This week, for the last podcast episode of 2019, Abbey chatted with freelancer and content creator Jessica Chan - known as CoderCoder on social media - about how she got into tech and started her educational website and YouTube channel.

On today's episode of the podcast, Abbey chats with software engineer Jackson Bates who lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. Jackson used to be a high school English teacher, but gradually taught himself to code and landed a pretty sweet gig as a React dev, partly by chance. Today he works part time as a developer, part time as a stay at home dad, and volunteers his time with various open source projects. Finding his way into tech Jackson grew up in England, and studied English in school. Although going into education seemed a logical choice, he dabbled in other fields - like working at a prison cafeteria - for a while before landing a teaching job. That first job had some unpleasant aspects, and he began to doubt if teaching was for him. After moving to Australia to be with his wife, he started dabbling in basic HTML and CSS. Even though he continued teaching high school English, Jackson couldn't tear himself away from coding completely. We’ve all got computers, but being able to write code and make your computer do something – once you learn to do that it becomes quite an addictive thing. I just loved the problem solving aspect and how creative you could be. Learning to code After about six years of teaching without all the proper Australian certifications, he decided to go back to school and get his masters. He budgeted a bit too much time for his studies, however, and ended up with six months before he was scheduled to go back to work. So he dove back into learning more about coding. And those teaching skills? They came in quite handy when he was teaching himself to code. As a teacher, you kind of understand what it really takes to learn something. When you’ve helped 11-18 year olds overcome really frustrating experiences in their own learning, you learn to give yourself a break when you hit roadblocks. You learn to put in the work that’s necessary, but you get a more realistic expectation of the timeframes involved to learn something. And he was hooked. He got through one more year of teaching before deciding to try to get a job as a software engineer. Getting that first tech job But the job hunt sucked. While this was no surprise, it was particularly demoralizing when he was rejected for the most basic role for which he felt quite overqualified. I always had it in the back of my mind that I was never really ready enough – and I know everyone always says oh I’ll just finish this certification and brush up my CV and do this course…we always give ourselves a million reasons not to do it, and really those reasons will always be there. At that point, a friend encouraged him to try out a new meetup group, just for the heck of it. So he went. And ended up meeting his future boss. You might get knocked back from things you’re overqualified for – but it only takes the right person to see you and decide you’d be a good fit for their team, and then all the rejections don’t matter anymore. You just have to keep putting yourself out there. A tentative follow-up email, a quick round of interviews, and an onsite later, he had the job. It was an excellent cultural fit, and he's never looked back. He gets to work on fun internal projects, support the data scientists on his team, and pick up new skills constantly. And he's even developed a refreshing perspective on debugging and facing challenges in his code: I really like working with broken code. Because you know staring down a bug until you’ve fixed it really gives you a better understanding of the whole thing that you’re trying to do. Even though it’s a bit slow, it helps it sink in a bit more. Now, 14 months later, he's learned a lot about different tech, Machine Learning, how to learn new skills, and what it takes to switch careers. It really is a long game that you’re playing. It’s easy to be discouraged, but people have made the change you’re trying to make. It feels impossible but people do actually do it. In this episode, Jackson offers valuable advice about job hunting, finding your learning style, dealing with imposter syndrome, and how to take chances - among many other things. Find Jackson on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jacksonbates

Quincy interviews Jeff Meyerson, the creator and host of the Software Engineering Daily podcast. Jeff grew up in Texas, played competitive poker, and ultimately worked as a software engineer at Amazon. We talk about how he got into tech, how left Amazon to become an entrepreneur, and the many lessons he learned along the way. Follow Jeff on Twitter: https://twitter.com/the_prion And subscribe to software engineering daily: https://softwareengineeringdaily.com

In this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Quincy Larson interviews Ruben Harris, who runs Career Karma, a social network for people interested in attending coding bootcamp. He also hosts the Breaking into Startups Podcast. Ruben just finished Y Combinator, a startup accelerator, where he and his team raised their first round of venture capital funding. Ruben grew up in Atlanta and worked in finance. He met his future co-founders - Ukrainian-born brothers Artur and Timur Meyster - years ago. The three of them agreed to spread out, get jobs in different industries, then later regroup to build a startup together. Ruben shares his insights on coding bootcamps. He also shares what he learned going through Y Combinator. And he talks about his close bond with his co-founders. Follow Ruben on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rubenharris Follow Quincy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ossia Subscribe to the Breaking Into Startups podcast: https://breakingintostartups.com/ Ruben interviews Quincy way back in 2017 (50 minute listen): https://breakingintostartups.com/quincy-free-code-camp/ Ruben interviews Gary V (an episode he mentions during this interview): https://breakingintostartups.com/76-gary-vaynerchuk-ceo-vaynermedia/

