We Belong Here: Lessons from Unconventional Paths to Tech

Latest Episodes:

From Web2 to Web3 with Zsófi Major Jan 05, 2023

Zsófi Major has had many roles over the years within the web2 space: project manager, COO, and business developer.
After business hours she volunteered within the Drupal community, bringing together developers from all over the world at conferences she organized.
After burning out from web development projects, unmanageable deadlines, and clients - she quit her job and decided to take a break and apply for roles she really wanted to do full-time - ones where she could be involved in community and event management.
She joined Parity’s DevRel team in March 2022 as a newbie in web3 and I’m happy to report she loves her job, for the first time in her life!

Resources:

@ZsófiMajor Twitter

@Polkadot Twitter

Parity blog

Hackathon calendar

Madly Deeply: The Diaries of Alan Rickman
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Sustainability and Blockchain with Alexandra Heller Dec 29, 2022

Alexandra Heller is the Founder of Crypto Philanthropy Club, a club for crypto people who care and give, and is the Marketing Director at Bitgreen, the sustainability blockchain.

Her life’s quest is to help the helpers and spread the ideas the world needs. She previously was the Head of Marketing at Parity Technologies as well as the Marketing Director at Floracopeia.

Resources:

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Introducing, We Belong... in Web3! Oct 24, 2022

We Belong is back!
We're (Lauren and Aaron ) talking about what we've been up to since the last episode - including new jobs in Web3 AND an incredibly adorable new member of our family.
This episode kicks off a new season of We Belong and it's all about Web3. Today they're discussing our own initial hesitations and skepticism around Web3, why we made the ultimate choice to join a Web3 company, and what we hope to achieve this season.
Join us this season as we celebrate the stories of those diversifying the Web3 space✨
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@AaronBassett
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A Bootcamper's Companion by Caitlyn Greffly Feb 22, 2022

Caitlyn joins Lauren to talk about her new book, The Bootcamper’s Companion.

If you're trying to break into tech, you probably already know it's a huge and complicated world. Maybe you're thinking about a career change, currently enrolled in a bootcamp, on a self-taught journey, or trying to figure out what will set you apart to land your first job.

Caitlyn wrote this book to give you the tools and information she wishes she had when she was career changing into tech. In it, you'll find the best resources, simplified explanations of technologies and job titles, and specific advice to help you stand out and find a job.

Unlock the tech industry today!

Resources:

Caitlyn’s first episode on We Belong Here

The Bootcamper’s Companion : use “BELONG” for a 20% discount at checkout!
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Caroline Kerns: How Dabbling in Careers Led to Community and #DevRel Jan 17, 2022

Caroline is originally from Germany and has tried many different careers on for size. She has had roles ranging from recruiting, automotive, and retail and her interest in programming began a few years ago with a desire to create a Jane Austen quote website (because who doesn’t want to read daily Jane Austen quotes?).

Since then, she’s dabbled in JavaScript and Python and today is the Community Manager at Vonage.

In today’s episode, we chat all about the power of community, especially within the Developer Relations space. Reflecting on her time as a recruiter, Caroline shares tips on how to write the best possible resume and get it in front of a hiring manager. We talk about how the pandemic impacted online communities and led to developers streaming on Twitch and she also gives advice on how to find tech communities that are inclusive and the right fit for you!

Resources:

Follow Caroline on Twitter @grumpysnek: https://twitter.com/grumpysnek

Caroline’s LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/captcalli/

Software and Game Development Twitch Category: https://twitch.tv/directory/game/Software%20and%20Game%20Development

The Live Coders Twitch: https://twitch.tv/team/livecoders

Instafluff Twitch: https://twitch.tv/instafluff

BaldBeardedBuilder Twitch: https://twitch.tv/baldbeardedbuilder

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Shamira Marshall: From Attorney to Software Developer Dec 14, 2021

Shamira Marshall is an attorney who learned to code in 2019 and today is a software engineer at GoDaddy. Her interest in tech started in law school and then attended Ada Developers Academy to make the career switch. Which is where she and I met!
Resources:
Ada Developers Academy
Shamira on Dev.to/MiraMarshall
Shamira on Twitter @MiraMarshalll
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PJ Metz: From Teacher to Coder Nov 30, 2021

My guest today is a former educator who now works as an Education Evangelist at GitLab. After teaching English for 11 years in Florida and South Korea, he made the transition into tech in May of 2021 after teaching himself to code with Codecademy during the pandemic.

He’s a passionate public speaker and has spoken at a Microsoft conference as well as hosted several meetups and other events representing GitLab. You can catch him on Twitch building a website about poetry or building his next pop-star-based Twitter bot.

