum network site. In the early part of 2017, she quit, moved to Germany and started working for LogMeIn, as a software engineer. (2.33) – Phil asks Emma how her new role is going and whether she has noticed any cultural differences between the two companies. Emma says she loves it and is learning lots of new skills. When it comes to working culture, the biggest difference has been the fact that in Germany the work-life balance is a lot better. When hometime comes, you are genuinely finished for the day. She has also noticed quite a few structural and logistical differences. But, this is probably more to do with the fact that LogMeIn is a much smaller company. Emma feels that working for a small company has enabled her to make more of a difference. (3.55) – Phil asks Emma for a unique IT career tip. Emma’s top tip is to find your niche. For her that is design and accessibility. She also points out that, in IT, there is no “one path fits all”. For example, not every successful developer has a degree in computer science. Her first manager at IBM was an English graduate. Interestingly, a lot of very successful engineers have musical backgrounds. Emma has noticed that there is a duality between those who are involved in the arts and music and many roles within the IT field. (6.13) – At this point, Emma is asked to share her worst career moment with the audience. That happened while Emma was building the IBM quantum network site. Unfortunately, the night before the website was due to go live she was asked to make some fairly big changes to it. Somewhere along the line there had been a failure in communication with marketing. This resulted in these last-minute changes being necessary. To get the site up and running on schedule Emma had to spend some of her family holiday time sorting things out. This unfortunate experience taught her that good communication is key to a project’s success. Emma also spoke about the fact that in many workplaces engineering still sits in a kind of silo. Something that Emma feels needs to be challenged and dealt with because it is a barrier to effective communication. (8.19) – Phil asks Emma what her best career moment was. Interestingly, it was the release of the IBM quantum computing network website. Emma said that it felt good to build something from scratch, using technology that she had never used before. Emma is particularly proud of the fact she was able to take her worst moment and turned it into a career highlight. (9.50) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? The fact that the industry is so volatile is very exciting. It is impossible to get bored when you are working in a field that is always changing. There is no limit to what you can build. You can learn anything and there is always someone willing to help you. Phil agrees that is exciting. But points out that anyone who wants to work in the industry needs to be prepared for the fact that constant change is something they are going to have to deal with. Emma says for her getting used to this constant state of flux has not been easy. Her personality means that change can make her feel uncomfortable. But, over the years, she has been able to learn to get “comfortable with being uncomfortable.” (11.14) – What drew you to a career in IT? Both of her parents worked for IBM, so they encouraged her to look at engineering. But, Emma rebelled. She wanted to be an obstetrician, but gave up on that idea when she realized that she was terrible at biology and chemistry. So, she switched her degree from biology to actuarial science. During that time she took an introduction to computer science course. On that course she learned how to convert binary to hexadecimal. It was that lesson that sparked her interest in IT engineering and set her on her current career path. (12.24) – What is the best career advice you were given? Definitely, “be consistent”. Emma had a blog, but not many people were reading it, but a colleague encouraged her not to give up. He explained that if she posted consistently and used social media to share her posts and took the time to respond to reader’s feedback, success would come. It worked. She stopped worrying about how many followers she had and opened herself up to the possibility of growth. Soon after she did that, the success did come. (13.43) – If you were to begin your IT career again, right now, what would you do? Emma says she would have gotten involved with the dev community, at a far earlier stage. She feels that had she done so, she would have found her career focus, a lot quicker. Her advice is to get involved in conversations on social media and read several IT blogs. Doing this will keep you interested and feeling passionate about your IT career. (14.39) – Phil asks Emma what she is currently focusing on in her career. Right now, it is the UX engineer concept that she is working on the most. A UX engineer is a developer that sits between engineering and design pulling the two together into a harmonious team. They help to create a harmonious team that works in a consistent and effective way. A UX engineer will typically have experience of working in both fields. It is an interesting role, but is not yet a well-trodden career path. Emma is currently working to spread the word and encourage more companies to employ people