On this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey interviews senior software engineer and prolific content creator Ohans Emmanuel. They discuss how he got into tech, how he ended up in Berlin, what goes into writing a book, and how he stays focused through it all. When Ohans was young, he learned a very important lesson from his parents: you must take responsibility for yourself and your actions. He was lucky enough to grow up with a computer in the house, and gradually learned computer basics. In school, he studied engineering, but didn't learn much programming. So he had to teach himself. And it was hard. He lacked a community, had to struggle through things on his own, and felt like it was much harder than it needed to be. "I don't understand what it was - I was a smart student, but when I started to teach myself to learn how to code, that was the most difficult thing I had to teach myself to do. I was really on my own, I didn't join any groups. It was really just me trying to figure out the road map for myself. And that was really difficult." But having a supportive mentor helped. And eventually he started freelancing and teaching young adults how to code. He also began to fall in love with design and writing. As his passion for design grew, he began to appreciate its usefulness as well: "There is something about a front-end engineer who understands design. You see things differently. You can have meaningful conversations with the designers, and you have different opinions. You're not just building stuff - you understand how it affects the users." As Ohans learned more skills and came across more and more tough topics, he decided to research and then write about them. Again and again. He has written a number of free, full-length books about React, Redux, CSS, and many other topics. And his approach to the process is unsurprisingly organized and measured. "The first step is deciding what to write about. So I find a subject that is challenging or that I think maybe the community hasn't really explored. Or if I think that a lot of beginners are finding this subject difficult, it just makes me want to write about it more." "I'm really passionate about teaching things in plain, simple language. So you take a difficult subject and you break it down. It's so much fun. And when you do this over and over, it helps a lot of people. And it puts smiles on my face." Now isn't that enthusiasm contagious? In addition to writing books and articles and helping kids learn to code, Ohans has a full-time software engineering job in Berlin. Deciding to make the move away from friends and family wasn't easy, but with their support he went for it. During the interview process, he learned a lot about job interviews in general and what it took to go through them successfully. He believes being good at your job as an engineer and being good at interviews are two very different things. Despite this, Ohans believes that anyone can conquer the interview process. And his go-to advice? "Just smile. It keeps you calm and makes the interviewer calm as well. They want to give you time and let you think. You're smart, you can do it - you just have to stay calm and figure it out." Part of Ohans' success is derived from his commitment to deep work and deep focus. He firmly believes that anyone can learn anything if they put their mind to it and have a plan. "I believe that the act of focus itself is a skill - just as much as you can learn to play the piano, you can learn to focus as well. And I think people really need to take their attention as seriously as possible. If you covet your attention, and take it like it's important, I think you'll be careful how you spend your time." In this interview, we discuss how he overcame the obstacles he faced when learning to code alone, how he got a job in another country, how he creates so much valuable, free content, and how he advises new developers to approach interviews, mentors, and many other tough subjects. "If you try something for a day and it doesn't work, go on and try it for a week. If it still doesn't work, try for two weeks. If it still doesn't work, re-evaluate what you're doing. If you still think you're heading in the right direction, try for another month. Or two months. And if you're still sure you're going in the right direction, don't give up - you're gonna get it.

