The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source - CROSSOVER — CodeNewbie and Community (Interview)

Episode Date: October 3, 2015

Saron Yitbarek, creator of CodeNewbie and the CodeNewbie podcast, joined the show to talk about helping more people discover software development, embarrassing moments, lessons learned along the way, and more.

Welcome back everyone. This is The Change Log and I'm your host Adams Dekovianak. This is episode 176 and on today's show we're talking to the creator of Code Newbie, Saranya Bark. She's also the host of their podcast, Code Newbie Podcast. Code Newbie is a supportive community of programmers and people learning to code. Great thing. Saranya's doing a lot of fun conversation today. We had four awesome sponsors, CodeShip, TopTow, Harvest, and Imagix. Our first sponsor of the show is CodeShip.

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or you can decide to go with a premium plan later on and use our code, TheChangeLogPodcast, to save 20% off any plan you choose for three months. Again, that code is Thechangelogpodcast. Head to codeship.com slash thechangelog to get started. And now on to the show. All right, everyone, we're back. We've got a great show on up today. We've got Saron joining us, the host of Code Newbie.

Jared, we've been waiting for this show for a while. I think it started back as a ping, kind of, in a way. That's right. Tell us about that. Yeah, all the way back on January 4th, I think GitHub user Dr. Vince Knight wrote in saying, loving the podcast. Yeah, isn't that?

Must be a PhD. Must be a doctor. Smart guy. And he said, Over the past three years, I've gone from complete open source ignorant to humbly, shyly contributing to some projects. I still very much consider myself a noob and would have thought there are others like me. I think a neat episode could be an overview of getting involved with open source. And he goes on to suggest a show for noobs,

which I didn't really know exactly how to put that together for a while, so I kind of just sat on it. Finally, I thought, you know who's really good with noobs is Saran Yabarik with Code Newbie. So I just kind of said, hey, thanks for writing in. Maybe you could listen to Code Newbie. That'd be great. And then I just happened to at mention Saron on the issue at which point she chimed in and said,

oh, let's get together and have a show. So it was back in January? Yep, January. That was January? Well, his original issue was January. It hasn't been that long since you chimed in. I think it was July.

Okay. I was going to say, well, that's a long timeed in. I think it was July. I'm glad that you waited because I think the show's gotten a lot better. Good job waiting until we got better. Procrastination, FTW. I guess without further ado, since you've been chatting here, Saran, for those

who don't listen to your show or only listen to it a few times and don't know fully who you are, can you introduce yourself to our audience? Sure. I am Saran. I'm host of the Code Newbie podcast. And we actually do a lot of stuff beyond the podcast. But the idea came from really my own coding journey. I guess it's been a little over two years ago at this point. So when I first learned to code, I learned mostly on my own, you know, for a few months just in my apartment. I quit my job.

I did it full time. I did Treehouse and CodeSchool and a bunch of other resources that your listeners are probably familiar with. And it was sad and lonely and frustrating. And it was really hard to learn on my own. And then I applied and got accepted into a programming boot camp. And I did that for three months. And it was, you know, a great experience for me. I learned a ton. But what I really got out of a programming bootcamp. And I did that for three months. And it was a great experience for me. I learned a ton.

But what I really got out of it was the community. It was really just sitting next to a bunch of people who were just as excited, just as passionate, who were just as terrified as I was learning to code. And that's really where the value was. And I felt that to get that value, it cost me $11,000 in a total of six months without a job, which, you know, fortunately, I can afford, but a lot of people can't. And I really, hey, if you're out there and you're learning to code, what are you learning? What are you excited about? What are some languages? What are some resources that you'd like to share?

And people responded. And we did that for many months. And it kept growing and it kept building momentum. And it got to a point where I said, you know, these Twitter chats are great, but you can't really do in-depth conversations with Twitter chats. And so I said, huh, a podcast is a really good format for in-depth conversations. And so that's how the podcast got started. And then from there, we've started doing project nights. So once a week, we have a Ruby team, we have a JavaScript team, we have a Python team. And we actually started doing Saturday discussions. And we're doing a book club as well. And we're starting a new thing called Iron Coder where people challenge each other and take on little code katas and work together to solve them. And so the idea, yeah, it's really, really neat.

We're launching that one actually very soon. So by the time this goes on air, we'll have done a couple of them. And the best part is, you know, we're not an education team. We're not a, you know, we're not a school. We're a place where you can come and find support and you can work on things together. And we find these little excuses to bring people together. So that's what we're about. Very interesting. Very cool. I think, man, that was a whirlwind tour. Let's camp out a little bit. Yeah. I mean, you come a long way and it's really quite astounding, but

you mentioned Flatiron, you mentioned trying some code school and code academies yourself. Unlike many people, you're coming to this and like many, so there's many of us out there, but this isn't your first career. Yes. Maybe take us back a little bit.

Tell us what you did before you decided that you're going to be a code newbie. And then at the tail end of that, well, I'll just ask a follow-up, but just to lead into that is like, why would you even want to switch to this career? But start with, where have you been before? So that second question is really funny because very senior developers ask me that all the time. And I'm like, because it's awesome. So, you know, maybe, hopefully I won't be, you know, jaded and sad later on in my career.

But right now I'm still really excited. But to answer your first question, you know, when I was in undergrad, I thought I was going to be a doctor. And I did all the pre-med courses. I studied organic chemistry. I taught organic chemistry. I was a biochemistry a doctor. And I did all the pre-med courses. I studied organic chemistry. I taught organic chemistry. I was a biochemistry research fellow. I'm a published author. I've done a lot of stuff in the hard sciences. And then I think it was my end of my junior year, I actually shadowed a doctor, which I should have done much sooner.

And I realized that what I liked about science was the problem solving. And it was the figuring out like what really is going on and what caused this and how did this happen. And it wasn't so much the saving lives part, just me being very honest. And I thought, you know, I probably shouldn't be a doctor if that's not the part I'm really excited about. And so, you know, I thought, what the hell do I do now? And I'd always done journalism. I interned at an NPR member station in DC. I wrote for a college paper. I was an online editor for a college magazine. And so I decided to pursue journalism. And I worked at NPR for a short bit. I worked at

Discover Magazine. And in that time, I read the Steve Jobs book. And to me, that book really just changed my life because for the first time, technology was presented in a way that got me excited about creating. And I'd never, ever thought of myself as a creator when it comes to tech. I always thought of myself as a consumer. So was that his bio, the Walter Isaacson one? Yes. The ridiculously long bio. Yes, that one. And it was great because it was this guy who, you know, wasn't a very nice person, but he brought together design and emotions and storytelling and, you know, beauty and all these things that I could connect to, you know, having written stories and done a lot of media stuff with like the hardcore tech. And so I said, I need to get in on this.

I don't know what this is, but I need to be here. And so I worked at a few different startups doing everything that was not technical. And I did that for, I think it was two to three years. And I felt like every time I was hitting this wall where I couldn't do what I really wanted to do, I couldn't make anything because I didn't know how to make things. I couldn't even have a real conversation about UX and UI and anything because I didn't have those skills. And so I felt like if I wanted to make products and if that's the person I wanted to be, I really did have to learn to code. Yeah, because as I was just kind of back-challenging with Adam, the thought that crossed my mind when you said the Steve Jobs bio kind of inspired you is that he's famously not an engineer, right? Right.

He's a salesman and an innovator in many things. But, you know, someone criticized because he was not a software developer. He's a leader. That's right. I think that's what we need. You know, I think that, you know, something that you said a bit earlier, Jerry,

was like those who are already developers kind of ask the question to someone like Soran to say, what is it that you like about software development or engineering? And Soran, your reply was, it's awesome. It's so much fun. Yeah, I mean, and that's the thing. So right now, I actually work at Microsoft as a program manager and I was hired on not to be a developer, not to be a coder,

but to manage a program that I think we'll talk about a little bit later called Tech Jobs Academy. And recently, I've gotten to do a lot more software stuff. And I've gotten to both do product development, but also code. And what's really fascinating is I feel like having worked at startups, having done a lot of product-y stuff, I'm able to bring that to the table. But because I also know how to code, I can connect with our engineers much, much better than other people can.