in these roles. (15.41) – Phil said that he would be interested to know how that goes. Emma responded by explaining that a good UX engineer will create a comprehensive component library for use from the very start of the project. When that is put together properly, everyone benefits greatly. To do this successfully, the UX engineer needs to work with the design team and the developers to produce the components the project needs. (16.33) – What is the number one non-technical skill that has helped you the most in your IT career? Emma’s response is – communication, in particular being able to articulate your thoughts concisely, during a discussion. It is also important to realize that a big part of communication is listening. (17.37) – Phil asks Emma to share a final piece of career advice. Emma does so by encouraging everyone to push through the hard times. It is particularly important to be aware of the imposter syndrome, but don’t let that feeling overwhelm you. When you just push through those times you will experience them less frequently, learn, grow and achieve more. BEST MOMENTS: (4.03) – EMMA – “My biggest tip is to find your niche.” (4.59) – EMMA – “Just because your career doesn't follow the same path as someone else does not mean it's not successful. So, there's no one path fits all.” (8.38) – EMMA – “I'm definitely a proponent of trying to turn your negative experiences into positive ones.”  (14.32) – EMMA – “It's going to be a lot easier for you to be passionate about it. If you see others excited about the field you are working in.” (17.20) – EMMA – “Communication is something that we take for granted. We need to be better about articulating what are the things that we need for this project to be successful.” CONTACT EMMA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/EmmaWedekind LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmawedekind/ Website: https://codingcoach.io/

GUEST BIO: My guest on today’s show is Katrina Clokie.Katrina leads a team of around 100 testers as a Test Practice Manager in Wellington, New Zealand.  Katrina is also an active contributor to the international testing community as the author of “A Practical Guide to Testing in DevOps”, an international keynote speaker, a co-founder of the WeTest New Zealand Testing community, the founder of Testing Trapeze magazine as well as being a frequent blogger and tweeter. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Katrina Clokie is Phil’s guest, on this week’s podcast. Like so many IT professionals, she started her career as a developer. After several years filling various roles she moved into the field of testing. Katrina is the co-founder of WeTest a New Zealand testing community. She regularly speaks at conferences and is the founder of the Testing Trapeze magazine and the author of “A Practical Guide to Testing in DevOps”. KEY TAKEAWAYS: ­­­ (1.01) – So, Katrina, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Katrina started her career after completing a computing and mathematical science degree. She majored in software engineering and started her full-time IT career, 10 years ago, by working in development. But, for a while she moved from sector to sector, finally, settling on testing as her field. Katrina is currently moving more into coaching and management within the testing domain. (2.04) – What made you switch from development to testing? Katrina explains that she found developing to be quite an isolated role. A way of working that she does not really enjoy. So, she switched to being a solution delivery engineer. The job gave her the chance to travel and work closely with others, something that appealed to her, at the time. She worked across Central and Latin America and Asia carrying out Telco network installs. Katrina had to test the installs as well as physically put them in place. She found the detective work involved in tracking down the root cause of any issues to be interesting, so decided that testing would be her new focus. (4.38) – Phil asks Katrina for a unique IT career tip. Katrina’s tip relates to finding new opportunities within IT. She points out that there is no need to pigeonhole yourself, something that most people tend to do. It is easier than you think to move into new disciplines within the IT industry. (6.13) – Phil agrees, but wonders if Katrina has any more tips to help people to identify where the opportunities lie. Katrina’s advice is to be constantly on the lookout for new opportunities within the organization you work for. When you see something a little different, that interests you, go and speak to some of the people who are currently filling that role or working in a similar field. If possible also talk to the person who is doing the recruiting, before, you edit your CV and apply for it. Taking this approach will give you a much deeper understanding of the types of roles that are available. If your application fails, don’t be afraid to ask for feedback. This will help you to improve your approach for your next application. (7.30) – Katrina is asked to share her worst career moment by Phil. She explained that happened when she was working for a mobile service provider, in Uruguay. They had a big problem. People were double-dipping on their mobile top up codes. Basically, one person was buying $20 worth