“If you’re a generalist, and if you’re good at multiple things, then you have a lot of options. You have a lot of career paths to choose from." Deepu K Sasidharan is a polyglot developer and a Senior Developer Advocate for DevOps at Okta. In this episode, Deepu shared why he consciously becomes a polyglot and generalist developer. He emphasized the importance of knowing more than one thing in the current rapidly changing tech industry. He gave practical tips for new engineers to start out and shared his technique to learn new stuffs, including languages, by building personal indexes. We then discussed the current interview practices trend and why he thinks it needs to change, especially to make it more inclusive and less biased. Towards the end, Deepu shared about developer experience, a topic that he is highly passionate about, on why it is becoming more important and some tips for building a good developer experience. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:05:21] Being a Polyglot Developer - [00:08:25] Should We Become Polyglot Developers? - [00:12:05] Tips for New Engineers - [00:15:14] Learning a New Language - [00:18:29] Building Index for Learning - [00:22:16] Broken Interview Practices - [00:25:27] Importance of Developer Experience - [00:28:50] Building a Good Developer Experience - [00:32:55] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:37:33] _____ Deepu K Sasidharan’s Bio Deepu is a polyglot developer and OSS aficionado. He mainly works with Java, JS, Rust, and Golang. He co-leads JHipster and created the JDL Studio and KDash. He’s a Senior Developer Advocate for DevOps at Okta. He is also an international speaker and published author. Deepu is an enthusiast of cloud & container technology, and he is passionate about developer experience and user experience. Follow Deepu: Website – https://deepu.tech/ Twitter – @deepu105 LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/deepu05/ GitHub – https://github.com/deepu105 Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/63.

“Coding well with others or being a team player is at the heart of everything we do as developers. Unless you’re coding yourself for a piece of software that only you are going to use, you’re not a solo developer." Fernando Doglio is the author of “Skills of a Software Developer”. In this episode, Fernando shared some insights from his book on how to be a successful software developer. He highlighted that software development is a mostly a team effort and shared tips on how we can work well within a team, including not to fall into the trap of over-engineering and early optimization. He then shared some practical tips on technical interviews and what we should avoid writing in our resume. Towards the end, Fernando gave his tips to aspiring authors who want to write a technical book and cleared some misconceptions and mental blocks that may stop a lot of them from writing. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:05:34] Skills of a Software Developer - [00:09:05] Everyone Can Be a Successful Developer - [00:11:34] Tips to Work Well in a Team - [00:14:47] Avoiding Overengineering - [00:16:35] Focus on Working Code First, Then Optimize It - [00:20:30] Writing Readable Code - [00:24:46] Tips on Technical Interviews - [00:28:26] Tips for Writing Technical Books - [00:34:07] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:40:56] _____ Fernando Doglio’s Bio Fernando Doglio is a Data Engineering Manager at Accenture and has over 18 years of experience in the software industry, from web development to big data. Fernando loves to tinker and learn, and has written several technical blogs and books such as Node.js and React. His latest book, “Skills of a Software Developer”, is currently available through the Manning Early Access Program, and he’s open to talk about the industry, possible projects, or any help regarding choice of tech-stack. Follow Fernando: Twitter – @deleteman123 LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/fernandodoglio/ Medium – https://deleteman123.medium.com/ Website – https://www.fdoglio.com/ Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/62.

“Understanding what makes code readable from a cognitive perspective will help you design better. There are so many areas of programming where knowing something about knowing is just going to make you happier and more effective." Felienne Hermans is the author of “The Programmer’s Brain” and an Associate Professor at Leiden University. She is also the creator of the Hedy programming language, the co-founder of Joy of Coding conference, and a host at Software Engineering Radio podcast. In this episode, Felienne explained why programming is one of the most demanding cognitive activities and described the three different cognitive processes involved. We discussed why code reading is hard and how to get better at it, the connection between programming and spoken languages, naming things and why it is so important to get it right, and how to avoid having bugs in our thinking. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:05:09] Kids Learning Programming - [00:06:15] Writing “The Programmer’s Brain” - [00:08:58] Programming as a Demanding Cognitive Ability - [00:11:19] Code Reading is So Hard- [00:16:23] 3 Cognitive Processes - [00:19:32] How to Improve Code Reading Skills - [00:22:09] Power of Chunking - [00:25:07] Learning Programming and Spoken Language - [00:27:35] Bugs in Thinking - [00:31:02] Naming Things is Hard - [00:34:32] Code with Bad Names Has More Bugs - [00:37:36] Mental Models - [00:41:31] Other Cognitive Aspects - [00:42:45] Impact of Interruptions - [00:44:37] 2 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:46:46] _____ Felienne Hermans’s Bio Felienne Hermans is an Associate Professor at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science at Leiden University, where she heads the PERL research group, focused on programming education. She also teaches prospective computer science teachers at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Felienne is the creator of the Hedy programming language, and was one of the founders of the Joy of Coding conference. Since 2016, she has been a host at Software Engineering Radio, one of the most popular software engineering podcasts on the web. Felienne is also the author of “The Programmer’s Brain” a book that helps programmers understand how their brains work and how to use it more effectively. In 2021, Felienne was awarded the Dutch Prize for ICT research. Felienne is a member the board of I&I, the Dutch association of high-school computer science teachers, and of TC39, the committee that designs JavaScript. Follow Felienne: Website – https://www.felienne.com/ Twitter – @Felienne LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/felienne Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/61.