Resources:

Follow PJ on Twitter: @MetzinAround
Codecademy
Gitlab

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Tonya Sims: From WNBA to Python and DevRel Nov 02, 2021

Tonya Sims is a self-taught developer and is the Python Developer Advocate at Vonage. She has an eclectic background ranging from roles in business, pharmaceutical sales, and even is a former professional women’s basketball player!

Tonya is humble and down to earth and has a ton of empathy. All of her life experiences allow her to see the world from many different perspectives.

She started her career in tech working as an executive assistant for a leading financial investments company in their IT department. Shortly thereafter, she transitioned into a computer operator role and started learning how to code. Eventually, she worked her way up from an entry-level position to earn roles as a software engineer in test and software developer contracting with some of the top financial services companies in Chicago.

Tonya is passionate about helping other budding engineers and loves to see people succeed!
Resources:

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Allen Whearry: Don't sell yourself short, you can code Aug 30, 2021

Allen is a self-taught iOS Developer who made the switch from a professional sales career and now sits as a software engineer at Yelp. He believes anyone can learn to program, they just have to put in the time and effort.

He studied psychology in school and figured he would end up going to grad school for it as well but ended up finding joy in the world of sales. While in sales, he learned so many lessons: the art of receiving negative feedback, the art of storytelling, as well how to both clearly and concisely communicate with people in his day-to-day life.

He had always had an interest in coding but wasn’t interested in studying Computer Science in school so thought that would never be a possible career path for him. But the curiosity never left him so eventually he began teaching himself Ruby and Python! But he wasn’t successful in finding a full-time role and so he pivoted to learning iOS and building apps he actually wanted to use in his life.

Today he is a Software Engineer at Yelp and continues to use the lessons he learned in sales. He also is the organizer of @iOSDevHappyHour - a place where current and aspiring iOS devs can come together and enjoy a good time!

Resources:

Allen on Twitter: @codeine_coding
@iOSDevHappyHour
Extreme Ownership book recommendation
codeinecoding.com

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Alex Merced: Learn, Build, Blog, Teach, Repeat! Aug 24, 2021

Alex Merced taught himself to code just a few years ago. Before that, he spent a decade training people in finance and has also moonlighted as a political candidate, concert promoter, and comic book store owner.

Today, he’s a developer for CampusGaurd and Instructor for General Assembly Coding Bootcamps. He is also the creator of devNursery.com - a developer community and is the creator of many Javascript libraries.

Resources:

AlexMercedCoder.com

devNursery.com

Podcast: Web Dev 101

Book Recommended: Nassim Taleb - Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder

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Wesley Faulkner: The Path to Developer Relations Aug 16, 2021

Wesley Faulkner is a first-generation American. He is a founding member of the government transparency group Open Austin and ran for Austin City Council in 2016. His professional experience also includes work as a social media and community manager for the software company Atlassian, and various roles for the computer processor company AMD, Dell, IBM, and Daily. Wesley serves as a board member for South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) and today is the Head of Community at SingleStore.

Resources:

Wesley on Twitter: @wesley83

FreeCodeCamp

Wesleyfaulkner.com

Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion
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Sierra OBryan: From Lasers to Androids Aug 10, 2021

Sierra is a Senior Consultant at Atomic Robot in Cincinnati, OH, focused primarily on Native Android solutions. She loves building beautiful and accessible Android apps, sharing knowledge with the community, and mentoring aspiring mobile developers. She serves as a Director of Women Who Code Cincinnati and a global track lead for Women Who Code Mobile.

Before becoming an Android developer, she was in graduate school in a Ph.D. program to become a laser physicist. She had actually always wanted to go to beauty school but after high school, because she had scholarships and was good at math and sciences, she ended up in the math and physics department in college. As she says, the passion for the subject wasn’t necessarily there but she ended up finishing her degree! But eventually, that lack of interest caught up with her and she recognized the need for something different.

JP Morgan was looking to diversify their tech pipeline and so she took a leap of faith to enroll in their program and learn to code! Today she has discovered her passion and is a consultant at a mobile development shop where she gets to build apps for clients and create things she’s truly excited about and interested in every single day.

Sierra believes that anyone can make the leap into tech and find joy in their career. She advocates for the power of googling and reminds the listener that the answer to their question is always out there!
Resources:

Sierra on Twitter: @_sierrobryan
Sierraobryan.dev
Women Who Code Cincinnati
Women Who Code Mobile

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Domitrius Clark: Always Putting the Customer First Aug 03, 2021

Domitrius is a Developer Experience Engineer at Cloudinary. From retail to engineering, his focus has always been on making sure the customer's experience is the top priority. He’s the founder of Reactadelphia, a Philly meetup for React & JavaScript developers, and is an avid community builder & consultant.