of credit, entering that code into their phone, and then sharing it with their friends. Their friends were then also getting $20 worth of calls, but without paying anything. Naturally, the company wanted the development team to solve the problem quickly. For Katrina, as a new team member, working under so much pressure was particularly difficult. But it was a situation that she learned a lot from. In particular, she saw how effective distributed communication could be when senior people conducted themselves in the proper way. It taught Katrina the importance of effective communication. A skill set that Katrina noted is, sadly, not taught as part of a computer science degree. (10.49) – Phil asks Katrina what her best career moment was. Katrina said that setting up and seeing WeTest succeed has been her career highlight, to date. She set this software testing community up with Aaron Hodder, in 2012. Just 6 years later they have been able to reach 500 testers and now run conferences in both Wellington and Auckland. The conferences have already attracted international speakers. WeTest has grown fast and is now influencing the conversations happening throughout the testing community in New Zealand. (11.54) – Phil asks what excites Katrina about the future of the IT industry. Katrina says the technology is exciting, as is the way the community is tooling and developing systems using it. It is clear that this new wave of technology is going to have a drastic impact on society, this is also exciting. But, Katrina is also very interested in the ethics, social science and philosophy of this exciting state of affairs. She is pleased to see the development community becoming more mindful of the impact their work is going to have on the way people earn their income and live day-to-day. (14.00) - Phil says that, in June, he had April Wensel on the podcast. She spoke about her compassionate coding philosophy and the work she was doing to spread this way of thinking and working. He went on to state that the movement is definitely gaining momentum, right now. (14.33) – What drew you to a career in IT? Katrina said that, initially, it was the money that attracted her. She saw an advert in a local newspaper for a web developer and was stunned to learn that they earned six figures. So, she cut that advert out and put it on the desk she used while studying for High School. Her aim was to land a job like that. To get there, she initially enrolled for an E-Commerce degree, but soon switched to pure computer science because she found that to be so interesting. (15.42) – What is the best career advice you were given? One of Katrina’s mentors is a CEO of a shipping company. She explained to Katrina how to present her skills in a way that management, who are usually non-technical, could understand. With her help, Katrina learned how to effectively demonstrate what she could contribute and help them to understand the true value she could bring to the company. (16.38) – If you were to start your IT career again, now, what would you do? Katrina said she would probably still end up taking the developer route into IT. She commented that is still what most students still do despite the fact they could be training for so many other IT disciplines and roles. (17.22) – Phil asks Katrina what career objectives she is currently focusing on. Katrina explained that she is planning another lateral movement to make sure that her role continues to be varied and interesting. She has just picked up a product owner role. This is allowing her to develop new skills in terms of product management thinking and tooling. She is also creating and leading a new delivery team. This is enabling her to learn more about communicating with business stakeholders from a product perspective rather than a technical one. (18.25) – What is the non-technical skill that has helped you the most in your IT career? Katrina feels that developing clear and empathetic communication skills has really helped her career progression. Using this type of communication creates an environment where everyone works together in a more harmonious way. (19.05) – Phil asks Katrina to share a parting piece of career advice. Katrina says that when you get started, landing that first role can be difficult. So, you have to learn to “keep going.” Don’t be demotivated by rejection. Instead, try to seek feedback and alter your approach when applying for the next role. BEST MOMENTS:  (7.16) KATARINA  – “ I think more people should look broadly and also do a little bit of research, I guess about what those broader options are because we pigeonhole ourselves. But it's, it's largely us who do that.” (10.15) KATARINA – “Communication isn't something that's really emphasized when you do a computer science degree. Yet it's something that's so important.” (16.20) KATARINA – “She gave me some really good tips around presenting my skills in a way that management could relate to and understand.” (16.48) KATARINA – “I still think it's quite hard for students to see a route into IT, that's not through development.” CONTACT KATARINA CLOKIE: Twitter: https://twitter.com/katrina_tester LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katrina-clokie/ Blog: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katrina-clokie/