On this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey chats with UX designer and musician Andi Galpern about how she creates engaging and unique experiences in the tech world. Andi shares stories about past jobs, how she started her company, her favorite moments from events she's produced, and how to break into the design market. Andi grew up in Florida and was first and foremost a musician at heart. Once she decided that she needed a plan other than becoming a rockstar, she picked up and moved across country to the Bay Area. After attending various tech events and taking photos, she started making connections and growing a network. In between regular jobs, she was trying to learn more about design - but couldn't find any meetups or events that fit the bill. So she started creating her own. And they were successful. After a while, she founded her company, Cascade SF, with the goal of helping other designers, product managers, and engineers learn more, meet other people in the community, and help each other out. As her strategy and process changed, so did her events. "I used to only get big name speakers. But now that I'm in control of the content, I help designers, product managers, and people in tech tell their stories. I help them design a program so they can share their knowledge and we can create more people like them. So it's more about creating new leaders, and creating content the industry needs." Andi kept learning more and more about different facets of design, and she shared many insights she gained along the way. "The product design process is holistic and a lot like life. We don't have to have all the answers, we just have to be willing to watch people try things out and grow and learn. There are no mistakes, there are only hypotheses and data and making decisions." Once her events grew large enough, and she started holding after work conferences, she realized the importance of a new skill: asking for what she wanted. "Asking for what you need or want can be really scary. But sometimes you're pleasantly surprised - you get a response back. You never really know unless you ask. But organizing a successful event requires much more than that. For Andi, it's all about the quality of the content. She does her research, figures out what people want, and then puts it all together. "Great design is about content first, so it's about comprehension. Make sure the purpose of the event is clear. You can continue to keep tweaking your design until everyone gets it immediately. You just have to distill it down into your one core message." "A big part of UX design is just making things simpler and more usable so people can enjoy their lives more." Now, hundreds of events and conferences later, she's running Cascade, working as a content strategist for growth at Adobe, volunteering with various organizations, dabbling back in photography and music, and dreaming of expanding her brand to different cities. In this episode, Andi shares advice on how to put on a successful tech event, how to survive the job interview process, and how to learn all sorts of design skills. We discuss challenges she's faced, solutions she's created, and why she loves pinball so much, among many other things. Find Andi on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/andigalpern Find Abbey on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/abbeyrenn

In this week's podcast episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey chats with Harry Wolff, an engineering manager at MongoDB in New York City. Harry has been in the world of tech for over a decade, holding jobs in various startups before ending up at Mongo. They discuss his journey to his current managerial role, what it's like to work at Mongo, how to start a meetup, and dos and don't for migrating from legacy codebases. Harry started his tech career working for startups. He liked the excitement, he liked learning new things, and he liked showing off his skills. After working for a few startups, he stumbled upon a position at MongoDB. One short week after beginning the interview process, he was in. The decision to leave his previous job was easier than he expected, and he reflected on the reasons he made the change: "For me, it was a matter of taking what I could from my job at the time, but knowing when it was time to move on. One of the ways you know it's time to leave is when the company's getting more out of you than you're getting out of the company." Once Harry was settled in at Mongo, he got right to work. After a couple years as an engineer working on various projects, he achieved one of his major goals and became a manager. Harry and I discussed his relatively new position in detail, and while he's still figuring things out, he has some valuable insights into his transition. "One of the most difficult things about being a manager is that there's no easy way to evaluate the success of your day. There are no milestones to say you've accomplished a lot. You might have a eureka! moment where you figure something out, but you're definitely living in the grey a lot more. Because it's people - they change by the day and hour and minute." But one of the best things for Harry is how much he gets to learn - constantly, from many different people, and about many different things. In addition to reading about new programming languages, discussing what's new in the JavaScript ecosystem in his podcast, and making every effort to stay on top of new tech, Harry has learned more nuanced skills as well. "One hard skill I needed to learn was being assertive and truthful when I needed to be. Most humans prefer that uncomfortable situations just resolve themselves...but if you wait six months [to deal with something], it becomes a dealbreaker." In addition to managing his team, working on his podcast, YouTube channel, and blog, and reading programming handbooks for fun, Harry has been working to update MongoDB's tech stack and move away from their legacy codebase. In the process, he's developed some insights into such migrations. "You have to have a good reason for doing it. And part of this is scolding my former self who would say 'yeah, just do it!' But having learned more, you need to have a good reason. For us, it's more maintainable, less error-prone, and better for recruiting." "But don't rewrite everything - that's seldom the right answer. Occasionally there are exceptions, but they're exceptions." When Harry isn't working or creating content, he hangs out with his wife and new son in New York. He encourages people getting into tech to keep at it and not get discouraged.        "Never give up. Just keep hustling. Take with a grain of salt the            feedback you get from companies and have confidence in what            you do and don't know. And stay humble. It's hard but you have          to just want it and keep hustling and stay curious." Find Harry on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/hswolff Find Abbey on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/abbeyrenn