He spent many years of his life working and managing retail stores. But upon learning that the path to success in that industry was very narrow, he knew he needed to find a different path. He had always had an interest in tech and coding bootcamps were just beginning to emerge at the time and thus he started exploring that as an option.

He attended a bootcamp in Philadelphia but struggled because of the lack of support and poor curriculum decisions the school made. The program has since shut down, but it was a really hard time for Domitrius. Ever resilient and determined to succeed, he decided to teach himself JavaScript and go on the job hunt on his own.

Domitrius is a community builder through and through. When he was still searching for his first web developer role, he created a community for bootcamp grads to connect with and support one another as they navigated the industry and worked to demonstrate to companies that bootcamp grads were qualified candidates in those early days when hiring managers and tech companies, in general, were still rather skeptical.

He landed his first role after he cold-emailed the CEO of a startup and offered his skills - owning that he wasn’t the most technical or senior dev by any means, but offered them his community-building powers and the confidence that he would be able to learn the necessary skills while in the role. He has since gone on to work as a Front-End and UI Engineer and now in Developer Relations at Cloudinary as a Developer Experience Engineer.

Today he creates Egghead courses and organizes meetups for folks who are also looking to learn to code. He is an active advocate for people hungry to make the career change themselves and e continues to incorporate community work in everything that he does.

Resources:

Reactadelphia: a Philly meetup dedicated to showing how awesome the local React community is!

Domitrius on Twitter @DomitriusClark

Domitrius on Twitch: twitch.tv/domitriusclark

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Chris Ferdinandi: How to Hack your Job Hunt Jul 25, 2021

Chris Ferdinandi helps people learn vanilla JavaScript. He believes there’s a simpler, more resilient way to make things for the web. His developer tips newsletter is read by thousands of developers each weekday which you can check out at GoMakeThings.com.

In college, Chris had a lot of curiosities and even 4-5 majors before landing in Anthropology. He loved studying the content, but the work wasn’t exactly interesting to him. His dad suggested he explore the world of HR (Human Resources) and he did, for quite a while in fact.

Interested in helping people solve problems within the world of HR, he started a blog and began teaching himself WordPress, HTML, and CSS. As he was learning but still working at his 9-5 job, he and his HR manager had the idea to create a scavenger hunt app to help new hires learn more about the company. The problem was that it was WAY too expensive to outsource and have someone else build. So Chris was given the opportunity to build it himself! And while creating that app, he discovered the joy of building and creating something with code. He has since gone on to become a Sr. Front-End Engineer! He has also developed deep expertise on Vanilla JS and teaches people how to create powerful and exciting things with it!

We discuss how to know when you’re ready to apply for your first web development job. Chris’s advice is to apply even sooner than when you feel ready! He encourages folks to teach others, help newbies, and blog about your learning to help others on their journey as it can help you find a job too!

Resources:

GoMakeThings.com

Follow Chris on Twitter @chrisferdinandi

Vanilla JS Podcast

Vanilla JS Academy

Developer Tips Newsletter

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Mindy Zwanziger: From Teacher to Coder Jul 20, 2021

Mindy is a math teacher turned software engineer with the goal of supporting folks entering the tech field. She had wanted to be a teacher ever since she was a little girl but after teaching middle and high school for a few years, she decided it wasn't quite the right fit.

She started searching for roles where she could use her math degree and found work as a temp at a civil engineering company. She was always looking for a new challenge and began to explore helping them automate their processes. That exploration led her to have a conversation with friends about potentially looking into learning to code.

So she attended an online coding school called Launch School and was fortunate to participate in one of the first cohorts of Collab Lab - a project-based collaborative experience for new developers. We talk all about her journey of applying to jobs and finding the right company and fit.

And she tells the story of landing her dream role as a Software Engineer at New Relic!

Resources:

Launch School: https://launchschool.com/

The Collab Lab: https://the-collab-lab.codes/

Ignite Program at New Relic: https://newrelic.com/resources/articles/ignite-program-hiring-overview

Mindy on Twitter @Mindy_Joy: https://twitter.com/Mindy_Joy

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Yechiel Kalmenson: Torah && Tech Jul 15, 2021

Yechiel Kalmenson is a rabbi and teacher who pivoted to engineering three years ago. After serving as a rabbi and elementary teacher for a few years, Yechiel faced a crossroads and needed to pivot careers. He started working in technical support, took courses online, and ultimately enrolled in a boot camp to learn to code. And today, he is a software engineer at VMware!

He still loves teaching and does that as much as he can through mentoring and using his blog and weekly newsletter, Torah && Tech.