GUEST BIO: Lee Byron is helping to lead web engineering at Robinhood having previously worked for Facebook for nearly ten years.  He is also an open source contributor and was a co-creator of GraphQL whilst at Facebook, which is an open source data query and manipulation language for APIs. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil’s guest on today’s show is Lee Byron.  He spent the first 10 years of his career working at Facebook. While there he developed several new tools, mainly for mobile. His work at Facebook led to Lee co-creating GraphQL. In 2018, he left and joined Robinhood. There, he is helping to lead web engineering and fulfill the company’s mission of democratizing access to America’s financial services. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.03) – So Lee, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Lee explains that he spent 10 years at Facebook, where he started out as a data scientist. Eventually, becoming a product designer working on Facebook Mobile, then on Front End Engineering, this led to him co-creating GraphQL. Lee has now moved on to Robinhood helping them to democratize finance by solving some of their technical challenges. (2.04) Phil speculates that Lee must have seen a big difference between the cultures of Facebook and Robinhood. Lee agrees, but explains that there were also quite a few similarities. When he first joined Facebook there were only around 400 people working there. Right now Robinhood is a similar size, with around 250 people. Both companies are very product orientated. They both “lend trust to the team” and transparency levels are high. Facebook held weekly Q&A sessions where people like Mark Zuckerburg gave a roundup about the important things that were happening then took questions. Often, answering quite tough questions. A process that makes sure that the tough conversations are had, Robinhood does something similar. (4.06) – Phil asks Lee for a unique IT career tip. Lee says he always looks for the overlap between two different skill sets. When you do that, it is possible to find a way into something new and can begin to solve problems in that field. He has very little formal training. Instead, he learns by doing. Lee has progressed mostly by seeing a problem, finding the end of the thread and pulling on it. This process leads him through the underlying issues and pushes him to find a solution to each of them, which, eventually, solves the overall problem. Over time, he has learned to get past his feelings of being an imposter because he has no formal training. Lee now realizes that when he is working with people who are smarter than him, that is a good thing. He can still contribute and, importantly, learn from everyone else, at the same time. (5.54) – Lee is asked to share his worst career moment and what he learned from it. Lee said that while at Facebook he bet big on HTML and the web platform as a way to do mobile development. They built a mobile website version that had a higher level of functionality than the existing app did. The mobile website worked extremely well on touch devices on Android and iOS. All in all, they reasoned, the site was well received and worked. So, they doubled down on that way of doing things. When it was time to build the iOS and Android apps out they did it in a similar way. Basically, the apps were glorified web browsers loading pages. At the time, this seemed like the right approach. After all iOS had mobile Safari and Android had their own browser. It seemed logical that these would be developed over time and continues to get better. Unfortunately, the opposite happened they got buggier. As a result, the functionality of the mobile site lagged further and further behind the desktop version of Facebook. In the end, they had to change direction. At that stage, Mark Zuckerburg stated that focusing on HTML5 had been a mistake. Naturally, for Lee, this was hard to hear. But, the good thing about the whole incident is that they went on to put together an API to enable native iOS and Android apps to be developed. That in turn, led Lee and his team, to create GraphQL. One of the things he is most proud of. (11.52) – Phil asked Lee if he now does anything differently to ensure that he will not pick the wrong technology, again. Lee explains that, nowadays, when working on a project he pauses at regular intervals and asks whether the choices he is making are still the right ones. Technology moves at a fast rate, so doing this is essential. In 2009, building a high-quality mobile website made a lot of sense for Facebook. But, by 2011, user habits had shifted significantly. People were now using their mobile phones far more than they were using touchscreen tablets and similar devices. That was the point at which Lee and his team should have switched from developing the mobile website to developing full iOS and Android apps. Instead, they doubled down on the work they had already done, which was a mistake.  (14.25) – Phil asks Lee what his best career moment was. For Lee, that was the open sourcing of GraphQL and building that community. GraphQL was written in Hack a dialect of PHP that was developed by Facebook. The language was open source, but still not widely used, so Lee was not sure about open sourcing GraphQL. The other problem was that GraphQL had evolved over 3 years, so it was not a crisp, clean tool. Fortunately, despite these issues, the Relay team still pushed to share GraphQL. Relay is a piece of software that ties React together with GraphQL. People in the open source community were really interested in Relay and wanted to build data-rich tools for Facebook, using it. So, the Relay team wanted to talk more publically about GraphQL more. In the end, everyone agreed to make it public. So, Lee’s team went through every item explaining what it was for and how it worked alongside and listed that information alongside the appropriate piece of pseudo code to produce an in-depth specification. Then they built a JavaScript library, so that everything could be more widely understood. They also built a new version of Graphical using JavaScript. Finally, they open sourced all of this. It was extremely well received. Within 6 months, the community had replicated everything in nine different languages, including Ruby, Android, iOS and Python. Naturally, for Lee and his team this was very gratifying, a real highlight of his career. (21.56) – Phil asks Lee what excites him about the future of the IT industry. The fact that so many technologies are becoming democratized is something that Lee finds exciting. He is especially excited to see this happening with technologies like AI. He predicts that within the next 10 years we will be using machine learning in ways that are currently unimaginable to us. He is also excited by the fact that we are finding effective ways to collaborate and work remotely. This change means that regardless of where a developer lives they will have the chance to work on all kinds of projects. As a result, everyone will have more IT career opportunities. (25.13) – What drew you to a career in IT? Lee was always interested in computers, but art, architecture and design were his passions. Lee had built websites in High School and found it really boring, so he really did not want to do that. But, when it was time to find work the financial crisis was in full swing. So, there was not that much work around. Luckily, through a personal connection, he got taken on as an intern at The New York Times. It was in the data graphics department, work that turned out to be very interesting. One day, the head of data science from Facebook contacted him and offered him the chance to work for them. But, he was not sure. At the time, social media was not that big and Facebook was still at the startup stage. Plus, the role would have had him working on building a website. But, when he talked to them, he was impressed. So, he took the job. Lee was supposed to be mostly helping the data science team, to interact with the press and explain what they were learning to the rest of the company. But, he was not kept busy enough just doing those tasks. So, he started doing small jobs for the design team.  In time, he was asked to join them full-time. At first, he said no. But, when he was given a bigger mobile related project to work on, he was inspired and started working in design full-time. (29.34) – What is the best career advice you have ever received? Lee said it was – “back up and look at the big picture.” This does not come naturally to Lee. But, every time he has made the effort to follow this advice, he has been able to pick up major issues. Spotting them sooner rather than later created the chance for him to fix things. If he had not stepped back, he would never have spotted those issues. (31.32) – If you were to start your IT career again, now, what would you do? Lee thinks he would probably have ended up doing something totally different. Just because he would have seen something interesting and gone off and explored it. Right now, the intersection between machine learning and the interesting new things that are happening in technology and education particularly interests Lee. He would love to work on the design of interactive exhibits and educational tools to produce exhibits and educational materials that are truly immersive. (34.13) – Phil asks Lee what he is currently focusing on, in his career. Right now, Lee’s main focus is helping Robinhood to grow. He believes that their mission is genuinely important. Finances and financial services are extremely complicated, even for someone like him, who is a bit of a nerd and a spreadsheet fiend. He really wants to be involved in demystifying things for ordinary people, so they can make the best decisions. Once they understand the options and how to access them they can invest and borrow without having to pay over the odds to do so. (36.44) – What’s the number one non-technical skill that has helped you in your IT career? Having a good understanding of how people interact with things has always helped Lee. This is a skill that he began learning, during his design studies. A lot of the principles that he learned then apply equally to digital and physical products. (38.18) – Phil asks Lee to share a final piece of career advice. Lee reiterates what he said earlier. He said that finding the overlap between skills and chasing that is what has helped him in his career. When you do that, one thing leads to another and it is easier for you to step into what are sometimes very different roles. BEST MOMENTS: (4.15) LEE – “The thing that has helped me the most is looking for the overlap between two different skill sets.” (5.09) LEE – “Learn to get over imposter syndrome.” (14.08) LEE – “Just spend a month or so just evaluating technologies before you move forward.” (22.58) LEE  – “I think 10 years from now, a lot of the software that we write will use machine learning in fascinating ways.” (39.38) LEE – “If you can find two things that you're good at that you don't think are related to each other, figure out where they overlap. There's almost always something really interesting there.” CONTACT LEE BYRON: Twitter: https://twitter.com/leeb Github: https://github.com/leebyron