“Software engineering involves a lot of decisions, and that decision has some trade-offs. We have pros and cons. It’s not like one decision is always better than the other." Tomasz Lelek is the author of “Software Mistakes and Tradeoffs”. In this episode, Tomasz shared what led him to write his book and one of the past software mistakes from his career experience. He also gave advice on how software developers should approach the potential software mistakes and explained some typical trade-offs when making software engineering design decisions, such as code duplication vs flexibility, premature optimization vs optimizing hot-path, data locality and memory, and finally delivery semantics in distributed systems. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:05:00] Why Write about Software Mistakes and Trade-offs - [00:07:42] Software Mistake Experience - [00:10:16] Tips for Software Developers - [00:13:08] Trade-off 1: Code Duplication vs Flexibility - [00:15:24] Trade-off 2: Premature Optimization vs Optimizing Hot-Path - [00:20:08] Trade-off 3: Data Locality and Memory - [00:25:02] Trade-off 4: Delivery Semantics in Distributed Systems - [00:33:01] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:40:28] _____ Tomasz Lelek’s Bio Tomasz currently works at Datastax, building products around one of the world’s favorite distributed databases - Cassandra. He contributes to Java-Driver, Cassandra-Quarkus, Cassandra-Kafka connector, and Stargate. He previously worked at Allegro, an e-commerce website in Poland, working on streaming, batch, and online systems serving millions of users. He is also a published author of “Software Mistakes and Tradeoffs: Making good programming decisions” that is focusing on real-world problems you may encounter in your production systems. Follow Tomasz: LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomaszlelek/ Twitter – @tomekl007 GitHub – https://github.com/tomekl007 Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/60.

“DevOps is about creating a collaborative environment between the development team and the operations team, and aligning goals and incentives between those two teams. Because so many of the problems that we encounter in life, not just even in technology, are due to misalignment of goals." Jeffery Smith is the author of “Operations Anti-Patterns, DevOps Solutions” and the Director of Production Operations at Centro. In this episode, Jeffery described DevOps essentials and emphasized what DevOps is not. He also explained about CAMS, a framework that outlines the core components required for successful DevOps transformation. We then discussed three anti-patterns taken from his book: paternalist syndrome, alert fatigue, and wasting perfectly good incident; and he explained how to recognize those anti-patterns in order to avoid them on our DevOps journey. Finally, Jeffery also talked about postmortem and shared tips on how to cultivate a good postmortem culture. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:04:47] DevOps - [00:09:13] CAMS - [00:12:42] Why DevOps Anti-Patterns - [00:16:48] Anti-Pattern 1: Paternalist Syndrome - [00:19:55] Anti-Pattern 2: Alert Fatigue - [00:27:20] Anti-Pattern 3: Wasting a Perfectly Good Incident - [00:34:33] Postmortem - [00:39:59] 4 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:45:57] _____ Jeffery Smith’s Bio Jeffery Smith has been in the technology industry for over 15 years, oscillating between management and individual contributor. Jeff currently serves as the Director of Production Operations for Centro, a media services and technology company headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Before that he served as the Manager of Site Reliability Engineering at Grubhub. Jeff is passionate about DevOps transformations in organizations large and small, with a particular interest in the psychological aspects of problems in companies. He lives in Chicago with his wife Stephanie and their two kids Ella and Xander. Follow Jeffery: Website – https://attainabledevops.com/ Twitter – @DarkAndNerdy LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffery-smith-devops Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/59.