Resources:

Rabbi on Rails

Torah && Tech

Yechiel’s LinkedIn

Yechiel on Twitter: @yechielk

Yechiel on GitHub: @achasveachas

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Cecelia Martinez: Know your Story and Share your Passion Jul 09, 2021

Before learning to code, Cecelia worked in journalism and financial services. She always had a hobby of making WordPress websites for friends but never thought of pursuing tech professionally. But after moving to Atlanta, meeting a few bootcamp grads, and discovering that coding is such a creative form of expression, she knew it was the path for her!

She is a graduate of the Full-Stack Software Engineering Program at Georgia Tech and today is a Technical Account Manager at Cypress.io where she spends her days talking to users about testing strategies, helping them overcome technical challenges, and providing education and training.

Resources:

Women Who Code Front End

Out in Tech Atlanta

Cecelia’s website

Cecelia’s personal GitHub

Cecelia’s professional GitHub
Blogpost on Networking

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Ceora Ford: Learn in Public and Share your Journey Jun 29, 2021

Ceora is a software developer based in Philadelphia. She worked in childcare and with children but was always interested in tech. Coding was always in the back of her mind. She starting freelancing as a digital marketer and was finding success, but then the pandemic hit, and lost all of her clients. At that moment in time, Ceora had an opportunity to reset her career progression and decided to go all-in on learning to code.

In a moment of transparency, she decided to share her learning with her community and create tutorials and blogs with others learning to code as well. Egghead.io saw her initial blog post and asked her to become a learner advocate for them. She took their courses, attended workshops, documented her learning, and published those notes to GitHub, all while getting exposed and building relationships with experienced developers in the industry!
She worked as a teacher with Kode with Klossy, as a writer for Digital Ocean, and as a Developer Marketing Coordinator at CodeSandbox. She's on a journey to become a Developer Advocate and will have more to share with the world soon!

She is a huge proponent of inclusion, accessibility, and community building. Her career thus far has centered around creating educational content focused on making the tech industry more accessible to everyone. This episode is packed with encouraging bits of advice and wisdom. It is not one to miss!

Resources:

Ceora on Twitter: @ceeoreo_

Ceora’s website: ceoraford.com

Ceora on LinkedIn

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Kenneth Cassel: A QuikTrip Journey to Code Jun 23, 2021

Kenneth is played the saxophone in school and always wanted to be a high school band director. But soon he discovered that while he was passionate about music, it wasn’t exactly the career for him. In college, Kenneth worked at a QuikTrip gas station part-time. When offered a promotion to be a night assistant manager, he realized that he would be making more money in that role than what he was studying in school. The competition in music was high and the pay was low, so he did not pursue it any further.

At QuikTrip, he learned the trade of handy maintenance and learned how to fix nearly anything! One day while browsing Reddit, he discovered a smart kegerator and wanted to see if he could build it himself! He began teaching himself Python, started creating web apps, and was thrilled by the new skills he was learning.

He worked out a schedule with QuikTrip and decided to go back to school to learn to program! There he joined a programming club, met some incredible individuals, participated in some hackathons, and began searching for a full-time gig!

He landed a development role at a boutique consulting firm and continued to build software on the side to help developers level up and earn money from their knowledge. He was always working on a side hustle, is ridiculously motivated, and his story is beyond inspiring.
Today, Kenneth has gone all-in on his company, Slip! Be sure to check it out. This episode is packed with incredible tips and words of wisdom for those looking to break into tech.

Resources:

Kenneth's company Slip

Kenneth’s Twitter: @KennethCassel

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Claudia Maciel: Conquering Clouds from Aviation and iOS Development Jun 08, 2021

Claudia Maciel grew up in a small farming community in California and had dreams of exploring the world. She went to college full of enthusiasm and curiosity - eager to discover what she was most passionate and interested in. In her first year, she enrolled in an intro to computer programming course but was the only girl and the only Mexican in the entire class. Her professors were encouraging though and she loved the class. In fact, she was so great at it she decided to major in Computer Science!

But when she graduated from college and started going out onto interviews, she suddenly was back to that same place of feeling alone and as though she didn’t belong in the industry. She just didn’t feel as though she belonged. So instead, she decided to help others and to teach students about computer science and aviation.

Oh yeah, in college she also discovered a passion and aptitude for aviation and flying!

So that is what she went on to do for a long time - she was teaching at an after-school program as well at the local aviation school. And that’s when NASA approached her! With NASA, Claudia helped to empower children to get into STEM and push beyond societal boundaries. It was an incredible program, but ultimately, the fact that she was encouraging students to pursue these sorts of careers despite pursuing them herself became too glaring and she felt ready to break into the industry herself.