And I think that it's not so much that... It's not that I feel like I need to be the best programmer and that's the goal. But I think that even being coding literate and having built enough and hopefully I plan on continuing to build my skills, I think that that perspective and that knowledge is incredibly, incredibly valuable when you're making business decisions in technology. where yes whereas there's somebody who has that wall which you said you kept hitting uh because you couldn't create you didn't know enough and you hit that wall with someone if you're trying to manage them and you're just like make the magic okay you're the magic man just make the magic and they're like well hey that's not how the magic works right right exactly so yeah it's it's really hard to do a good job managing something if you can't speak the language.

If you can't understand the process and the pieces, it's really hard to do that. So you got started on online training courses and yet you're here saying that it's awesome. And it sounded like those things were kind of false starts for you. Is that fair to say? Yeah, I mean, the thing with the online stuff is it helped me enough to know that I wanted to keep going. But I mean, I was honestly shocked at the difference between, you know,

learning online for a few months and being in a more structured program for the same amount of time. You know, I feel like I was able to skip, you know, nine years of what would have been very frustrating, very slow learning and condense it down to the things that I needed to know to be productive. So it's not so much that, and honestly, a lot of people that we interview on the Code to Be podcast are entirely, at least half of them are mostly self-taught, mostly using online resources and books. And I have so much admiration for those people because I think it takes, you know, a very specific determination and work ethic

and discipline and faith in yourself to be able to be productive and get a job purely on online. Yeah. Yeah. I've had a similar experience, not personally. I am a bit self-taught, although kind of formally trained in computer-y things and then self-taught on software development. But back when I was trying to learn software development, there weren't code schools. These are great things that we have. But what a lot of people that I talk to find

is that they go through those motions and they get the excitement and the kind of like that hit of adrenaline that I talk to find is, is that they go through those motions and they get the excitement and the kind of like that hit of adrenaline that you get, you know, um, but there's no comprehension that really goes with it. And so what the, and some people can just power through that. Like you said, that it's an amazing kind of characteristic for somebody that can go completely through that. Um, but others kind of need a structure. They need other people. And then with that, paired with an online course, with a Linda or a subscription to – I'm trying to think of the one. Treehouse. Treehouse, yeah.

Code School sponsored this show. Oh, yeah. Code School. Thank you. They're all great. We love Code School. We love them all. But cover all your bases there. CodeSchool, thank you. They're all great. We love CodeSchool. We love them all.

But cover all your bases there. It's a great adjunct in that sense. But for a lot of people, it's not going to take you all the way home. And I think that the big thing is just direction. I wrote a blog post, I think it was a couple months ago, called I Am Not a Tinkerer. And to me, I feel like those online resources are really, they're great for tinkers. You know, I think it's great if you want to try things and you're learning things. And it's okay if there isn't, you know,

a very specific goal and there's not a specific purpose. There's not a, you know, an end that you're trying to get to and you're just kind of following along. And I think that a lot of people are like that and that's awesome. I am not one of those people.

I know that about myself. I need to have a very clear purpose. I need to know why am I doing this in this order? When am I doing it? How long am I doing it for? I need to have that to make the most out of my learning. And to me, that was the missing piece. You know, I think that if I had a senior developer

or someone say, you should do this course, don't worry about that one, go to this one next. You know, if someone can kind of give me directions, I think then it would have been helpful. But for me, it was, it was really about the structure and the direction that was really valuable. I'm a hands-on learner myself. I need to have some guidance. I like team. I'm never, even though I work at home like you, Jared and Saran, I'm sure you, do you work from home? I'm assuming once in a while, once in a while. I mean, as a loner, so to speak, like my office doesn't have two desks in it. Right.

So I'm usually alone, but in that space, even though that's the case, I have a team, I have Jared, I have others around here that work with us and make this possible. We do. I love team and I cannot, I cannot take, I can't learn very well at least in uh in an isolated environment it doesn't work yeah yeah it's sad like it's just sad i just get sad when i'm you know on my own and then when things go well there's no one to high five you gotta high five yourself that's weird that's not fun yeah exactly exactly pictures of it put on the internet

just to prove that you're doing something. I've spent a little bit of time, I mean, I spent a lot of my career as a solo developer in my basement. And so I have stretches where I don't have a team and I'm okay with that. It's nice to be around people. It's also nice to be by myself. But what I miss out on is, I wonder, am I missing out on, could I be better, even as a developer or as a thinker or a problem solver, if I had somebody else that was riffing and jiving with me? And would I be learning faster? So some of the reasons why I listen to all the podcasts and I read all the blogs and stuff is I feel like I don't have that much of a community

physically there with me of people who are awesome developers that I'm just learning from constantly. So I can definitely feel the sense of need for a team. And I do like developing by myself and being kind of a solo. But I wonder, I'm always like,

is the grass really greener over there? Yeah. Sounds like perhaps it is. You know, I have my moments where I really like being alone, especially if it's on, if I'm working on a feature that I already know how to build, you know, tools I know

and I just, you know, put my headphones on and I go and it's wonderful. But when I'm doing anything new, tools I know, and I just put my headphones on and I go, and it's wonderful. But when I'm doing anything new, when I find myself getting frustrated, just having someone I can just tap on the shoulder and say, you just look at this for me. You don't even have to say anything. Just be my rubber duck. Just look at it and let me talk at you.

That alone is incredibly valuable. I like how you say that because I've learned over the years that, and maybe you'll lament with this, maybe you won't, but I feel like as soon as I personally say it out loud, whether it's, sometimes it's to the wall. Sometimes I don't have a ruby back there or whatever. But I feel like the moment you say something passionately from your conviction, from your heart, you believe it. It could be anything.

It could be describing how it should work and you get your own aha moment. You don't really need any sort of reciprocation from the person you're working with. So I feel like the moment you get a chance to speak out loud is when things happen. Or you think you have a great idea and then you say it out loud

and you're like, actually, when I say it out loud, that's a terrible idea. That's awful. Then you're embarrassed. You're like, I wish I didn't say that at all. Right. You think I'm just talking to a wall. Yes, exactly.

You know, something that you said, Saran, about your shadowing experience. This was back when you were, I think you said you were going to be a doctor. Is that right? Yes, I was pre-med. My parents were very proud of me. Parents were very proud, pre-med, shadowing. And you said that's when you hit this point where you were like, I know I don't like this thing. What was that like to be like, were you let down? Were they let down? Was it hard? What was the experience like trying to step away from, you know, that's a pretty ambitious and courageous,

you know, kind of career. Yeah, it was awful. It was really, really rough. Yeah. So I shadowed this cardiologist for a couple of times. Most of the time it was just him talking to patients. I just sat in the room and just listened. One time I actually got to scrub into a surgery. That was actually really awesome. I had to wear, you know, that big lead soup thing you wear to protect your private parts. Yes. I had to wear one of those. It was so heavy. That's when I realized how weak I was. And I had to just, you know, stand in the corner for like hours just watching them cut this guy's chest open and put a, what in the world is it called? I think it was a pacemaker in it. And it was insane. It was, it was like the craziest thing I ever saw. But even with that, I still didn't want to be a doctor. So, you know, at that point,

I was pretty convinced it wasn't for me. But it was really hard. You know, I felt like I worked so hard in college. I worked so, so hard. And by the time I graduated in four years, by the time I graduated, I had enough credits to get three full degrees. That's how hard I worked. And, you know, I was very active. I stayed up very late. I sacrificed my social life. And, and at the end of it, I was like, crap, I have no idea what I'm going to do now. And it was, you know, it was really disappointing for me. It was incredibly disappointing for my parents, especially when, you know, I went from well paying secure job as a doctor to journalist, you know, that wasn't, that was not fun. But I think that as sad as I was and as disappointed as I was, I knew that eventually I would figure it out. And getting through the,

you know, the crappy parts where you haven't quite figured it out was way harder than I thought it would be. But eventually I knew I'd get there. And I just asked, you know, my parents and, you know, my friends and all that to just be patient with me as I figured it out. But yeah, it was, it was hard because I was always, you know, among my family and my friends, I was always the one who did things right and who planned ahead and who was really organized and had her crap together. And then I just didn't. And dealing with that was, it was rough. But maybe you said this and maybe I missed it, but when did it, when did you actually find the software side of you? Yeah. So I found it, I guess. So I read the Steve Jobs book a year after I graduated college. And then I got my first startup job. Yeah. I think

it was actually just about a year after I graduated. And then I... Where was that job at? That was at Contently. Okay, still around? They're still around, yeah. Wow. I know. I say the name, people are like, oh, I think I've heard of that.