“The main goal of unit testing is to enable sustainable growth of your software project that enables you to move faster with a more quality code base." Vladimir Khorikov is the author of “Unit Testing: Principles, Practices, and Patterns” and the founder of Enterprise Craftsmanship blog. In this episode, we discussed in-depth about unit testing. Vladimir broke down the four pillars of unit testing and the anatomy of a good unit test, as well as mentioned a couple of common unit testing anti-patterns. We also discussed topics such as test-driven development, code coverage and other unit testing metrics, test mocks and how to use it properly, and how to be pragmatic when writing unit tests. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:05:32] Unit Testing - [00:08:20] The Goal of Unit Testing - [00:11:34] Test-Driven Development - [00:12:55] Code Coverage & Other Successful Metrics - [00:17:35] Pragmatic Unit Tests - [00:21:04] 4 Pillars of Unit Testing - [00:23:40] Anatomy of a Good Unit Test - [00:34:01] Test Mocks - [00:38:16] Unit Testing Anti-Patterns - [00:47:05] Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:49:56] _____ Vladimir Khorikov’s Bio Vladimir Khorikov is the author of the book “Unit Testing: Principles, Practices, and Patterns”. He has been professionally involved in software development for over 15 years, including mentoring teams on the ins and outs of unit testing. He’s also the founder of the Enterprise Craftsmanship blog, where he reaches 500 thousand software developers yearly. Follow Vladimir: LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimir-khorikov-bb482653 Twitter – https://twitter.com/vkhorikov Enterprise Craftsmanship – https://enterprisecraftsmanship.com/ Pluralsight – https://app.pluralsight.com/profile/author/vladimir-khorikov Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/58.

“Software telemetry is what you use to figure out what your production systems are doing. It’s all about shortening that feedback loop between the user experience and the engineers who are writing the user experience." Jamie Riedesel is a Staff Engineer at Dropbox working on the HelloSign product and also the author of “Software Telemetry”. In this episode, Jamie shared an overview of software telemetry and explained why it is important for us to understand how our production systems are behaving by using those telemetry data. She also explained different software telemetry types, concepts such as observability and cardinality, and shared some software telemetry best practices. In the second part of our conversation, Jamie opened up and shared her own personal experience dealing with toxic work environments. She emphasized the importance of self-awareness and psychological safety, as well as went through the five key dynamics to a successful team based on Google’s re:Work blog post. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:05:15] Software Telemetry - [00:07:22] Knowing Your Production System - [00:12:13] Types of Software Telemetry - [00:16:45] High Cardinality - [00:22:34] Observability & Buzzwords - [00:27:08] In-House vs. SaaS - [00:30:04] Some Telemetry Best Practices - [00:32:35] Toxic Workplace - [00:38:45] Identifying Your Toxicity - [00:44:18] Psychological Safety - [00:49:02] Identifying a Person’s Baggage - [00:53:52] Who is On The Team Matters Less - [00:58:09] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [01:01:49] _____ Jamie Riedesel’s Bio Jamie Riedesel has over twenty years of experience in the tech industry, and has spent her time as a System Administrator, Systems Engineer, DevOps Engineer, and Platform Engineer. She is currently a Staff Engineer at Dropbox, working on their HelloSign product. Jamie’s blog at sysadmin1138.net has been there since 2004 and survived the apocalypse of Google Reader shutting down. Jamie is the author of “Software Telemetry” through Manning Publications, and also has a deep interest in reforming team cultures to be less toxic. Follow Jamie: Blog – https://sysadmin1138.net/mt/blog/ Twitter – https://twitter.com/sysadm1138 LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-riedesel-983773b Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/57.

“Good code should be resilient to bugs. It should make it easier to do the changes that you want to the system. Some refactoring could make it harder to make changes. So, if you guess wrongly the direction of the software, then it can have a negative effect." Christian Clausen is a Technical Agile Coach specializing in teaching teams on how to refactor their code properly. He is also the author of “Five Lines of Code”. In this episode, Christian explained in-depth about refactoring, when and how we should do refactoring, the components, workflow, and pillars of refactoring. Christian also shared about a few important architectural refactoring, such as composition over inheritance and changing by addition instead of modification. Finally, Christian also shared a few tips for writing quality software, such as the five lines of code rule, the habit of deleting code, and avoiding optimization and generality. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:04:20] Refactoring & Good Code - [00:06:58] Refactoring & Testing - [00:10:07] Components of Refactoring - [00:14:36] Advice to Start Refactoring - [00:16:17] Refactoring Workflow - [00:18:21] Pillars of Refactoring - [00:22:07] Five Lines of Code - [00:25:51] Composition Over Inheritance - [00:30:00] Changing by Addition Instead of Modification - [00:34:12] Love Deleting Code - [00:37:01] Avoid Optimizations and Generality - [00:39:38] Favorite Refactoring Strategies - [00:43:28] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:45:17] _____ Christian Clausen’s Bio Christian Clausen works as a Technical Agile Coach teaching teams how to properly refactor their code. He has previously worked as a software engineer on the Coccinelle semantic patching project, an automated refactoring tool. He holds an MSc degree in Computer Science and has taught software quality at a university level for five years. Follow Christian: Twitter – https://twitter.com/thedrlambda GitHub – https://github.com/thedrlambda Medium – https://thedrlambda.medium.com/ Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/56.