GUEST BIO: Simon Maple is the Director of Developer Relations at Snyk, a Java Champion since 2014 and was a JavaOneRockstar speaker in 2014 and 2017.  Simon is also a Duke’s Choice award winner, the founder and organizer of Virtual JUG, co-leader of the London Java Community and a regular conference speaker. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil’s guest on today’s show is Simon Maple. He is a developer advocate who spent 20 years working with IBM and is now involved with start-ups. Simon is well known for setting up vJUG, the Virtual Java User Group, which now has 16,000 members. He is also the co-leader of the London Java Community and a Java Champion. On a regular basis, Simon presents at major conferences, including, Devooxx Fr and UK, JavaOne, JavaZone, JAX, JavaLand and many more. KEY TAKEAWAYS: ­(1.02) – So Simon, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Simon started his career as a developer for IBM, 20 years ago. After 10 years, he moved into what IBM called technical evangelism, which is also known as developer advocacy. It was a big change. Suddenly, he had to do public speaking, customer engagement and blogging. Developer advocacy, for Simon, is all about helping developers with the day to day issues that they have. He does this in many different ways. Mostly, by introducing tools and techniques that can be used to make things easier for the developer. Part of his role is to educate developers about different issues, for example security. (2.50) Do you find that there are certain subjects that people ask questions about more than others? Simon says that is more to do with the number of questions people ask rather than specific topics. When a developer has the confidence to start asking you more questions, you know you have hit the right level in terms of the information you are giving out as an advocate. If you overwhelm people they clam up because they are having trouble keeping up. Give them too little information and they find it impossible to piece things together and understand what you are trying to say. When you get the balance right, you know because the conversation flows and the questions come. People will talk more about topics that interest them or that resonate with them. Also, after speaking about a topic a few times you will pick up on the questions that most people want to be answered. (4.22) – Phil asks Simon for a unique IT career tip. Simon explains that his role is basically to communicate something to someone. Over the years, he has learned that it is important to share the information your audience wants to consume. This is the case whether you are talking to one person or a thousand, or more. When you empathize with the person you are speaking to, you naturally adjust what you say and make it as relevant to the audience as possible. Empathy will also help you to change the way you say things, so that it easier for them to digest the information you are sharing. When you do that, regardless of what your role is, you will progress in your career. (6.26) – Simon is asked to share his worst career moment with the I.T. Career Energizer audience. For Simon this was more of a personal situation rather than a professional one. As humans it is hard to keep up with all of the social pressure that comes with change. The developer world moves very quickly. You are doing your job in a certain way following a known path. Suddenly, Agile comes along and everything moves far faster. Testing has to be done in 2 weeks. Then you have to take on DevOps and SecOps as well as your main role of developing. Basically, the work keeps on being piled onto your plate. In that situation, it is all too easy to take on too much too quickly. When you do that, you burn out physically and mentally. That has happened to Simon twice, which put him in a bad place and stopped his career in its tracks. He is now careful about what he takes on and has got into the habit of prioritizing things properly.  