I'm like, yes, they made it. Or they're making it currently. Yeah. And I think it was two years after that where I actually started learning to code. So you ended up at Flatiron Academy, which is a 12-week program? Flatiron School

and yes, it was a 12-week program. 12-week program, full-time, $11,000 as you said. Huge jump there, right? Just jump in. Which kind of seems to be something that you just kind of do. You seem like you just jump in.

Because you got out of Flatiron on the other side of it, and not before long, you're doing conference talks, you're on the Ruby Rogues. Did it all move really fast once you got into Flatiron? No, it all felt very slow. I'm very, very impatient. So things never come as fast or as quickly as I want them to. But I'm very all or nothing when it comes to really everything that I do.

So if I decide I'm going to be a developer, I'm going to be a developer. And I'm going to be in as many places as I can. I'm going to be as involved as I can. I'm going to give everything I have to it. And so speaking and podcasting and CodeNewbie and all that just falls into the same bucket. What was the hard part for me specifically with the speaking was I applied to RailsConf, I think it was two months after graduating from the program. And I no way expected to be considered and to have my proposal taken seriously. I actually didn't even like my own proposal, but I submitted anyway. And for me, I knew that it was a step I had to take. I knew that the act of filling out the form and putting my idea on paper and pressing submit,

that was the act that I wanted to do because that for me was really, really, really hard. That was like my most imposter moment that I've had so far. And just, you know, when I think of a speaker, I think of someone who's an expert, who's been doing it for years. So when you look up to, I have, you know, very big expectations for that title.

And the idea that I dare submit myself to be one of those people was just a huge mental hurdle that I just knew I had to get over. And so for me, the real win wasn't the speaking. It was pressing the submit button. Wow. How did the speaking, it was pressing the submit button. Wow. How did the speaking go? So, um, I think I threw up the night before and, uh, then I got my period immediately after. So that was fun. Um, yeah, I, it was, Oh my God. I was so nervous. I was shaking the entire time. Apparently you can't tell from the video, which is great. And I found out that I have,

um, I do this nervous thing where when I, when I speak, I actually clench my butt cheeks really hard to the point where my left one twitches. So that's what I was like. You found this out while you're on stage? I did. I'm like,

why is it twitching? Oh, cause I'm clenching them cause I'm so nervous. Uh, so that's what speaking is like. I have to commend you on being so forward about things that could be embarrassing or probably are embarrassing. Yeah.

You know, whatever. Right. Yeah. Whatever. I mean, it's already happened. What are you,

what are you going to do? It doesn't come through on the video. So no one sees it twitching. Exactly. What a great place to have like a nervous tick, right? Like on your butt where no one can see. It's great. Good. What a great place to have a nervous tick, right? Like on your butt where no one can see. It's great.

Yep. Well, let's pause here. I know we want to dive deeper into the story of Code Newbie, where this came from, all that. But we have some awesome sponsors that make this show possible. And if you're out there and you're thinking, man, I love the changelog. I want to support you guys.

Well, one, we have memberships, but we also have sponsors. And we don't just put these on here to pay the bills. We put them on here because these are awesome companies we love, and we want you to love them too. So check them out. If you like what they're doing, support them, and that's supporting us. So let's take a break. You've heard me talk about TopTile several times on this podcast, and TopTile is by far the best place to work as a freelance software developer.

Well, they have this term elite engineer, and that defines the kind of software developer that works at TopTile. I had a chance to sit down and talk to Brendan Beneshot, the co-founder and COO of TopTile, and I asked him, Brendan, what is an elite engineer? Take a listen. An elite engineer for us is somebody who satisfies all the technical requirements that you would need in a great developer

if you're working at like a Google or Facebook. But then at TopTile, you have to add this extra layer on top of it to make sure that people are mature enough and professional enough to be totally self-directed.

So making sure that they take a tremendous amount of pride in their work and that they're accountable and very, very communicative. Because in remote freelancing, that's sometimes just as important as being technically competent. All right. If Brendan got you excited about being an elite engineer at TopTile. Head to TopTile.com slash developers. That's T-O-P-T-A-L.com slash developers to learn more and tell them the cheese load sent you. All right, we're back from that awesome break. We got Saran here. We've got embarrassing moments. We've got potential doctorates, new communities forming,

nervous twitches we didn't know we had. And then we got this new community, Code Newbie. And it's so thriving now. And you said earlier you're kind of glad you didn't come on earlier because the show's gotten better. But you've also grown the community quite a bit. But we like to go back to the beginning where things first, first began. And I think you said it started on Twitter. So maybe start there if that's where it began for you. Yeah, that's where it began.

I saw a lot of people doing Twitter chats. And if you don't know what a Twitter chat is, it's when you pick a time. We do ours on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. Eastern time. And you pick a hashtag. So our hashtag is CodeNewbie, C-O-D-E-N-E-W-B-I-E. And we tweet questions for one hour and anybody can answer. So we have a system where we'll say, you know, Q1 is what language are you coding? And then you respond A1. And that allows people to easily follow the conversation. And so we did that for a while. And when we started, you know, I had absolutely zero plans to start

a community or a podcast or team projects or any of that. I saw something that I thought was interesting. I saw something that I thought would help people. And so I just started tweeting. And I emailed everyone that I knew and I said, Hey, I'm starting this thing. You should totally jump in and join the chat. I'd love for you to tell your friends and tweet about it. And that's where it all started. And eventually it got to a point where it needed to really be its own thing, where people were using the hashtag outside of that one hour. And people would tweet us questions and would specifically would tweet questions using the hashtag and would have conversations around the hashtag. So I thought it makes more sense for CodeNewbie to have its own Twitter account and to kind of be its own thing.

And then we can talk about being a CodeNewbie full-time without it being directly tied to my account. And so that's kind of what happened next. And it's one of those things that I thought would last maybe a couple months, but it just kept going and people kept coming back. And people started adding it to their calendars and people were really looking forward to it. So that's how we got started.

Seems like you really struck a chord because there's so many more new developers now, and there even were a few years ago, some thanks to the bootcamp, some thanks to the incredible demand that we have in the industry, and also

because it's awesome, like you said. Did you know there are so many of them out there when you got started? Yeah, yeah, I did. I knew because I just being, you know, part of the Flatiron School and a part of the team there, like I knew, I knew the number of applicants who were applying. I'd done a good amount of research on other bootcamps and other online programs as well. And I knew their numbers. I knew how many people were looking to apply. I, I've seen the tweets, I've read the articles. So I knew that there were definitely enough, there was definitely enough demand to have a thriving community. I didn't necessarily think that I would be the one that started that community, but I knew that a community was there somewhere. Yeah. But you had a voice. I mean, you were, you had your, your conference talks to give you a voice and then you were also a regular on the

Ruby Rogues. I think you were gone for a while and you seem to be back now. Yeah, I got guilted. Yeah, I got guilted into coming back. Avdi, Avdi Grim sent me an email and he was like, yeah, I know you're really busy, but I really miss having you. It'd be really great if you came back. And I said, well, if Avdi asks, then I think I have to say yes. Right, can't say no to Avdi.

Then I came back. So let me speak to that experience a little bit because here you are, you're fresh out of code school, of a code school. And you have, like you said, you have a moment of imposter syndrome. You're very much a beginner when it comes to an experience of programming.

And then you're invited onto, or maybe you can even say how you came onto the show of a panel show of very expert developers. Can you speak to that experience? Yeah, that was very surprising. So as part of the bootcamp experience, we're expected to blog about what we learn. And the very first thing that I blogged was on a talk that was credited to Matsu who wrote Ruby.

