Open Source

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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