“Decide where it is you’re going and what kind of career you need to live the life you want and aim for that really deliberately. Because if you don’t know where you’re going, then you never will get there." Don Jones is the author of “Own Your Tech Career” and the VP of Developer Skills at Pluralsight. In this episode, Don explained why it is important for us to understand the career we want and aim to build that career deliberately, instead of keep chasing promotion and more money continuously, and thus winding up in a rat race. He emphasized a few important things as part of owning our career, such as the importance of soft skills, showing yourself as a professional, building a personal brand, and being a better decision-maker. Do not miss a couple of showing up as professional tips that Don adopted from Disney! Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:05:52] Owning Our Tech Career - [00:07:11] On Money - [00:11:18] Importance of Soft Skills - [00:13:24] Showcasing Strong Profile - [00:16:28] Showing as Professional: Be Your Word - [00:20:14] Be Detailed and Precise - [00:23:15] Cut Your Losses When The Time is Right - [00:25:21] Let Blue Sky Mode Happen - [00:29:28] Draw a Yellow Line - [00:31:38] Building a Personal Brand - [00:34:45] What to Contribute and Finding Time - [00:40:24] RAPID Decision Making - [00:43:46] Deciding What’s Enough - [00:45:29] Deciding What to Believe - [00:47:55] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:51:23] _____ Don Jones’s Bio Don Jones has been in the IT industry since the mid-1990s, and has worked in roles ranging from software developer to network engineer. He’s most well-known for his work with Microsoft’s Windows PowerShell, and he’s written literally dozens of books on other IT topics. Today, much of Don’s focus is on helping technology professionals become owners of their careers, through books like How to Own Your Tech Career and projects like his Ampere.Club website. You can view Don’s full bibliography at DonJones.com. Follow Don: Website – https://donjones.com/ LinkedIn – https://linkedin.com/in/concentrateddon/ Twitter – https://twitter.com/concentrateddon Ampere Club – https://ampere.club Our Sponsor This episode is proudly sponsored by Emergence, the journal of business agility. This quarterly publication brings you inspiring stories from the most innovative companies and explores themes of new ways of working, reclaiming management, and humanizing business. Each issue is hand illustrated and 100% content. Use the promo code “techlead” to get a 10% discount on your annual subscription. Visit businessagility.institute/emergence to get your edition and support the publication supporting your podcast. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/55.

“Going from development to management is not a promotion. It’s an entirely new career. And there is normally a lack of proper guidance for that." Alvaro Moya is the founder of Lidr, a community that prepares and transforms the tech leaders and CTOs of tomorrow through immersive, experiential, and community-driven programs. In this episode, Alvaro shared the story of Lidr and why he started it, learning from his own journey working in multiple startups and scaleups. Alvaro then shared his view on technical leadership, the challenges surrounding it, and why it is important for companies to prioritize on improving leadership. Alvaro also touched on how tech leaders can create and nurture high-performing teams, with an emphasis on cultivating ownership, as well as giving some advice on how we should plan and choose our career track and progression, including tips and practices on how we can become better tech leaders through practising leadership informally. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:05:29] Lidr.co - [00:10:21] Technical Leadership Challenges - [00:12:22] Upskilling Leadership - [00:15:23] Prioritizing Improving Leadership - [00:18:56] Career Progression Guide - [00:24:31] Nurturing High-Performance Team - [00:27:17] Cultivating Ownership - [00:31:36] Becoming a Better Tech Leader - [00:36:21] Advise for Choosing Career Track - [00:41:56] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:45:04] _____ Alvaro Moya’s Bio Alvaro Moya is the founder of Lidr, a community that prepares and transforms the tech leaders and CTOs of tomorrow through immersive, experiential, and community-driven programs. He is an experienced CTO and tech consultant, passionate about tech startups, a serial founder, investor & advisor. Follow Alvaro: Lidr – https://www.lidr.co LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/alvarormoya/ Twitter – https://twitter.com/AlvaroRMoya Email – alvaro@lidr.co Join #TECHLEADweek on 27-30 Sep 2021 – https://tech.lidr.co/tlw-techleadjournal Our Sponsor This episode is proudly sponsored by Emergence, the journal of business agility. This quarterly publication brings you inspiring stories from the most innovative companies and explores themes of new ways of working, reclaiming management, and humanizing business. Each issue is hand illustrated and 100% content. Use the promo code “techlead” to get a 10% discount on your annual subscription. Visit businessagility.institute/emergence to get your edition and support the publication supporting your podcast. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/54.