But it was the wrong person. It was actually a talk given by James Edward Gray. And I wrote my reflection and my feelings about the talk. And it kind of went a little bit more emotionally deeper than I think I meant to when I first started writing it. And he read it, maybe it was like seven or eight months after that. And he said, Hey, I read your blog post. I really like it. It was the talk that you wrote about was actually by me. And I was like, Oh, that's equally awesome. And he saw my RailsConf talk, which came out by that time. And he saw my cartoon, which I drew to get into the Flatiron School. And then he invited me onto the show. And he said, I'd love to hear more about your experience and what that was like. So I came on as a guest to start. And around that time, they were starting this kind of three-month guest panel.

They called it, I think we called it like a rogue in residence program where they have different people coming on for three months at a time. And so they really liked the show that I did and they had me on for just a three-month period. And after that, they wanted to keep me on. So they asked me to become a full panelist. And that was, I think that was the second most terrifying thing that I've done in code so far. Because every week I had to show up and talk to these incredible people

about stuff I didn't really know about. And try to follow along as much as I can and try to follow along as much as I can and try to be, you know, to be present without sounding too stupid and too beginnerish. And it was, I mean, it was really hard. It was really, really hard. But just like submitting that talk, I did it not necessarily because I enjoyed it every week, but because I knew that that was a really big step for my career. And I knew that it would help me in the long run. So I kind of took my feelings.

I put them in a drawer and I closed it. And I said, you just stop it. I can't deal with you right now. I have work to do. My husband likes to tell me to punch my feelings in the face. So that's kind of what I did. I punched him in the face until they subdued. Love that. Love that. Punch him in the face.

Punch him in the face. I mean, probably what you had to tell yourself and maybe you see it now is that actually a beginner's perspective is a breath of fresh air to people who have been in the industry for a long time. And when you came on that show, it was an angle. It was a new perspective on things that nobody else there could bring. Because as an expert, you can't feign fresh eyes. You don't have them. It's very difficult even to empathize and go back. You try. And so maybe

that explained a little bit of your success there. So very good job punching your feelings in the face and really just facing the fear. Because that gave you a little bit of a platform and a visibility as a very respected newbie in kind of the greater software scene. So then you decided Twitter's not quite good enough. We want deeper conversations. I'm going to turn this into a podcast. Can you speak to some of your early podcasting?

Yeah, sure. So we do our twitter chats very differently from how other people do them so if you follow other people's twitter chats what they usually do what they usually do is they'll bring on a guest and they'll do an interview with the guest using the hashtag and then other people can chime in and ask questions as well and And I think that's just a terrible way of using Twitter. I don't think Twitter is meant to have interviews. I don't think you're meant to have deep conversations. I think you're meant to tweet and have little conversation starters. And so what happened was we had all these really great conversations happening, but they weren't being explored. They weren't being captured. There wasn't a way to really dive deep. So, and you know, I previously I worked at NPR and I worked

at NPR member stations. And so I always wanted to get back into audio. And I thought, great, I'll, this is, this is like how I'll do that. I'll start my own podcast. And the, the podcast setup process was really, was really hard. I don't know how it was for you guys when you decided on what tools you were going to use. It's hard. Yeah, it's really hard. Yeah, it's not easy. I mean, it never gets easier, but it was hard in the beginning.

It's still hard now. Yeah, and my husband does, he's a techie as well. He's not a developer, but he loves technology, does a lot of tech stuff and he loves, you know, audio and video editing and knows a ton about that stuff. And so we spent almost every evening for about a month trying out different tools and different recording software and different ways to upload audio. We tried so many different combinations before we found the one that worked and before we found the one that we really liked. And, you know, I wanted to make sure my audio sounded as high quality as it could.

And I wanted to make sure the guest's audio was as good as it could be as well. And so there's just a lot of trial and error. And now that we have a process set up, it's fairly straightforward. But I think it was two weeks ago, he went to visit some family in Florida. And so I had to do one of my interviews on my own. And we usually run all of the server and the upload and all that stuff on his computer. And this time we had to do it on mine. So we had to redo all that setup on my computer. And there were just so many pieces. Like I'd forgotten how many pieces there were to get it to work. And a lot of people ask me, you know, I'm looking to start my own podcast. What equipment do you use?

And I have, you know, this set email that I've just, you know, copy and send out to people. And there are a lot of steps to it. So it was really hard, but I really wanted to do it. And I love just the excuse of getting to talk to so many incredible people from all over the world doing really interesting things and being able to just sit and ask questions. That's just, I mean, that's such a great job to have. You just sit and you're the one that knows the least and everyone loves that, you know, and getting to really ping people about their lives. It's awesome.

I'm curious to know a bit more about the tools and the pieces to your process. I'll tell you to tell that story that you told us in the pre-call if you don't mind, but I'd like to start with the process if you can. Sure. So we use Mumble. Do you guys know Mumble?

I don't know Mumble. Mumble. So it's basically like a Skype. And it was actually created for gamers. So a lot of gamers use it when you're, I don't know how games work, but I assume there's a lot of people and they need to talk to each other sometimes. Oh, yes. So they use it for that.

Yeah. I think that's how that works. And so a lot of people have repurposed Mumble for podcasting for really two reasons one there's a record button directly on mumble and when you do record it records your local copy not what comes through the internet which is nice so you don't get that you know that pre-pro that processed stuff right and then two it records in multi-channel so when the guest is recording they're recording their local stream separate from your internet stream. So it's super easy.

It's just one place that we don't have to open up different software to do the podcast. So you record everybody then or everybody records themselves? Yes. Everyone records everyone. Yep, exactly. And so that's what we use for that. And so we run the Mumble server, usually off of my husband's computer. And then we have them connect to us. And then we use, do you know Pydio? No.

It's a program for Linux that does really easy file uploads. And so we have that also set up on Ubuntu on his computer. And then that's where people upload stuff as well. And then for editing, we use Audition. And so it's not so much that these pieces themselves are complex. It was more about... So for Mumble, one of the other benefits to it is you get really, really granular control over your audio settings. And we had to figure out what the right settings were. And it took a lot of trial and error to figure out what the right settings were. And the very, very first podcast episode we did, we did not have the right settings at all.

And luckily, the person that I did it with is actually a person who started the Twitter chat with me way back when. And his name is Carlos Lazo, really great guy, really great developer. And when we did it, I picked him, one, because he's a great story and he's awesome. But also because I knew that if I had to rerecord or if anything went wrong,

he'd be the most understanding person. And so when we interviewed the first time, all the settings were terrible. We had to rerecord the whole thing, threw it away. The second time that we did it, he sounded fine, but I sounded like crap. And so I had to basically redub myself, which was really awkward because it was, you know, over an hour's worth of a conversation. And I had to fake all the laughing and all the sighs and the pauses and the breaks. And I also wanted to time it so that the timing

kind of just fit in with the existing time. And so I did that. And then my audio was still totally wrong. And I was basically clipping the entire time. And so I did that and then my audio was still totally wrong and I was basically clipping the entire time and I said to myself, I can't believe I have to do this a third time. So I did it again and I had a transcript of everything I said

and I'm just like... I was like, we are getting this right. This is drive at its best right here. Right. I mean, you really wanted to do this show. Doing it again. I really wanted to do it well. And so, you know, I'm doing it and I'm just going,

yes, that was great. Ha ha ha. And it sounds, oh, it sounds so awful. And I put it out and for the most part, people liked it, but then I got this one tweet that was like, that sounded really scripted. And I'm thinking, that's because that was like that sounded really scripted and I'm thinking that's because it was it was totally scripted

partially scripted it was dub scripted this is based on a true story right that's how I should have introduced it darn oh that would have been great what would be great would be like a b-sides where you release another track only you change all of the things

that you say to make his answers be completely ridiculous. It would be part of the greatest hits. That's going to be Cone to Be podcast number two. And it will just be taking the interviews and making them sound ridiculous. I think my guests would really like that. I think so. I think the listeners probably would.

I've got to give you credit because I just recorded like a three second redub, didn't I, Adam? Yes. And I couldn't do three seconds. I'm like, this is pathetic. He even had the visual to go with it because it was a redub for a piece that he did on video. And the audio wasn't perfect, but what he said was good.

