Tech Done Right

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Software How-To
**Tech Done Right**

The Tech Done Right podcast is a show by and for people who care about what they build. We don’t just build software, we build teams, companies, careers, and communities.
Each episode features host Noel Rappin talking to interesting people in the tech community about building something the right way. We’re not just going to give you our thoughts on the topic, but tools, processes, or references that you can use immediately to build better software and communities.

Latest Episodes:

Episode 62: Food and Design Thinking May 22, 2019

Show notes

Food and Design Thinking

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com.

Guests

Rex Chekal: Director of Digital Strategy and Product Designer at Table XI.
Jessie Shternshus: Founder and Owner of the Improv Effect.
Chemia Davis: Innovation Methods Conductor and Member of the Tyson Foods Innovation Lab.
Santi Proano: Experimental Brand Dreamer for Yappah Foods and Member of the Tyson Foods Innovation Lab.

Summary

In this episode, we have a slightly different topic for Tech Done Right - food. Table XI has been working to adapt our design sprint process out of the realm of custom software and into more general product design. In particular, we've worked with Tyson Foods Innovation Lab on a few different projects including the creation of their Yappah brand which is designed to prevent food waste. In this episode, you'll hear from Chemia Davis and Santi Proano from Tyson, Rex Chekal from Table XI and Jessie Shternshus from the Improv Effect and we'll show you how we adapted design thinking and Agile process from software to food products.

Notes

02:58 - The Scope of Work Between Table XI and Tyson Foods Innovation Lab

04:08 - The Goal of the Innovation Lab

Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG)

06:51 - Bringing Design Thinking to Product Development and CPGs

11:13 - Design Steps

17:14 - Facilitating Communication

22:05 - The Sprint Week Experience

The Three-Hour Brand Sprint

26:40 - Next Steps After Sprint Week

Yappah on Indiegogo

29:32 - Learning From the Design and Coaching Process

Special Guests: Chemia Davis, Jesse Shternshus, Rex Chekal, and Santi Proano.

Episode 61: Tech For Good With Andrew Means and Sean Marcia May 08, 2019

Show notes

Tech For Good With Andrew Means and Sean Marcia

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com.

Guests

Summary

Our guests this week are Andrew Means of Data Analysts for Social Good and Sean Marcia of Ruby for Good. Both of them run organizations that are involved with using technology to helping non-profits that could use even some simple software or data assistance. We’ll talk about what kinds of work their organizations do, how non-profits differ from for-profit work, how they try to keep projects running over time, and how you can get involved working with technology for good.

Notes

02:01 - The Shared Mission of Tech For Good Events

Uptake.org

04:04 - The History and The Why

06:30 - Working with Nonprofits and Vetting Projects

13:20 - Managing and Maintaining Projects

16:26 - Understanding Nonprofit Problems and Issues

18:54 - For Profit vs Nonprofit

25:12 - Getting Involved / Recruiting Technologists

DataKind

26:51 - Using Open Source

Ruby for Good on GitHub

27:34 - Growing and Maturing the Tech For Good Space

Special Guests: Andrew Means and Sean Marcia.

Episode 60: Jumpstarting Your Side Project With Dicko Sow Apr 24, 2019

Show notes

Jumpstarting Your Side Project With Dicko Sow

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com.

Guest

Dicko Sow: Founder of Yodi Naturals.

Summary

Our guest this week is Dicko Sow. Dicko is a software developer at a technical consultancy, but recently she has been spending her time building out a side project called Yodi Naturals. We talk about how she chose the project, how important it was to plan the project, the technical decisions, and what Dicko learned putting together the launch page. If you’re trying to decide whether to try a side project, this episode has some good information about how to put that together.

Notes

01:58 - Wanting to do a Side Project; Deciding on Said Side Project

03:59 - Yodi Naturals

05:56 - Getting Started (Mentally)

07:50 - Planning and Prioritization of Minimum Viable Product Features

13:25 - Name Origin

16:08 - Getting Started (Technically)

18:45 - Using React

20:26 - Working with AWS

22:24 - Decoupling React and Rails and Releasing Features

23:51 - Design

26:31 - Learning as the Project Comes Together

27:29 - Managing Search and Tag Functionality

Elasticsearch

31:18 - Recipe Curation

31:52 - Launching the Launch Page; Shipping Things

Special Guest: Dicko Sow.

Episode 59: Building Git with James Coglan Apr 10, 2019

Show notes

Building Git With James Coglan

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com.

Guest

James Coglan: Author of Building Git and JavaScript Testing Recipes. More at jcoglan.com/.

Summary

Our guest today is James Coglan. James has written an extraordinary programming book called Building Git. In it, he describes the inner workings of the Git source control tool by re-implementing a substantial part it in Ruby, including commits, diffs, branching, and networking. Along the way he shows not just how Git works, but also details of some of the algorithms it uses. There’s also a lot about building complex systems generally. And it has some great examples of test-driven development. James and I also talk about implementing in a high-level language like Ruby, versus a lower-level language like C. It’s a unique book, and I’ve been looking forward to talking to James about it for some time.

