Hiya folks!
Last week I had a conversation with Fabian Tamp about…well, it was originally gonna be about blogging, but we also talked about tech careers and what we do. We even touched on automated testing for mobile apps (because it wouldn’t be a conversation with me if software risk mitigation didn’t get in there somehow).
Below I have included the audio, a list of topics by timestamp, and then links to resources we talked about.
My timestamps don’t link to the corresponding locations on the audio itself. Fabian’s links do, so if that’s what you’d like, I recommend heading over to his blog to check out his version of this post.
Topics, by Timestamp
| 00:00:00 | Intros, Berlin, Chicago, Where is ‘home’? |
| 00:02:35 | Chelsea’s current software engineering work, projects, live-streaming development |
| 00:05:40 | Storyboarding and mobile UI, Starting with screens, Why is UI development always so fiddly, Huge evolution in Android over the last 4 years |
| 00:08:20 | Fabian’s transition from Android to Backend, “Full Stack Development” |
| 00:10:00 | Fabian’s job search, criteria, jobs with meaningful products. |
| 00:11:45 | Has it been easier to find remote jobs because of Coronavirus? |
| 00:13:20 | Chelsea’s trajectory, work-life balance, burnout, limits to concentration, productivity flux throughout the day |
| 00:18:00 | High- vs Low-pressure software development, software development for fun, Terrible Sourdough |
| 00:24:15 | Corona and work-life balance and staying inside all the time, weather in Chicago (US), Berlin (DE), Wollongong (AU), climate change |
| 00:29:00 | “What a situation we’re in” – 2020 is the year of all the other shoes falling, Mercury stuck in retrograde etc |
| 00:32:15 | Blogging! Writing Process, Robert Heaton on how to come up with blog ideas |
| 00:35:10 | People don’t read code; how to prevent people’s eyes from glazing over |
| 00:36:10 | Hillel Wayne on using appropriate examples |
| 00:38:00 | Different types of blog posts and their motivation |
| 00:46:15 | Blog posts in job applications, hiring |
| 00:50:00 | Hiring and interviewing in general, resumés, “interview shape” |
| 00:52:45 | Open source work, making it easy to contribute |
| 00:56:30 | Splitting responsibility between management and individual contributor work |
| 00:58:25 | Intersection between social / cultural issues and technical work |
| 01:08:00 | From amorphous idea to blog post |
| 01:14:25 | Making sure your work is seen by people, motivation |
| 01:20:00 | Testing on mobile |
Links and Things we mentioned!
- Robert Heaton – How to come up with blog post ideas
- Hillel Wayne – Instructive and Persuasive Examples
- Jones & Okun – White Supremacy Culture (pdf)
- Ongaro & Ousterhout – In Search of an Understandable Consensus Algorithm (aka The Raft Consensus Algorithm, pdf)
- The Raft class that Chelsea took – Rafting Trip
- Chelsea’s Raft implementation blog series
- The Scottish Gaelic Tattoo Handbook
- Chelsea Live Streams all Development on the Scottish Gaelic Tattoo App
- One of the quickest blog posts I’ve ever written, How to ask questions well, asynchronously
- Probably the longest blog post I’ve ever written, How Does Lossless Compression in Fuji RAF Files work?
- Techniques for setting boundaries around your remote job
- Sendwave, my former company, working on remittances. They’re great, and they’re hiring remotely!
- The Recurse Center
- Julia Evans on blogging principles she uses and “advice” for aspiring tech bloggers
- Charity Majors – The (Real) 11 Reasons I don’t hire you
If you liked this, you might also like:
This conversation with Borja Sotomayor about feedback in software development
This conversation with Peter Bell, also about feedback
This conversation with Todd Nief about everything under the Sun
This conversation with Greater Than Code, also about a lot of stuff