And so if he can get the rhythm right and he can get the enunciation right the enthusiasm right it would be a win right it was kind of tough wasn't it together yeah and then you're like can you do it again i'm like i'm gonna be here all night like imagine doing an hour show oh it was grueling do you have it scripted jared what do you mean i mean do you know what you said oh do i know could you give us a tease right now what you said no that was tuesday i flushed my ram so i've rebooted since then well that's very interesting i mean it's an interesting way to start because uh i mean i think there are so many people out there that would love to to do something with

podcasting because it is a fun medium. Like you said before, it's really fun to be the person to ask the questions. And you get to really meet a lot of interesting people depending upon the show type that you have. And I think there are so many unknowns. There are so many technological unknowns. There are so many audio unknowns. There are so many personal unknowns. Like, can I actually perform can i

actually do it three times you know things like that yeah well what's interesting is um i so in the beginning so when i went to nbr i wrote the scripts which means that i interviewed the guests ahead of time i wrote all the questions i did a a little research. And the host, I wrote for Michelle Martin for the show, Tell Me More. And she would, you know, read from that script and then, you know, ad lib as much as she wanted to. And so I went into the podcasting world thinking I needed to write a script every time. And I did, you know, I did like an hour of research on every guest, wrote out the questions, etc. And it honestly didn't go as well as I wanted. And over time, I learned to trust myself and I learned to... And right now, I don't script. I don't even... I'll do a quick Google search a podcaster when I know very little about the guest, when I know just enough to ask the right questions, but I don't know the answers. Because then I can naturally take the conversation where the listener wants it to go

because I'm reacting and I'm not planning. And that to me was really surprising. I'm with you there because I've been in the same position. I've had other shows before besides this show here, The Change Log. And there's times when we script it just to give us guidelines not to script it right exactly and i think that's that's the better ground like if you're going to do anything give yourself some got some guardrails to like operate around you know like jared and i we prepare sometimes a couple days in advance

sometimes you know 30 minutes in advance of the show and it's not so much like preparation like we know who the guest is we know what they're about but we haven't sat down together as co-hosts and sunk and figured out like okay this is my angle this is your angle how are we you know sank sunk sunk up i don't know synced synced up sounds like you know we're in a boat and we're gonna we sunk we saw, which sometimes we may do that. Scratch that and make sense of it. Synced it up. We synced it up.

And then, you know, but, but the thing is, is like, I did the same thing with another show I had called Founders Talk, where I would do an hour, an hour of research and I would figure out the backstory and figure out all these different details. And I did have certain questions I did want to script because I wanted to ask a certain way, but I still let the conversation play into it. Just go. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so I knew how I wanted to ask the exact question, but how I worded it, when it all came out, the question kind of came out the way I scripted it, but the way I spoke that fragment of the show wasn't scripted.

Yeah. Yeah. So. And go ahead. But I was going to say, like, there's a lot of technical pieces. There's a lot of like there's so many nuances to podcasting that make it a tough job, but at the same time, a very fun and rewarding job. Yeah. I think that people underestimate how many hours it takes. I don't know how long it takes for, for you guys, but between booking the actual interview, editing and publishing,

I think we spend about six to seven hours a week on it. Um, and you know, for, for our editing, we spend between two and three times the length of the show. So if we have, you know,

an hour show, well, there's your, there's your three hours. Um, and, and I think that doing that consistently is hard. And I know that a lot of people have started podcasts and kind of fallen off because they do it the first time and realize, Holy crap, there's, I gotta,

I gotta process this and I gotta put it in all the podcast directories and I have to publish it on the website and I have to do show notes. And there's, there are a lot of pieces that go into it. And then there are people who don't care about those pieces and they do a quick 20 minute show and they don't do any editing at all. I'm not one of those people. I'm way too much of a perfectionist to be okay with that. And I think if you do it that way, it's less work. But even then, it's definitely a commitment. So there's two sides to that coin. We can go deep, deep into this topic. And I've kind of been on both sides where I used to edit I used to edit ums ahs I used to make it perfect and then after a while I was like this is going to kill me this is going to burn me out it made me start hating podcasting because it was so much work

and I started to live with the uh like I told you before like if your husband steps in when he comes back yeah that's okay we're gonna we're gonna roll with it let's let's uh embrace our mistakes so to speak and there's a term in radio called live to tape. And it's essentially just take what you do live and put it right on tape and not doing much editing or any editing at all. Maybe you do some EQing or if it's visual, you do some color correction or whatever. But it's pretty much what it is is what it is. It's going through the door. And I like that approach with the option to edit a little bit.

But not the ums and the ahs. And not to make like Jared's question come perfectly after mine at the perfect, you know, half a second or millisecond later. It's more like just to make sense of the matter. So that it is a good show and it's listenable. And that's sort of our angle when we come to our edits. And our edits, just so everybody knows we're probably about at least one time, the length of the show. Cause you got to listen to it.

That's pretty good. But we watched the timeline. We know that where the breaks are at and we've gotten to the point where we know. And I would say maybe at least the length of the show and a half or, you know, twice, twice the length of the show.

So if it's an hour show, two hours edit, but that's, that's rare to our edit rare. So when you do you all timestamp and know where the breaks are and stuff? Are you doing that right now as we're speaking? Well, when the breaks, so we take some sponsor breaks during the show. I just look at the sound wave and say, okay,

well, there's emptiness there. I listen to it. I jump around the timeline and I just sort of know how long, like, for example, where four minutes passed taking a break, for example. We should have taken a break four minutes ago. And I know when the breaks are in our show. So because of that, it's easier for me to sit, you know, to sit in the editor chair later on and say, well, a break should have been around this space here. Let me jump to that part of the timeline and listen. And that's where I don't have to listen to the whole show. and say, well, a break should have been around this space here. Let me jump to that part of the timeline and listen. And that's where I don't have to listen to the whole show.

I just listen to like two or three minutes of different segments. And I mean, that's sort of, I think you just kind of get that through experience. Just like with programming, you know, you get with experience, you know, new superpowers, so to speak. Yeah. So for the ums and ahs, we generally, we don't edit them out unless they're distracting. So if we

have a speaker who just does it so often that it takes away from the message, then we'll start removing those to just gather the message a little bit better. And we also kill a lot of dead air. Oh, it's funny. So as we're talking about audio editing, my husband's about to walk in.

Hey, babe. You want to say hi? We'll edit this all out. Nah. We'll leave it in there. Leave it in there. That's the whole point, right? Well, we just entered him anyways.

He kind of is a cameo. He is a cameo. You want to say hi real quick? This is the Change Log podcast. You can say hi. He ran away. he ran away he ran away he got really scared and then he ran away i mean that's a sign to take a break then let's uh let's take that break i said we were late for to listen to a sponsor again we love our sponsors they're super awesome and if you want to support us support us by supporting them uh when we come back uh there's a couple more questions i'd like to talk to you about around your podcast and it's

really well not just your podcast but like where you're going with code newbie and i think you might have the same questions jared i'm not i'm gonna assume that but uh then we have another topic we'll dive into but let's let's start there when we come back from this break and we'll go from there so we're back for those out there we'll go from there. So we're back. For those out there working solo or on a team tracking time, you thought you were wrapping up a project until the client or your boss asks for a new feature at the last minute and here you are stuck. You're not sure how much time you're spending on every feature,

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we are back with saran code newbie this great story i am jared i don't know about you but i'm amazed honestly i'm i'm so excited to have her on the show, and I'm so excited about this story. It just doesn't seem to get any better, I guess. So, Ron, you said with Code Newbie, when it started, you did some market research. You kind of knew the opportunity. Jared, you asked the question about how wide and vast the developer space is and what opportunities you might have to educate and teach and lead newbies. So I'm wondering, I don't really know how to ask the question, but I kind of want to open up the topic of the business side, right? There is some sustainability. We've talked about open source sustainability on the show before.