That’s when Claudia became a pilot for SkyWest Airlines. She was finally then able to travel, to leave her town, and see the world!

She loved it, but the traveling became too much for her family, and so with the confidence gained after joining the male-dominated industry of aviation, Claudia discovered she felt ready and able to enter the tech industry.

She discovered the Lambda School’s iOS program and dedicated herself to their program to dive int0 the world of native application development. And since recording the interview, Claudia has landed her first tech job as a mobile app developer at Jack Henry & Associates!

This episode is packed with advice and tips for those looking to break into tech. Claudia overcame fears of being the only woman or Latina in both aviation and tech. Today, she is an example for all young Latinas to never stop pursuing their dreams!

Resources:

Claudia on Twitter @coder_pilot

#WomenWhoCodeMobile

Claudia on LinkedIn

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Dan Morse: It’s Never Too Late to Learn to Code Jun 01, 2021

Dan worked as a freelance sign language interpreter for nearly two decades. He has always had an affinity for visual learning and languages in particular. And in high school, he remembers observing that sign language itself was a visual language.

Once in college, he finally took a sign language class and discovered how incredible it is to express something in three dimensions. He soon began his freelancing business and quickly turned that into a full-time thing!

In 2008, he bought his first Apple computer and began building small Python scripts to automate some of his freelancing processes. That sort of tinkering piqued his interest and he began to start playing with other learning platforms as he and his kids began learning coding concepts together. Eventually, he enrolled in the Lambda School on the iOS track and has since joined Nordstrom as a mobile application engineer!

Today we tackle what it’s like to join tech as someone older than the industry average and Dan gives the advice to just own it and to not let it define you. Dan speaks to the power of community and the importance of giving back to the communities you care about - as you never know how they might impact your future and your life. This episode is packed with great advice for those curious to break into tech. It is not one to miss!

Resources:

Dan on Twitter @Danandami

Dan’s LinkedIn

UnderDog Devs

Unloop

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Jess Bonanno: Rooting for the UnderDog May 22, 2021

Jess Bonanno grew up in Brooklyn and moved to NJ during high school. She has always been obsessed with tech and planned to study it after high school but began getting herself into trouble.
She thought she had missed her chance to make tech a career and in 2004 became a house painter - of which she has been mastering that trade for the past 16 years.
In 2019 she decided to teach herself to code in hopes of a career switch. She started at Lambda School and earlier this year!
In September of 2020, she was invited into UnderDog Devs, a group dedicated to supporting formerly incarcerated & disadvantaged aspiring developers, and has become an active part of the community.
Since graduating from Lambda School in February, Jess started Hack Reactor and graduates on June 4th! She will then begin working with one of the partnering companies. All very happy and exciting things ✨

Resources:

Jess on Twitter: @JessDoesCode

@UnderDog Devs

UnderDog Devs Slack

Donate to Underdog Devs

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Filip Hric: The Value of Learning in Public Apr 27, 2021

Filip Hric always loved playing with and tinkering with tech. But growing up, he struggled with math and thus convinced himself that he didn’t belong in the world of tech. So instead, he decided to study Psychology and ended up even getting a Master’s in it!

After school, while working at an NGO, he helped build an application that allowed people struggling with mental health to chat with volunteer psychologists and social workers. He worked on the campaign graphics and changed the layout on the page. Slowly, he began to learn some CSS and HTML so that he could make even bigger changes to the app. These experiences led to him discovering that his heart desired to be in tech.
He spent his evenings teaching himself basic HTML and Javascript and that learning fueled a fire of curiosity and passion for him. His father’s tech company was searching for a tester so he decided to take the leap into the world of tech.

Today, he advocates that testing is a great way to enter into tech, to learn about the basics, and to explore the patterns and best practices of developing apps.

Because of his background in Psychology, Filip strives for a human-centered approach in everything he does. The question, why do people do what they do? is truly what user experience is all about.

Today he is a QA lead and test automation engineer at a Slovakia-based company called Slido, where he leads a team and watches over the monthly releases of Slido products.

There he searches for bugs and problems within the product and simulates the way the end-user might interact with a feature.

Today’s episode is a great conversation and is full of encouragement for those looking to transition into tech!

Resources:

Filip on Twitter: @filip_hric

Filip’s blog and website: filiphric.com

Testing automation resource: Cypress.io

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Tali Herzka: From Molecular Biology to Software Engineering Apr 13, 2021

On today’s episode, I chat with Tali Herzka. Who has forever been interested in Science, genetics, and Molecular Biology. Molecular pathways and systems seemed to connect with the way she understood the world.