Notes

01:58 - Reimplementing Git

04:17 - Examples and Understanding Git Internals

06:32 - Building Complex Systems in General

09:10 - How the Design of the Code Emerges

11:51 - Test-Driven Development

15:16 - Implementing Git and Ruby

22:37 - Surprises

26:29 - Making UI Changes

29:30 - Gaps Remaining in Functionality and Performance

32:04 - Contribution and Implementations in Other Languages
- Gary Bernhardt's Screencasts

34:25 - Lower-level Language vs Higher-level Language Implementation

Special Guest: James Coglan.

Episode 58: Agriculture And Technology with Orlando Saez Mar 27, 2019

Show notes

Agriculture And Technology with Orlando Saez

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com.

Guest

Orlando Saez: Co-founder and CEO of Aker Technologies.

Summary

Our guest today is Orlando Saez. Orlando is the co-founder and CEO of Aker, a precision crop diagnostic data and service company. We're going to talk about what that means and more generally, about how technology and agriculture intersect. We'll talk about how Orlando got into the agriculture and technology space and who his customers are and what they learn from using specialized drones to monitor their crops. It's an interesting deep dive into a part of the technology world that I, for one, did not know very much about and I hope you enjoy it.

Notes

01:44 - What Aker Does; The Tech/Agriculture Sector

Becoming a Senior Engineer with Jamey Hampton

03:30 - Technology: IoT, Drones, and Machine Learning

08:55 - Aggregating Information + Shared Data

11:09 - Working with the Agriculture Sector and The Way Growers Work

Precision Agriculture

17:14 - Differences Between Purchases and Users: Ways Products Are Used in the Field

20:40 - Aker as a Service Provider

21:53 - Drone Technology and Training Pilots

24:10 - Using General Machine Learning Techniques

25:51 - Looking Forward

28:21 - Orlando’s Background in Getting Involved in This Space

31:18 - More Resources for People Interested in AgTech

Special Guest: Orlando Saez.

Episode 57: Unlearn with Barry O'Reilly Mar 13, 2019

Show notes

Unlearn With Barry O'Reilly

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com.

Summary

Our guest today is Barry O’Reilly, author of the book “Unlearn: Let Go of Past Success to Achieve Extraordinary Results”. In it, he sets out a process for defining outcomes, identifying behaviors that might help or hinder reaching the outcomes, and then unlearning existing behaviors and relearning new ones. We talk about how that process works, how to use it yourself, how it might fail, and what Barry unlearned for himself in the process of writing the book. We’d like to hear from you. What’s something you’ve needed to unlearn to reach success? Let us know at techdoneright.io/57 or on Twitter at @tech_done_right

Guest

Barry O’Reilly: Author of Unlearn: Let Go of Past Success to Achieve Extraordinary Results. Unlearn website. Author of Lean Enterprise: How High Performance Organizations Innovate at Scale with Jez Humble and Joanne Molesky, barryoreilly.com.

Summary

03:15 - Letting Go and Unlearning Past Behavior

07:17 - How to Achieve and Define Positive Outcomes

15:25 - Unlearning as a Continuous Cycle

20:25 - Think Big, Smart Small, and Learn Fast

26:14 - When People Don’t Succeed

29:03 - Being Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable

31:30 - Learning to Unlearn

33:00 - Focusing on Deliberate Reflection

34:55 - Unlearning and Leadership Roles

36:56 - Getting Started with Unlearning

Special Guest: Barry O'Reilly.

Episode 56: Developer Hiring Feb 27, 2019

Show notes

Developer Hiring

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com or find us at http://tablexi.com.workshops

Today on the show, we're talking about hiring with Jennifer Tu and Zee Spencer of Cohere, Thayer Prime of Team Prime, and software consultant Matt Patterson. We talk about the entire developer hiring process from how to advertise your company to potential candidates, through coding tests and interviews, and all the way to the final decision process. It's a great conversation with a lot of different perspectives and a lot of good advice. We’d like to hear from you. What do you look for when hiring developers? Let us know at http://techdoneright.io/56 or on Twitter at @tech_done_right

Guests

Jennifer Tu: Cofounder of Cohere.
Zee Spencer: Cofounder of Cohere.
Thayer Prime: Founder of Team Prime.
Matt Patterson: Software Consultant.

Notes

02:55 - Common Mistakes When Hiring Developers

05:17 - Effective Hiring Procedures and Interview Processes

10:31 - Getting Your Company’s Name Out There

15:30 - Recruitment, Onboarding, and Reviews

18:52 - Sending Take-Home Exercises and the Problems They Present; Pre-Hire Pairing

30:33 - Good and Bad Uses of Interview Time

33:11 - Developing Interview Question and Using Standardization to Remove Biases

35:34 - Making Yes/No Decisions

Related Episodes

Special Guests: Jennifer Tu, Matt Patterson, Thayer Prime, and Zee Spencer.