There's some sustainability to what you're doing. And I'm kind of curious with that research and with what you're doing, if you thought about how can you do this for not just now, the future. And so what are some of the things you're doing to make this sustainable? Yeah. So I'm very, very lucky to have such a great mostly volunteer team. So my husband actually. So I got to a point in the podcasting where I got really annoyed editing.

And I looked at him and I said, I'm about to just hire. Because I used to do all the editing myself. And I said, I'm about to just hire... Because I used to do all the editing myself. And I said, I'm about to just hire somebody to do this for me. And he said, no, don't worry about it. I'll do it myself. So every Sunday evening, I poke him and I go, remember how you do the podcast this week?

So I'm very lucky to have him take care of that part for me. We also have a volunteer community manager. All of our team project leads are volunteers. We actually just opened up two local in-person Code Newbie meetups. We have one in Austin, and we have one that we announced very recently in Atlanta. And those are also volunteer organizers. So I'm so, so lucky that everyone, for the most part, everyone that I'm working with and that has helped came to me. And it wasn't me saying, you know, I need a team lead for this. Who's available? It was them saying,

hey, I really want to get involved. And I want to help out. I want to bring this to my community. I want to bring this to JavaScript. I want to, you know, I want to take on a leadership role. What can I do? And so I think that, you know, when you asked about market research and this community, I think that there's such, there's so many people who are excited about making that transition and so many people who are just really excited and really passionate to be creators for, you know, possibly the first time in their lives and getting involved is, you know, it's a huge, it's a huge honor for them. And I think that's a huge part in the sustainability question. We also just did a Patreon account. So we do accept, you know, donations if anyone's interested in supporting. It's patreon.com slash codenewbie. And we also do sponsors on the podcast itself. So those resources have been really helpful. I think that for me, the biggest question has been, you know, where does CodeNewbie go? What is it going to become?

And it took me, honestly, a really long time to really understand what it was. You know, when I told people about CodeNewbie, a lot of people assumed that it was ed tech. You know, they said, oh, you can turn it into an education startup. And that always made me very uncomfortable. And it wasn't until recently that I understood that better. And I think it's because we're not really solving an education problem. There is not a lack of resources

when it comes to learning to code. There's a lack of empathy and community and people. Right, exactly. And so the problem that we're solving is not education, it's loneliness. It's just that feeling of being completely overwhelmed by this incredible thing that you want to do and you feel like you can't. That's the problem that we're solving for. And once I was able to crystallize that and really focus on that, it became about making sure that the space we've

created, the community that we've created continues to be incredibly positive. When I tweet from me, about like half the tweets from Code Newbie come from me and the other half come from our community manager. When I tweet on Code Newbie, I take on a very specific persona. I am the ultimate cheerleader. You know, any tweet that I have, it's my responses are filled with exclamation points and smiley faces. And, you know, we try to celebrate all of the little wins, all the big wins. And it's really, really important for me to be overly positive and overly enthusiastic. And that has really, that has really defined the community in every aspect of what we do.

And so I think that as far as sustainability, it's about being very clear about who we are and what we want to do and continuing to nurture that. Do you have an end game? Do you have a master goal that you're trying to reach? I do and I don't um my master goal is to is to give anyone who wants to learn to code a group of people that they can lean on that they can reach out to a group of people who will cheer them on who will share resources who will help them get unstuck who will help them feel less alone the way that we do that is going to change with the needs of the community. So, you know, we did the podcast in response to this need of diving deeper

into conversations. We started the team projects a couple months ago in response to the need where, you know, when you learn to code on your own, you are not, you know, by virtue of being on your own, you're not in a collaborative setting. You're probably not doing pull requests and code reviews. You probably don't, you know, you don't have a Trello board. You don't have a lot of these very essential tools that are part of being a professional developer. And so we created this team projects

to create this very, very friendly, collaborative experience where you do have to do code reviews and you have to do pull requests and you, you know, you have to contribute and you have to pick up an issue. And that was a response to a need that we saw. So I think that the needs of the community will involve. And our goal is to make sure that we're there to make sure everyone is happy and learning.

How do you feel that's been going so far? You've obviously grown quite a bit beyond just yourself, even just looking at your blog. I mean, I don't see on on here at all, Saran. You have so many contributors. Kaya Thomas, Philip Gray, Jamal Hanson, Jonathan Cullen, Farish Kashif, and just so many people writing. And it already seems like such a vibrant community. I'm curious if there's a language divide. I see you have Ruby Monday.

Obviously, you have a background in what you've been taught in Ruby on Rails, I'm assuming. There's Python Thursday. And there's Code Newbies in all these different camps. And if you're a code newbie learning Java, maybe you still might feel alienated. Have you tried to bridge those gaps? Yeah, I mean, there are

many different ways in the community where you can feel excluded. I think that language is definitely a big one. I think in the beginning, especially for the podcast guests, my network specifically is definitely a big one. I think in the beginning, especially for the podcast guests, my network specifically is in the Ruby community. So I honestly didn't even notice it,

but I ended up having a lot of Ruby developers in the beginning of the show. And I think someone called me out on that on Twitter, and I was like, crap, I need to not do that. So I said, okay, I will not have a Ruby developer for the next 10 shows. And I kind of gave myself a little quota. And now I think that we've had slightly more front-end developers Now I got to get back to the back end. So, you know, I'm

constantly thinking of, you know, making sure I have a diversity of people when it comes to, you know, race and gender, but also skill set and experience and age and background and all these different things. So I think that it's really, really hard to have a community where 100% of the people you want to reach out to are being catered to. A big one for us is also time zones. Everything that we do is very, very US-centric. And I've had a lot of people tweet at us and say, Oh, it'd be really great if we could start a Twitter chat, like have two Twitter chats, you know, one in the morning and one in the evening. So people in different parts of Europe can join in. And for a while, I really wanted to, I wanted to cater to that. And I really wanted to get as many people into it as I could. And I find that that is, it's really hard. It's really hard to make everyone happy.

And so what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to listen as much as I can and to understand what the major pain points and the major subjects are and build around that. And so for us, US time zones are obviously the easiest for me, the easiest for most of our team. And so we're probably going to continue to be US centric for a while, unfortunately. Ruby, JavaScript, and Python are three languages we picked because those were the three languages that most people were learning. And so eventually if we get big enough and there's enough demand for a Java or a Swift or whatever it is. Yeah. And actually Swift is one I would really like to start because I know a lot of people are looking into that. I'm open to it, but it's a matter of, you know, with limited resources and this being a part-time thing for me,

how can I best serve the community with what I have? Yeah. So part-time kind of rings a bell because you do have a full-time job. This is not your day job. It's my night job. It's your night job. So you have two jobs going. And one of them, interestingly, is at Microsoft. And I'm trying to pull up the title Tech Jobs Academy. Yep. Can you tell us about your work with Microsoft?

Sure. So that role I got directly because of CodeNewbie. A person, Tom Black, who works at 18F in DC had been keeping up with CodeNewbie and the work that I've done. And he found out about this position and he emailed me and said, hey, I've seen the work that you've been doing for the coding community.

There's a position where they're starting a technical training program, a boot camp style technical training program. It's four months. It's full time. It's free. It's serving underemployed and unemployed New York City residents,

which sounds very similar in spirit to what you're doing with Code Newbie. So if you're interested, I'd be happy to recommend you. And I looked at that and I got, and I looked at it and I said, I cannot believe this is a job. I can't believe that the thing that I'm doing on the side is a job that I can get paid for and have the support of a really big tech company for. So I was incredibly, incredibly excited to interview and to take that position.

So yeah, it's a four-month program. We're doing it in partnership with CUNY, which is the community college system in New York, and with the city government. So I think it was a year ago, the city government pledged $10 million to help in workforce training and specifically to get our residents and to get them tech skills that were valuable and that would help them be employable and to get good, high paying, secure jobs. And it was a $10 million fund called the Tech Talent Pipeline. And we're one of the projects in a portfolio of projects who are working towards that mission. And so, you know, it's four months, it's full time, it's free. We've been doing a lot of community work and community outreach with a lot of organizations who are working in a very similar space of reaching these members.