Simon has found that taking things out of his head and feeding them into a “to do” type tool helps him a lot. He finds that getting everything out of his head and into the tool enables him to concentrate once again on his work. Phil described it as removing clutter from his brain. (9.23) – Phil asks Simon what his best career moment was. Simon feels that the best inventions come about when someone is trying to solve a problem. His best career moment came about because Simon was struggling to see enough of his family and still fulfill all of his work responsibilities. He wanted to attend the London Java group events, they were very beneficial, but he was very short on time. So, he came up with the idea of setting up a virtual Java group. At the time, this way of bringing people together was very rarely done. Now user groups stream their events so everyone can benefit, regardless of where they are in the world. Today, the virtual community that he set up, vJUG has 16,000 members. It has helped tens of thousands of people to collaborate and become more successful. His work with the group has helped Simon to become well-known something which has greatly helped his career. He thinks that setting up and running the group is the main reason he got the Java Champion award. (12.23) – Phil asks what excites Simon about the future of the industry and IT careers. Simon finds the pace of change exciting, because it represents an incredible learning opportunity. Although, the pace of change means that just learning technical skills is no longer enough. Every developer now needs to develop additional skill sets to ensure they can keep up and remain relevant. (14.44) – What first attracted you to a career in IT? Simon’s dad was a developer, so he gave Simon a book on C and the rest was history. He was hooked. (15.02) – What is the best career advice you’ve ever received? Simon said always ask questions. There are no stupid questions and the sooner you ask them the less likely you are to think it is a stupid question. (15.18) – If you were to start your IT career again, now, what would you do? Simon says he would have taken something like a computer science and cybernetics or AI degree instead of pure computer science. He would still choose to work in software development, but would move more quickly from working for a large company to joining a startup. (16.01) – Phil asks Simon what he is currently focusing on. Right now, Simon is learning how to grow high performing teams and ensure that each individual in them reaches their full potential. So, that they can grow and so can the team. (16.32) – What is the No. 1 non-technical skill that has helped you the most in your IT career? Simon says the way he has learned to communicate with others has really helped him to progress. When you are happy and friendly people enjoy talking to you, which means that you can learn more. (17.05) – Phil asks Simon to share a final piece of career advice. Never look at what you want to be in 10 to 15 years. Instead, make sure you enjoy what you are doing and who you are working with. If you are not happy, do not be frightened to follow your gut and change your career. BEST MOMENTS: (5.19) SIMON – “Always make sure that the information that you’re giving is the information that person wants to actually consume.” (9.44) SIMON - “The best kind of inventions come from problems or issues.” (15.08) SIMON – “The earlier you ask a question the less likely it will be that you will think it’s a stupid question.” (17.35) SIMON – “Always make sure that you’re enjoying the job you are doing.” CONTACT SIMON MAPLE: Twitter: https://twitter.com/sjmaple LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonmaple/ Website: https://www.devangelist.blogspot.com

GUEST BIO: Lisa is a software tester who enjoys sharing her experiences and learning from others.  She is also the co-author of “More Agile Testing: Learning Journeys for the Whole Team” and “Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Agile Testers and Agile Teams”.  And in 2012 Lisa was voted the most influential agile testing professional person. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil’s guest on today’s show is Lisa Crispin. She has spent much of her career working within the testing sphere. Today, she is also an author, public speaker and trainer. Lisa is the co-author of several books including Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Agile Testers and Agile Teams. In 2012, she was voted as the Most Influential Agile Testing Professional Person. She is currently working with mabl who specialize in automated regression testing services. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.02) – So Lisa, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Lisa explains that she has been involved in the industry for a long time, so has seen a lot of change. She is currently working with mabl out of Boston, a start-up that provides an innovative automated testing service. But, Lisa does a lot of other things too. For example, with Janet Gregory she has written books and put together a video course. Lisa also said that she likes to spend her free time looking after her donkeys, who are still adapting to the move from Colorado to Vermont. (2.12) – Phil asks Lisa for a unique IT career tip. Lisa’s biggest tip is to ask questions. It helps you to learn and lets others know that you like to learn. It also helps the person answering the questions to think. As a tester that is 2nd nature for Lisa, but she knows this is not the case for everyone. (3.04) – Phil comments that a lot of people who are new to the industry are concerned about asking questions because they are afraid that it shows a lack of knowledge. Do you see that often? Lisa says yes people want to come across as confident and accentuate what they know. But, as a tester you have to ask questions. Doing that is the only way to uncover the unknown unknowns. That only happens when you ask the right questions. Lisa explains that testers have to be