After getting a bachelor’s degree in Molecular Biology and working in a cancer research laboratory for several years, she moved cross country to pursue a drastic career change and learn to code. It was a massive leap of faith diverging from her prescribed future in science and felt wildly exciting and terrifying all at once. She moved into a “Hacker House” which was just a warehouse in San Francisco and was thrust into a whole new world of tech.

Since graduating from her bootcamp, Tali has been a full-time software developer/data engineer for 7 years now. She currently is a software engineer at Scribd but when not coding, she's crafting or taking pictures of her bird for the 'gram.

In today’s episode, Tali gives the advice of combining your prior interests and experiences into your role in tech. And also to listen to your gut, to take a risk on passions, and to never pursue a path that isn’t your own.

Resources:

Codecademy

Tali on Twitter: @therzka

Tali’s bird: Mango the Yellow Sided Conure

Tali’s Website

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We Belong Here Podcast:

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WeBelongPodcast.com

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Kilo Loco: Self Taught Sr. Developer Advocate at AWS Mar 17, 2021

On today’s episode, I chat with Kilo Loco, aka Kyle Lee. Who is a self-taught developer, programming tutorial YouTuber, and Senior Developer Advocate at AWS.
Kilo officially entered tech in 2016. Prior to that, he worked in many different industries: in restaurants, real estate, car sales, telemarketing, and more. But he never found a true passion in any of those roles. Eventually, he came across programming and absolutely fell in love!
He navigated through different tech languages including HTML, CSS, Javascript, Objective-C, and Swift. To learn the language, he played around with building apps that he and his family wanted and/or needed. For example, he created an accessibility app for his great grandfather who was hard of hearing to better communicate with him. Although they were simple apps, he felt ready to start applying for full-time development roles.
He started a YouTube channel to share his learning with his community and today is a Sr. Developer Advocate at AWS.
Kilo has several years of experience working at companies both large and small, as well as freelance contracting. His focus is to take his experiences as a developer and share them with the world, helping others to code passionately.
Resources:

Kilo’s YouTube channel
Follow Kilo on Twitter @Kilo_Loco

AWS Amplify
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We Belong Here Podcast:

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42. Lucy Suddenly: There's Room at the Table for Everyone Mar 11, 2021

Lucy Suddenly is a white, able-bodied trans woman from the greater Seattle area. She got a BA in psychology and spent a decade in box office management before realizing that programming was her destiny. She switched careers after attending Flatiron School and now works as a Builds and Deployment Engineer at Outreach.io in Seattle.

We chat about the box office industry, how small it is, and the lack of roles it has as a result. She had dabbled with code quite a bit as a kid and returned to it after a major life event and was searching for a new career path. She attended Flatiron School as a part of Seattle’s first in-person cohort and even went on to teach there afterward.

Today at Outreach.io, Lucy is building CI-CD services and accompanying tooling to abstract away the complexity of deployments for her new favorite customers: product engineers. Her free time is spent playing video games, bringing a chaotic evil DnD character to life, baby talking to her cat, and cramming as many new units of programming wisdom into her brain as possible.

In our conversation today, Lucy shares how the lessons she learned while in the box office industry translate to her current role in tech. Knowing how to remain calm and level-headed during a moment of crisis or facing bugs in the code while everyone else is losing their cool has proved to be wildly helpful and powerful now on an engineering team.
She recommends keeping data on your day-to-day learnings of both your challenges and successes so that you can champion and advocate for yourself and authentically speak to the growth you've made.
At Outreach.io, she founded a Trans Employee Resource Group and created a 101 course for folks to take action and educate themselves. She's a proud squeaky wheel there and advocates for change and they welcome her with open arms.

Resources:

Lucy’s LinkedIn

Outreach.io

Flatiron School

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41. Alex Trost: Horsing Around with this Frontend Dev🐴 Mar 04, 2021

Alex Trost grew up having, as he puts it, a fixed mindset. He studied graphic design and education in school and actually taught himself to program by making an app for his school when he was a teacher. In 2018, he realized he wanted to do development full time and has been a frontend dev ever since.

Growing up, he was always passionate about tech and loved to tinker and build. So much so that he had a pet project called FreeBasketballSkills.com where he modified the HTML and CSS of the site to share basketball skills with his friends. Despite that, he never thought he could actually program because he equated that with calculus and complex math abilities.

He thought he wasn’t smart enough to succeed in school, so wondered why even bother trying. He ended up going to community college to study graphic design. But eventually found himself in a career in teaching 2nd grade as he loved the moment of helping kids unlock new skills.

Soon he learned about the Growth Mindset Concept and realized that he had always thought that because he didn’t currently understand something it meant that he never would know it. He discovered that we can in fact be good at whatever it is we set out and work to learn.