And it's been really interesting to me because my network is primarily in dev. It's in tech, but on the coding side of tech. And a lot of my networking that I do is online. I tweet all the time. I love Google Hangouts. And I love just online communication for the most part. And so this was an opportunity to actually talk to people who were on the ground, who were a couple streets away, and to meet with them and to look them in the eye

and get to really see what they were doing very hands-on. And that to me was very different and really incredible. And I feel so honored and amazed at how much work is being done to help other people get jobs and to find their passion and to launch a new career specifically in tech. So that's what that's about. Sounds like a great gig. Yeah, it's awesome. It is. So that's what that's about. Sounds like a great gig. Yeah, it's awesome.

It is crazy that that's actually a job though. I know. I looked at that. It's one of those jobs where I thought, maybe there's something interesting like this that I would get to in a couple of years. But to be able to do it now, at this moment, at this point in my career,

it came a lot sooner than I expected. But it's been, it's been great. So how did you leave or how did you deal with kind of leaving the coding world to a certain degree to take a role like this? Sadly, I left it sadly. It was, it was kind of, it was weird and it was weird to explain it. Um, because I don't know, I felt like people would think that I was abandoning code, that I was only going to be there for a short amount of time. And it wasn't that at all. Um, to me, this was an opportunity to impact lives in a very, very, very tangible way. Um, and to throw myself into something that I basically do in my spare time for free. And so that's really where the pull came from. But I was very clear with my team that at the

heart of it, I see myself as a developer first and foremost. And I want to make sure that I'm maintaining those skills and that I'm still getting to code as much as I can. And actually, for the past, I think, three weeks, I've been coding like 80% of the time that I've been working. So that's been really great. Yeah. But it's been... I was worried about it. I think people took it better than I thought.

And I think that people really understand what I'm passionate about. And they're more happy for me than they are disappointed that I'm not in a specifically a coding-only job. So what about Code Newbie with regard to Tech Jobs Academy? Are there synergies there? Are there conflicts of interest? Is there anything like that that you feel between the two institutions? Yeah, it's very different, but the spirit is very similar. So, you know, for me, a lot of the people in the Columbia community come from very, very different backgrounds and have very different experiences. And we have dancers and teachers and truck drivers

and, you know, stay at home moms and dads. And we have, you know, veterans and we could just have so many different types of people. And one of the things that most of them have in common is that they're using code as a way to improve their lives. And so in that way, I feel very connected to that mission of helping people improve their lives, you know, provide for their families, build better futures by having a really exciting career that they're passionate about. And so, you know, my favorite parts of meetings that I get to have with the city and with CUNY with other Microsoft team members is when I get to say, you know, as someone who went through this process of going through a three month boot camp and learning how to code, this is what it's like.

And I can bring a perspective that really no one else at the table can bring. And I think that is incredibly valuable. And being able to not just speak on my experience, but to speak to the experiences of all the people, or as many people as I've talked to in our community, has been just a really, really great

synergy. This also introduces me to something I had no idea existed, which is Microsoft New York. That's a thing. I thought Redmond was Microsoft, but, which is Microsoft New York. That's a thing. I thought Redmond was, that was Microsoft, but apparently there's a New York. Yeah, we actually have two buildings.

We have our main building in Times Square, which is beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful. And then we have our Microsoft Research Center, which is in the Flatiron District. And we actually, so my team is the tech and civic engagement team. And our job is to engage with the city So my team is the tech and civic engagement team.

And our job is to engage with the city and with the government on issues like civic tech and politics and education and city planning and just a lot of citizenship type things. And so this is one of our education initiatives that we're doing. And we actually don't work in either one of those buildings. We work out of this co-working space called Civic Hall, which we're one of the sponsors for. And Civic Hall is a co-working space for people who do civic tech. And it's such a great room of people who are in all different, you know, people who do more politics and policy and that side of things. But then there's also like developers and designers and more tech people, too. So that's where I get to spend my days. Cool. You get to cross new paths with the Code for America people?

Yeah, we actually had, I think they had a Code for America summit recently, like a month or two ago, and it was at Civic Hall. So, yeah. Very cool. So are you a NYC native or are you a migrant? I'm an immigrant and a migrant. I think I can be both, right? I don't know.

Yeah. So I was actually born in Ethiopia. And then I came to the U.S. when I was almost three years old and lived in the D.C. metro area for most of my life. And then I moved up here to the New York City area four years ago. Very cool. Immigrant and a migrant. That's quite an accomplishment there. That's my biggest accomplishment. You think so? I don't know.

You're stacking them up here. Might be a good point for us to take our final sponsor break, hear from another one of our awesome sponsors. If we come back, we will continue the discussion and of course, close up with our awesome closing questions.

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We love going deep with our guests. And Saran, it's just so easy to just talk to you. I love this conversation, honestly. It's great talking to you. You guys rock. Thank you. Thank you. This is the most conversational podcast i've done

i really like this style awesome it's fun awesome well speaking of style i like your style and i like what you're doing with microsoft and during this because this last piece if you didn't notice as a listener um and as a guest obviously um i was um I was sort of taking a backseat because Jared got great questions. I love some of the direction Jared takes the show sometimes, and I just wanted to sit back and listen. And while I was listening, I couldn't help but think that the synergy that you described and that Jared kind of pulled you into is that the thing that you're doing at Microsoft

now and what you're doing at Code Newbie is so close. I'm curious if you think, because Microsoft does like to acquire things, if they would ever sort of like acquire CodeNewbie or empower you to and employ you to build CodeNewbie, like if that's a thing and if you would do it. Yeah, that's something I honestly hadn't thought of before, which is kind of surprising because I think about that kind of thing all the time. But I think that the reason why I didn't think of that is because at the core of it, Code Newbie is a community.

And acquiring a community feels funny. You know, it really feels funny to me. Maybe adopting. Maybe adopting, yeah. It's know supporting yeah i like the adopting because you're right they couldn't they couldn't acquire but they could empower you to because when we ask the question of a sustainability um you know for example with node um you've got companies like joint supporting node for years and other companies so there's there's definitely this and jared you can lament to this as well.

VMware supported Redis for a time. And it wasn't out of goodwill. Obviously, they had a vested interest in Redis, but they weren't, therefore, running the project. They were just letting Antires, I can't remember his real name. Antires. Felipe Salvatore. Salvatore, yeah, thank you. they were just letting uh anti-res i can't remember his real name yeah anna res uh felipe salvatore salvatore yeah thank you they were just letting him work on it and so maybe it'd be more like that relationship not like this is our thing now but like we love you we love what you're doing

we love this community you know yeah like a 501c3 or a 501c6, I think. There's an option for it. I forget which C it is, but something that makes it not so much that it's not a real thing. I'm not belittling by any means by saying that. But giving you this layer of the same support that you said you love by going there and doing what you're doing. Because you said, I can't believe there's a job doing this. And I think what I thought was kind of funny when I was sitting there listening was like, you've already got the job. You already have the job, right? Now you're just going for Microsoft. Yeah, that's true.

I'm doing the job in a more official capacity with definitely more support. But yeah, I would totally be open to that. I definitely see it as being, at the very least, like a 20% project or something that I do for part of the time. And I definitely see, like, Microsoft is so invested in the community, and we do a lot in terms of supporting, specifically in New York, we do a lot

on the team with supporting local hackathons and organizations and community members and things like that. So I definitely see this fitting into that portfolio. You know, on that note too, just, I see this happening too. I see Microsoft commercials and there's a time when

i was like i just want them to come back in a good way and this is like four or five years ago and i think they have been coming back there's a there's a side of microsoft that's like uh this corporation and there's like this product side and there's this the side that you're on which is like supporting and loving developers and like rethinking the way they think about as a corporation about technology and the people that make it. And I love Microsoft. I think they're doing great. I love what you're saying here about how they're supporting the community.