big picture people. They have to keep the end user in mind at all times, which their role as tester allows them to do because they are not focused on the code. (4.07) – Lisa is asked to share her worst career moment by Phil. Lisa explains that some years ago a company tracked her down, told her they were admirers of her work and offered her a job. She was flattered and intrigued, but still did her due diligence, after which she accepted the job. But, on the first day they did something that was not in line with her values. She knew immediately she had made a mistake, but pushed that feeling aside and carried on working with them. Within 6 months she ended up leaving and, fortunately, going back to her old job. (6.02) – Phil asks Lisa what would she do differently now. Lisa said there were no warning signs before she started the job, but, now she would listen to her gut. She would pause and ask herself why she felt that way. Often your subconscious is telling you something important, so it is best to pay attention to those feelings. If she had done that, she would have left that unsuitable job straight away. (6.35) – Phil asks Lisa what her best career moment was. Lisa starts by sharing the fact that helping people is something she loves, so being able to do that is a big plus, for her. She was also lucky enough to spend many years working for a company that valued, respected and trusted their IT team. The team was great they really gelled. Importantly, the IT team was involved in many business decisions and they had significant input into what tools they developed for the firm. (9.00) – Phil asks what excites Lisa about the future for the IT industry. As a tester Lisa can see the need and benefits of using machine learning for testing. So, that excites her and she is currently learning as much as she can about it. AI has the potential to take on the burden of much of the boring tedious work, which frees up our time to do more with our brains and intuition. (10.24) – What drew you to a career in IT, Lisa? Basically, it was the fact that she needed a job and wanted to move to Austin. She saw an advert for programmer trainees, took the aptitude test. They wanted people with business knowledge to work on accounting and payroll systems. Knowledge Lisa had because she had formally worked a government job. (11.22) – What is the best career advice you’ve ever received? Lisa says that came from one of her line managers. He explained that a good leader makes sure people know what they and their team are contributing. She feels that this is part of the reason she has had such a successful career. The role of testers is not well understood and what they contribute can easily be overlooked. It is important tok how to get around that issue so that you and your team are properly recognized and rewarded. Phil agrees, he has also noticed that it is hard for testers to demonstrate their contribution. (13.01) – If you were to start your IT career again, now, what would you do? Lisa says she would actually stick with testing and helping others. (13.32) – Phil asks Lisa what career objectives she is currently focusing on. She believes that she has a great future as a testing advocate. The way she likes to work and her experience means that she is able to reach out to both the testers and the people who use their services and draw them together. She has a deep understanding of both worlds and is a good connector. Lisa also enjoys helping people to learn, so that will be one of her focuses. So, she will carry on with her blog and public speaking. (14.41) – What is the non-technical skill that has helped you the most in your IT career? Lisa thinks it is probably her leadership skills. From an early stage she knew she wanted to manage. So, Lisa has always worked to hone those skills. Interestingly, she pointed out that you can be a leader regardless of what your title is. You just need to be willing to be a change agent and show the way to make things better. (15.44) – Phil asks Lisa to share a final piece of career advice. Be brave and push yourself out of your comfort zone. Lisa is a shy person, so often has to do things that make her feel a little uneasy. So, she works within her comfort zone for a while to build up the energy she needs while working outside of her comfort zone, so that she can get important things done. She also points out that you need to overcome your fear of asking for help. After all, not asking for help when you need it can easily lead to a disaster. BEST MOMENTS:  (2.37) LISA – “My biggest tip is going to be to ask questions, you know, learn and show that you'd like to learn and learn what you need to learn about.” (5.58) LISA – “"We all learn from failure. There's no real failure, right? Just learning moments." (10.06) LISA – “I think AI just has a lot of potential to help us put more of the boring, tedious repetitive work on two machines, and free up our time to use our human brains and senses and intuition.” (11.36) LISA – “An important part of leadership is making sure that people know what you contributed, and what your team contributed, you had to make that visible.” CONTACT LISA CRISPIN: Twitter: https://twitter.com/lisacrispin LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-crispin-88420a/ Website: https://www.lisacrispin.com