He taught himself to code when he built an application for his school to make sense of all of the data the district had on their students’ performance.
Eventually, he landed a role as a frontend developer and had the opportunity to do a ton of on-the-job learning.

Today, he is a Developer Experience Engineer at Prismic and writes Frontend Horse, a newsletter and blog where he learns creative techniques from other great frontend developers. Alex brings with him what he learned in his past as an educator into his newsletters to ensure that they are accessible to a variety of skill levels.

Resources:

Frontend Horse
The Overlap Podcast
Bear app - note taking & writing app
The Learning Myth: Why I'll Never Tell My Son He's Smart
Doing Content Right with Steph Smith

Follow Alex on Socials:

Alex’s website

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We Belong Here Podcast:

Follow Lauren on Twitter @LoLoCoding

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40. Dacey Nolan: The Power of Community While Searching For Your First Coding Role Feb 23, 2021

In today’s episode, Dacey tells the story of studying Public Relations in school and pursuing many different avenues and industries to find a job she loved. She tried many different things from content management, social media, marketing, special education, and Non-Profit work.

One day, during a series of dates where she and her boyfriend (now husband) taught one another new things, he tried to teach her HTML and CSS. But the lesson wasn't a success because she didn't think she'd be good at it and zoned him out.

But eventually, she decided to build an app with him and they collaboratively built things that they were both interested in. He helped guide her self-learning and exposed her to core concepts and tools such as GitHub and pull requests.

When she felt ready, she left her full-time job in March 2019 to search for a job. She gave herself a year to learn the skills and wanted to be ready to apply to jobs by March 2020... which was a pretty rough time in the world to be applying to new roles! But she refused to let the pandemic get her down. Her husband and friend group helped her prep for interviews and built up her algorithm skills. She applied to 207 positions and got rejected 206 times. But she applied for a Sr. Developer role at This Dot and asked them to take a chance on her. And that they did! She came on via a contract, which helped her land her current job at TriggerMesh where she uses Javascript, Vue, and Cypress in her frontend role.

Today, her work in special education still impacts her work in tech. She understands the accessibility needs that folks face and that drives her passion day in and day out. You can find her tweeting about how to make applications more accessible for someone with epilepsy or is visually or audibly impaired.

Dacey reminds listeners that there is no age limit to learning to code.

Early in her career, she felt frustrated with how quickly another new employee was closing tickets and performing on the job. She reached out to her boss and received feedback that has never left her: “To never compare yourself to anyone but yourself.”

Resources:

Women in Tech sessions

Follow Dacey:

Twitter: @dacey_nolan

Dacey's LinkedIn
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39. Frank Foster: Persistence Pays Off After 100+ Interviews for this iOS Software Developer Feb 16, 2021

Frank got his start in tech working at Apple’s Genius Bar doing all sorts of IT things. He loved Apple products and when a store was opening up near him, he jumped at the opportunity to work there.
Realizing that a lot of IT work was within the PC world, he jumped from Apple to PC to see what it was all about. But ultimately he craved something that would be more fulfilling and creative.
As a gamer himself, he became curious about how to create video games. Virtual Reality was super hot and he dabbled with VR and trying to build experiences despite there not being a ton of tutorials or docs out there on how to.
He's a firm believer that you can teach yourself to do anything and in 2018, he joined as a mentor for Inspire Idaho, a program created for adults who weren’t able or interested in following traditional education paths to become app developers. He became a volunteer and mentor for the program and helped people on their journey of learning iOS development. As he helped folks learn, he too began to level up his coding skills.
He started with the question, what app do I want to build? And decided on an organization app for Dungeons and Dragons players. He learned how important passion is to your coding journey and tackled it piece by piece as opposed to getting overwhelmed by how big the project was.
When he finally felt ready to begin applying for software development roles, he applied to over 100 jobs. He maybe got 5 interviews out of all of those applications.
Ultimately he was hired by Gleason Technology as a Mobile Software Engineer in September of 2020! Frank finally landed his first software development role!
We talk about that recent journey of interviewing and submitting over 100 job applications and what it takes to overcome imposter syndrome and finally land your dream job. We acknowledge how overwhelming it feels to finally feel ready to apply for your first software engineering role and the value in learning the art of interviewing itself.
His past in retail helped him shine in his interviews in that his soft skills differentiated him from other candidates.
We talk about the value of asking questions. His advice is to admit when you’re feeling emotions of imposter syndrome those around you. Nothing good comes from struggling alone - it’s important to rely on our communities to navigate those feelings.
His advice is to find a project and commit to it. Every day, commit to learning one small thing. Reach out to your communities & know that we are all here to cheer you on.