And I think listeners out there, I don't have a ton of knowledge about it, but I'm just for Microsoft. I think it's great what they're doing. And I'm excited about that because we need more people like that, more things like that happening. Yeah, I totally agree. And it's funny because when I first heard about the position and the program, I was honestly kind of skeptical. When I think about a really big tech company, regardless of who it is, doing a program like that, I thought to myself, there has to be an angle. There has to be a thing where they're greatly benefiting in some financial way. And the great thing about the team that I work on is we don't report to sales, we

don't report to a business division, like we report, we're under corporate affairs and relationships. So we're all about relationship building and genuinely about, you know, community. Like our metrics are, you know, how many people did we help? You know, what did we do to improve lives? Like that's how we measure our own success. And then me being able to lead that program, you know, I get to say what direction we go in and, you know, how we approach conversations and what we do. And, you know, seeing that they're genuinely invested in the community has been a huge relief for me personally. And it's really great to see that and get to work with that.

Awesome. Well, unfortunately, we are getting a bit long in the tooth here. We do have time, of course, for our awesome closing questions. I'm going to ask a little bit of a different one today, specifically for the CodeNewbie audience and for people who are interested in your experience and the experience of the community.

So if you had the ear of the open source community and beginners to experts and you had a tip or a trick or an experience as a beginner developer that you could relay, what would it be? Yeah, so my advice is around getting a job.

So when I got my very first job from Bootcamp, I was a hacker in residence, which is possibly my favorite job title ever. And I worked at the New York Tech Meetup, which was the largest meetup organization in the world. They have, I think, over 42,000 members at this point. They do a monthly demo night showcasing all different types of technology in New York. It sells out in minutes every month. And our job was to build a platform for it. And when I got that offer, the way that we did it was we had a science fair. We had a science fair and employers, I think we had about 100 employers come in and we

had a little booth set up with our computers. And we had to talk through the thing that we built. We had talked through our student projects. And I'm pretty sure I was the only person in our class of, I think we had 45 people, who only had one thing to show. And I had exactly one app and it was a note-taking app for video where you play the video and then you can take notes on the side and it gives you timestamps. You can play back the video when you click on the note at exactly the point where you took the note. So your notes and your videos were always in sync. And when I talked about or when I planned how I was going to talk about the app, I focused on things that I knew would make me different. And I focused more on... So if you watch any of my talks, then you know that I love to draw and I do a lot of cartooning.

And so I spent a lot of time focusing on the color scheme and the design. And actually, the splash page had a cartoon on it. And I focused so much on the UX and all the things that I knew that my classmates were not going to focus on. And when I talked through it, I wasn't trying to impress anybody with my one controller and my actions. Because these are senior developers, these are CTOs, these are people who are not going to be impressed by anything that I can make in three months.

And so instead, what I focused on was I focused on the design stuff. I pointed out the fact that I didn't use Bootstrap. I did my own design. I did my own CSS mostly from scratch. I talked about how I thought about the user flow. I talked about the things that went wrong and how I fixed them. I talked about how I thought about the user flow. I talked about the things that went wrong and how I fixed them.

I talked about the struggles that I had. I talked about the lessons that I learned. And above all, I was incredibly excited to talk about everything. And I was so excited that usually there was no time for them to ask me questions, which was part of the plan. It was great.

I guess our time's up. Yeah, exactly. You're hired. I mean, you're not. And, you know, I think that I kept meeting with employers for at least an hour after the science fair officially ended. And that evening, I had my first interview. And out of that one science fair, I had booked, I think it was seven interviews for the following two weeks. And it's not that I was necessarily the best coder.

It's that I knew how to pitch and I knew how to communicate and I knew how to talk and show the best that I had. And the best advice that I give to code newbies is to do just that. It's to find the things that make you different, the things that give you the edge. And the great thing about people who are transitioning into tech is they come from very different fields. That's an advantage. And I think that a lot of people are self-conscious about that. And they think, oh, I've only been coding for two years.

I've done marketing for 10 years. That's awesome. Use your marketing angle. Talk about those experiences and talk about how you communicate and how you pitch. There's so many other skills that you can bring that are valuable to being a developer. And knowing how to position yourself has been just an incredible, incredible part of my journey. That's excellent advice. I don't want to cut that up and have a soundbite right there. Yeah, absolutely. Let's do our next one here. The old saw that everybody has to answer when they come on the show, which is who is your programming hero and why? I like that one. I like that one a lot. I think my programming hero is Katrina Owen.

So Katrina is a developer, an incredible, incredible speaker. We spoke together at Bath Ruby earlier this year and I think she went on right after me. And I thought I did a pretty good job. I was pretty happy with my talk. And then she went up and she just killed it.

Oh my God. She practices relentlessly, which pays off. Yes, she does. Yes. And the reason why she's my hero is because, you know, I know a lot of really great developers. I know a lot of people who hone their craft

and who are just very good. And when I talk to her, and we've become pretty close in the last year, when I talk to her and I've learned more about her background and her story, I've never met someone with so with such great work ethic. Like she really, really cares and she puts in the time and she puts in the hours. And you know, if you, if you've been listening to this podcast, you probably know that I work very hard too. I think she works harder than me. And

I don't know many people who work harder than me. And just, you know, seeing her grow and knowing, you know, how much time and sweat she puts into her craft, and then her side project, Exorcism, what she's doing, you know, purely for the benefit of the community and how much time and effort she puts into helping other people learn to code as well and us very much being in that same space. That's to me what makes a hero. It's not just the end because when you see someone on stage and you hear them speak, you think, oh, they're a great speaker. But it's knowing the backstory and the journey. It's knowing what it took to get there and knowing what I know from what it takes

her to get to where she is. That to me is very heroic. Very good answer. For those interested her to get to where she is, that to me is very heroic. Very good answer. For those interested in exorcism, we did have Katrina on the show, episode 108. So check out changelog.com slash 108. We also hung out with her a little bit at

GopherCon and are in talks to have her back on for a little bit of a catching up with exorcism here this fall or perhaps in the winter. We're due for a catch-up because that show that you just mentioned was October 16th 2013. Oh wow.

That's a while back. It's a bit back. It's when it first started and we laughed actually because the Exorcism client that was written, the CLI was originally written in Ruby and it was rewritten in Go. And that show was when it was still not fully transitioned.

So she laughed at GopherCon saying, oh, that's a long time ago. Yeah. Yeah, she's an incredible person. Absolutely. Well, Saron, it's definitely been fun having you on the show. I know that we tend to go deep. You said it was fun because it was conversational. It's the most conversational show you've been on.

But it's been a blast having you. It's been a blast learning about your journey from the different backgrounds you come from into code. I love what you said there, which was if you're new to software development or design or programming or whatever, not to forget about the history you bring to the subject matter. Just because you're new at developing a software program doesn't mean that you're new at developing something. I think there's a lot of knowledge to really bring, and that's an important fact to not forget to those listeners out there. So, Ron, you hail from Codenewbie.org.

So if you're listening, we do take show notes. Check those out. Codenewbie.org. We had four awesome sponsors for the show. CodeShip, TopTal, and Harvest, as well as Imagix. I said and because we usually have three sponsors. And, Jared, we lost something new ourselves recently, Beyond Code. Do you want to mention Beyond Code real quick?

I know it's at beyondcode.tv. Right. And it's something we do at conferences. What can we say about this fun thing we do? Yeah, so for those who like our closing questions, we ask similar questions to those. Everybody gets the exact same five questions, and we really get to meet the people at the conference after parties.

We launched Season 1, which is at Keep Ruby Weird. Season 2 is coming soon. Space City JS, check it out, beyondcode.tv. Super short interview series. We think you'll really enjoy it. There's a middle list there too. So if you want to know when the new seasons get announced, go ahead and subscribe.

We'll let you know beyond code.tv. We also have a couple of emails as well. Change law weekly and change log nightly, both respectively at change law.com slash weekly or slash nightly. Those are awesome emails. If you don't subscribe, we make sad faces. So you should subscribe. But Saran, it's been such a blast to have you on the show.

Thank you so much for joining us and just taking the time just to share so much about what you're doing. And we definitely want to be an encourager of you and what you're doing in your community that you're building. So definitely stay in touch. To the listeners out there and to the members that support this podcast and what we do at The Change Law, we thank you so much. Jared and I really appreciate all the support we get. But this is now the time to say goodbye, so let's do that.

So goodbye from me. Bye. Goodbye. Bye. Bye. you