This week, I got to chat with Briana Swift, who used to teach music to elementary school children. She loved teaching and loved her job, but realized it wasn't what she wanted to do for the rest of her life. So she started looking around for what might be the next steps, and started learning about the world of tech. After going to a number of meetups and looking around online for various free resources, she stumbled upon freeCodeCamp. Over the course of a couple years, she got her full-stack certification while sharing videos of herself learning various concepts. When she started looking for a job, she experienced what so many new developers experience: rejection and frustration. She had to adapt, learn how to learn, and keep trying. But one day, after attending a random meetup, someone drew her attention to a role at GitHub that seemed tailor-made for her skill set. Doubting that she'd get through the interview process, she applied anyway - and got the job. She identifies a few of the skills that helped her get the job: "On the one hand, it was the actual skills I learned [before working at GitHub]. But on the other hand it was the mindset. Because even if I'd learned everything perfectly 2-3 years ago, it was such a different ecosystem out there now. Knowing how to search the documentation or find the answer or Google to get what you need - I don't think that will ever go out of style." Three and a half years later, she's worked her way up through a couple different roles at GitHub and couldn't be happier with her job. She's learned how work with a diverse and passionate team, she's learned how to stand up for herself, and she's come to appreciate how much soft skills matter. "Anything that's a technical thing can be learned. But working with a bunch of really smart, passionate people can be challenging because they're so passionate. And I think navigating that and trying to meet people where they are while still getting the best work done that I can is something I'll be working on for the rest of my life." One thing she emphasizes again and again throughout our chat was not being afraid to ask questions and have confidence in yourself: "Ask questions even if you think it's gonna make you look dumb. Sometimes no one else is asking because they want to look smart. But on the other hand, trust yourself - don't let anyone convince you that you don't know something if you've done your research. You can be the person who asks dumb questions and the person who's an expert on something at the same time." In this episode, we discuss how she transitioned into tech, how she learned all the skills she needed to work at GitHub - and how she continues to learn, what she does to support diversity in her tech community, and how she stays fueled up and motivated day to day. She's gained a lot of insight on creativity, and shared her perspective on staying creative: "Creativity is like a body of water. And if you let yourself become like a pond, where nothing's coming in, then nothing's gonna go out. If you want something to go out, you have to have new experiences, new things going in." Briana also offers advice on learning to code, asking questions, achieving balance in your life, and being a good team member, among many other things. Find Briana on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/brianamarie132 Find Abbey on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/abbeyrenn

In this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey chats with software developer and freelancer Kyle Prinsloo who lives and works in South Africa. Kyle knew from a young age that he wanted to pursue a career in business. He launched websites with his brother, worked various jobs, and eventually gained experience in marketing and tech. Although he had a job he enjoyed working for people he respected, he wanted more from his work and life. He wanted to marry his now wife, and he wanted to be his own boss. So he started doing some freelancing work on the side. Little by little, as he built relationships with clients and gained more experience, his portfolio grew and he started making more from his side business than from his regular job. So he decided to make a change. In this podcast, you'll learn how he launched his business and educational website, how he prices his services, and how he advises others to become successful freelancers as well. Kyle offers actionable tips on gaining experience, shares anecdotes from his own journey, and discusses how he balances his many responsibilities. You can connect with Kyle on Instagram. Check out his website here.

In this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey chats with software developer and army veteran Jami Gibbs about her journey into tech. Jami was born and raised in the Chicago area, and her first encounter with programming was in high school. While majoring in English in college, she joined the National Guard and did several tours overseas. During her time in the army, she came back to the world of tech and started learning more about coding. After leaving the military and finishing her English degree, she realized she wanted to switch careers and commit to becoming a software developer. She taught herself most of what she knows, supplemented it with a boot camp, and got her first job working on WordPress themes. Through building a number of side projects, enhancing her skills, and working her way up to other tech jobs, Jami reached her current position as a software engineer in Chicago. When she's not spending all her free time coding, she runs races, enjoys the Chicago craft beer scene, and roots for the Chicago Bears. In this episode, Jami discusses the hiring process, what it was like getting a tech job in her 30s, how her time in the army helped during the job hunt, and more. Find Jami on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/JamiGibbs Find Abbey on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/abbeyrenn