Resources:

Steve Wozniak, What’s In My Tech Bag

Journey, the game

Inspire Idaho

Apple Learn to Code with Apple

100 Days of Swift

iOS Dev Happy Hour

Follow Frank of Socials:

GitHub

Twitter @ FrankeFoster

Frank’s website

Bonus Interview:

Greg Thomas: Code Your Way Up

Reach out to Greg to get the book: codeyourwayup@betarover.com

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38. JT Kaufman: Tips & Tricks on Breaking into Tech from a Former Recruiter Feb 01, 2021

JT Kaufman dabbled in a whole lot of things before learning to code. She worked as a nanny, at a restaurant, as a janitor, and a load of different office work. At some point, she found her way into recruiting and eventually specialized within tech recruiting, which allowed her to learn about all of the different areas of tech.

After realizing that she was burned out from recruiting, lost, and unhappy in general, JT took a massive leap of faith and moved across the country to attend a coding bootcamp. She is super creative and she discovered that learning to code would be a super creative form of expression. Code ignited passion for her from day one.

We talk about how to differentiate yourself from fellow bootcampers and how to get your foot in the door as a developer. As a prior recruiter, she learned tips and tricks on how to smartly apply for jobs. She knew not to just apply for every role out there but instead use the boolean technique. She landed a role and took those recruiting skills with her started out doing query construction with SQL. Instead of diving into React as so many bootcampers do, she specialized in Vue.js, which has allowed her to stand out as a candidate. And today, she is a Senior Software Engineer at Red Hat working on product vulnerability tooling.

Despite not necessarily “needing it,” JT is currently working to complete her Computer Science degree. She has loved the process of continuing her education and being challenged and pushed technically

She advocates for community and using Twitter, Slack, Discord, to find your community while learning to code. She shares tons of community resources for the listeners to check out!

Resources:

- Open Source Software Degree on GitHub

- Women in Tech chat online (but it’s by invite, if you DM JT, she’s happy to add you!)

- Frontend Foxes is a great group for learning frontend web technologies for women

- CodeBuddies Slack has tech-specific channels, social channels, and pairing sessions

- CodeNewbies Slack

- CodeTheDream the nonprofit that creates a bootcamp-like experience with more structure than solo learning and is free!

Socials:

Follow JT on Twitter at @heyJTK

Read her writing on dev.to

Connect with her on LinkedIn

Bonus Interview:

Jennifer Brazer, author of From Cubicle to Cloud: How to Start and Scale a Virtual Professional Service Business

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37. Cher: The Power of Resilience Jan 25, 2021

My guest today is a self-taught engineer currently working as a Principal Software Engineer at Apple. With 20 years of experience in web development, she attributes her skills and success to being “passionately curious”. She has a deep affinity for gaming and is a published video game journalist.

Her journey started when she was in middle school when her mom worked as an office administrator and brought home computer parts. Cher quickly became fascinated in taking things apart and putting them back together again.

She faced abuse and addiction early on in life and eventually dropped out of high school. She soon started doing sex work and stripping. It felt as though no matter where she went, that was her story. At that point, it felt entirely impossible that she was ever going to become a scientist or an architect and decided that if she was going to be used for sex anyway, she might as well be paid for it and do porn. She managed to escape that situation but as a result, she tried to end her own life and ended up spending 6 weeks in a mental institution.
Cher eventually got pregnant, which helped her stop using drugs and stripping. In need of a job, she applied for a front end developer role and landed one because, throughout all of these hard times, she had been tinkering and building live journal templates and had become the second google result for “front end developer” in 2006.
We discuss the sexism she faced when she started doing freelance work and quickly learned that clients did not trust or believe her to be both the designer AND the engineer. So instead had to pretend she wasn’t doing the backend work when she really was.

Cher couldn’t afford a lot of data for her phone plan and so developed a lot of opinions about mobile development and soon became a leader in that up and coming space. Because of that expertise, USA Today took an interest in her, and although she did not know how to whiteboard and flopped the interview, she demonstrated her passion and willingness to learn, and thus they took a chance on her and she got her big break.

She went on to work at many different companies as a software developer and at Apple today, she is paid fairly and the end of her poverty debt is near! Over the past 20 years, she has learned the power of grit and resilience. She has had to navigate so many difficult life situations to survive. She brings the lessons she learned from those challenges and is capable of zooming out and seeing things from a broader perspective with the resolve that she is capable of solving any problem.
Her life and story is beyond inspiring. It is packed with wisdom, advice, and an incredibly beautiful story of overcoming life’s largest obstacles. This episode is genuinely not one to miss!

Resources:

The Last Mile Changing Lives Through Tech

Follow Cher on Twitter

Cher’s website
We Belong Here Podcast:

Follow Lauren on Twitter @LoLoCoding

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