Open Source

Episode 22: Becoming a Machine Learning Engineer at Twitter

July 15, 2020 michaela Company Culture, Open Source, Women in Tech 00:41:53

In this episode, I talk to Jigyasa Grover, a machine learning engineer at Twitter. Jigyasa is my first data engineer, and so it’s great to learn from her about what her day to day work entails. But in addition, she is also very ambitious and tells me about her successful career path through internships and research projects.

We talk about:

  • what a machine learning engineer does, 
  • how to get started as a machine learning engineer,
  • open source and Google’s summer of code projects,
  • and her role at Facebook combing data and software engineering. 
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Episode 20: Fundamentally Changing How We Develop Software

June 9, 2020 michaela DevOps, Entrepreneurship, Monitoring, Open Source, Productivity, Startup 00:45:04

In this episode, I talk to Tudor Gîrba, CEO and co-founder of Feenk, a software consultancy. Over the last 10 years, Tudor researched new ways to develop software – called moldable development. In this interview, I did deep to understand what that exactly means, and how he started to work on a novel IDE that enables moldable developments. 

We talk about:

  • how reading code slows down software productivity,
  • building developer tools,
  • starting your own software company,
  • transitioning from consultancy to product company,
  • and applied research.
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Episode 15: How to Succeed in Building Developer Tooling with Peter Pezaris

March 31, 2020 michaela Company Culture, DevOps, Open Source, Productivity, Remote Work 00:57:47

In this episode, I talk to Peter Pezaris. Peter is the CEO and co-founder of a start-up called CodeStream. What’s interesting about Peter’s story is that CodeStream isn’t his first startup. CodeStream is one of the many companies Peter built. So, in this interview, we talk about his 25 years-long journey building tech startups and what he has learned along the way.

We talk about:

  • how he started his journey as a founder,
  • which technology changes he went through throughout the different tech start-ups,
  • the tech stack and architecture of the developer collaboration software CodeStream,
  • how he was able to build a team that stuck with him through four different startups,
  • and his advice for first-time founders. 
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Episode 13: Bad Tests Are Worse Than Product Issues with Dan Abramov

March 3, 2020 michaela Company Culture, Hiring, Open Source 01:04:16

In this episode, I talk to Dan Abramov. Dan is a developer at Facebook, working on the popular JavaScript framework React. Dan is also one of the most well-known person in the whole front-end developer scene and recently started working on his new side-project JustJavaScript.

We talk about:

  • how he got a job at Facebook,
  • his interview tips for getting into Facebook
  • the development mentality and the development practices at Facebook,
  • and his new project JustJavaScript that helps intermediate developers to become JavaScript experts. 
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Episode 11: Making Gatsby easy to understand with Laurie Barth

February 4, 2020 michaela Company Culture, Hiring, Open Source, Women in Tech 00:47:24

In this episode, I talk to Laurie Barth, a staff software engineer at Gatsby. Laurie is also a vivid conference speaker, tech blogger, and egghead instructor.

We talk about:

  • how she got this awesome position at Gatsby
  • her work as an open-source maintainer
  • code reviews and making sure to give valuable feedback
  • and growing a Twitter following.
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Episode 10: Done playing Microsoft’s corporate game with Suz Hinton

January 21, 2020 michaela Company Culture, Hiring, Open Source, Women in Tech 00:57:36

In this episode, I talk to Suz Hinton, about her transition from Microsoft to Stripe, mentoring and advancing one’s career and live coding.

We talk about:

  • her role and responsibilities at Stripe, 
  • how to understand what customers and users want,
  • why she left Microsoft,
  • how she now ensures the job and company culture matches her personality,
  • and about her style of mentoring junior developers.
  • Finally, Suz tells me all there is to know about live coding. 
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Episode 6: Making Git faster with Derrick Stolee

November 4, 2019 michaela Company Culture, Open Source 00:51:42

In this episode, I talk to Derrick Stolee, a principal software engineer at Microsoft who makes sure the Git version control system is lightning fast.

We talk about:

  • his career switch from being a professor to become a software engineer at Microsoft, 
  • what it means to contribute to open-source during your worktime for Microsoft,
  • how he improves the speed and performance of such a widely-used and mature software system as Git,
  • how to do code reviews via mailing lists,
  • and what it takes to become an open-source maintainer. 
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Episode 4: Getting a remote job at Auttomatic with Leif Singer

October 8, 2019 michaela Company Culture, Hiring, Open Source, Remote Work 00:47:41

In this episode, I talk to Leif Singer, an engineer at the fully remote company Automattic. Automattic is the company behind WordPress, a famous and powerful content management system with an estimated 75 Million user base. 

We talk about:

  • why he switched from academia to industry,
  • how he got hired without knowing the company’s tech stack,
  • why he worked for several months at Automattic before being hired,
  • how the Automattic creed, influences, and guides company values and mindset,
  • Automattic’s software engineering practices,
  • and how they fight technical debt during quarterly scheduled clean-up weeks.
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