Episode 55: Engineering Management With Allison McMillan Feb 13, 2019

Show notes

Engineering Management With Allison McMillan

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com or visit the web at http://tablexi.com/workshops.

Guest

Allison McMillan: Engineering Manager at GitHub; Atom; Creator of the Parent Driven Development Podcast. Blogs at DayDreams in Ruby.

Summary

Today on the show we’re talking about engineering management. Allison McMillan is an engineering manager for the Atom team at GitHub. We talk about what her role is within the team, how she helps her team grow and improve, and how the management role is different from her previous developer jobs. We’d like to hear from you. What makes a great engineering manager? Let us know at techdoneright.io/55 or on Twitter at @tech_done_right

Notes

01:48 - What does an Engineering Manager do?

05:29 - Having Effective and Successful Meetings

12:20 - Goals as a Developer and Teammate

22:56 - Becoming an Engineering Manager

27:34 - Expectations and Challenges

32:01 - Measuring Yourself and Your Progress

35:10 - Plans to Improve / Having Teammates Rate Your Performance as a Manager

Related Episodes

Episode 003: Remote Work with Allison McMillan and Bradley Schaefer

Special Guest: Allison McMillan.

Episode 54: Code Style and Community with Sam Phippen and Justin Searls Jan 30, 2019

Show notes

Code Style and Community with Sam Phippen and Justin Searls

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com or visit http://www.tablexi.com/workshops.

Guests

Sam Phippen: Developer Advocate at Google and member of the RSpec Core Team
Justin Searls: Cofounder of Test Double

Summary

On this episode, we’ve got Sam Phippen and Justin Searls back for their third round on the show. Both of them have been working on new Ruby tools to better standardize your team’s style and code formatting. We talk about why they’ve decided these tools are important, what their philosophy of coding style is, how coding style relates to the Ruby community, and how they evaluate code when given a code sample to look at.

We’d like to hear from you. How does your team handle differences of opinion in code style? Let us know at techdoneright.io/54 or on Twitter at @tech_done_right

Notes

02:21 - Code Style

09:46 - Choosing Ruby: Community Standards vs Style

14:59 - Evaluating Code Samples for Developer Positions

Gilded Rose Refactoring Kata

21:04 - Ruby Format

29:05 - Selecting Rules For Standard

35:38 - Discrepancies in Rails View Template Files

haml-lint

39:10 - What happens if these projects aren’t successful?

Why's (poignant) Guide To Ruby

Previous Justin/Sam Episodes:

Part I: Episode 004: In The Testing Weeds
Part II: Back in the Testing Weeds with Sam Phippen and Justin Searls

Special Guests: Justin Searls and Penelope Phippen.

Episode 53: Tribal Knowledge and Onboarding with Annie Sexton Jan 16, 2019

Show notes

Tribal Knowledge and On-boarding with Annie Sexton

TableXI offers training for developers and product teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com.

Guest

Annie Sexton: Core Support Engineer at Heroku. Traveler. Amateur graphic novelist. More at momotarocomic.com/.

Summary

Developers and teams build up a lot of knowledge about their code and their process which never gets written down and which makes it harder together to get new team members up to speed. Our guest, Annie Sexton, is a support engineer for Heroku and has to deal with not only Heroku’s vast amount of knowledge, but also the unwritten information of many of her support customers. We’ll talk about the practical things Annie recommends to help make this knowledge explicit, and how your team can improve its group memory and team on-boarding. We’d also like to hear from you. Is there something your team has done to write down the things everybody knows? Let us know at http://techdoneright.io/53 or on Twitter at @tech_done_right.

Notes

01:51 - Why Tribal Knowledge is a Bad Thing

Annie’s RubyConf Talk: The Dangers of Tribal Knowledge

04:50 - Legacy Code

Noel Rappin: The Road To Legacy Is Paved With Good Intentions -- WindyCityRails, Sept 2017

06:38 - Capturing Tribal Knowledge

12:55 - Keeping Things Up-To-Date

15:57 - When the “Why” and the “Overview” Get Lost

17:49 - Becoming Immune to Complexity

20:39 - Tools for Documentation

28:50 - Convincing Others that Documentation is Important

33:31 - Planning for Succession

Related Episodes

Special Guest: Annie Sexton.

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Food and Design Thinking

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Notes

Tech For Good With Andrew Means and Sean Marcia

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Notes

Jumpstarting Your Side Project With Dicko Sow

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Notes

Building Git With James Coglan

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Summary

Notes

Agriculture And Technology with Orlando Saez

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Notes

Unlearn With Barry O'Reilly

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Developer Hiring

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Engineering Management With Allison McMillan

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Summary

Notes

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Code Style and Community with Sam Phippen and Justin Searls

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Tribal Knowledge and On-boarding with Annie Sexton

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