Data & Dev with Jon and Mel

A follow-up on our previous compilation, our season 2 guests share more advice on working in the tech industry as well as some role specific advice.

Hear from our season 2 guests on advice for just starting out and what they wish they knew when starting their career in tech.

If you work in tech long enough, you will eventually break prod, drop a database, have a major work miscommunication, or any number of other mistakes that feel horrific at the moment but provide you with stories to share that elicit both laughter and horror from your hearer.

Our season 2 guests share some of their worst work mistakes in this compilation episode.

Hear our Season 2 guests answer the question, 'Advice for handling interview nerves.'

This compilation episode recaps those prior conversations in the following order:

To cap off Season 2, Jon and I spoke to what many might consider a tech success story.  Daniel Vassallo is no stranger to tech Twitter, but in case he is a new name to you, Daniel is a former Amazon Software Engineer who now makes a living with a portfolio of small bets.   He made his way to Seattle by way of Ireland, working for 7 years at Amazon before leaving the corporate world for the freedom of self-employment.  I (Melissa) love Daniel's story, largely because I long to replicate his portfolio of small bets approach to work. 

This was a wonderful conversation. I appreciate Daniel's transparency and authenticity.  Have a listen to hear:

• Daniel's path into amazon
• Correspondence college, long before remote schooling was a thing
• The interview process
• Navigating coding challenges over the phone -- these were pre-Zoom/Skype/Facetime days!
• Moving from Ireland to Seattle
• How his role and job scope changed over time
• Salary numbers over time
• The process of self-reflection through his time at Amazon
• Leaving amazon to pursue a portfolio of small bets

Kexin's story is a great demonstration that sometimes building a career in tech is more about seeing and taking the opportunities placed before you rather than having a pre-planned series of steps to follow.  In this episode we talked about:

• Intro and College in Australia
• Freelancer
• Learning in Industry
• Machine Learning at scale
• Distributed Computing
• Hiring for Distributed Computing roles
• Culture: China, Australia, USA
• Role of Software Architect
• Advice on finding the first role
• Closing Questions

Nikhil pursued a career in Product Management through the route of an MBA.  In this conversation we talk about whether an MBA is required for a PM career, traits that make for a good PM, and more.  Listen in to hear:

Life at Adobe
Role of Product Manager
Squashing Bugs vs New Features
PM/Eng org structure
Decision making
Traits for a PM
Is an MBA required?
Interview advice
Product Manager vs. Project Manager
What does a PM career path look like?

Rocco started his career in the game industry. He shares the good, and the bad, of that area of tech, his experience as an entrepreneur, and how he ended up at Meta.  In this episode we cover:

Brenda has taken a circuitous route into Software Engineering.  She served her country in the Air Force before leaving active duty to be at home with her children. She eventually chose to re-enter the workforce via Software and opted to pursue a Master's degree to that end. Brenda's story is a great one.  Tune in to hear:

- ROTC route into the Air Force.

- Life as a Space Operations Officer in the air force

- Leaving active duty and going reserves to raise children

- Recruiting role with Air Force Academy and ROTC

- Funding undergraduate studies with ROTC

- Re-entering the workforce - thought process and plan

- Deciding where to gain a software education

- Penn MCIT program

- Strengths and weaknesses of the MCIT program

- Resources for military folks to get into tech

- MSSA program

- The job hunt

- Life as a new Microsoft engineer

- Onboarding

- Imposter syndrome

We chat with Gatsby recruiter, Trish Do, and gain some insider info on the tech recruiting process.

Prety early into Tim's professional career, he opted to change directions. He enrolled in a Master's program and ended up in Data Science.

In this episode we talk about:

• Tim's background as a business major and his first role as a software implementation consultant role
• The epiphany that led to a desire for a more data-specific role
• Misconceptions of what a career in tech would look like
• Accessibility of learning today
• Choosing where to study to make the shift into data science
• MCIT and Georgia Tech programs
• Finding that first role in Data Science
• Gatekeeping in Data Science
• Data Science at Ad Astra
• Career goals
• Tools used for the job

This was another great conversation. I know I say that every time, but it seems to always be true.

Emily and I (Melissa) crossed paths 5 years ago at Flatiron School.  Our careers have taken different trajectory paths since then and this conversation was a chance to both catch up as well as to get her full story of going from English Professor to Frontend Engineer.

We cover:

• Choosing the route of academia
• Work as a college English professor
• “Trying out” programming
• Flatiron Bootcamp
• First role at Pendo
• Onboarding as a brand new engineer
• The Bootcamp path
• Growing from an entry-level frontend engineer to a senior engineer
• The value of meetups and forming relationships within the industry

Two great places to "try it out" are:

This was a great conversation with a former Geological Engineer turned Software Developer. Mat is a Canadian who recently took advantage of the shift to remote work.  He's enjoying the good life with a slower pace of life, outside of the city.  Mat talks about his background in his former career.  The impetus to make a switch. Going back to school for Data Science before landing on Software. Mat found his niche in the Scala community and makes his living writing mostly functional code.  

We covered quite a bit in Season 1.  For some "Go Deeper" resource suggestions for each topic, check the notes below.

Episode 1: How email travels

Show Notes

Security is about tradeoffs

Security is a business decision

Product and Security persons need to understand each other. The correct solution depends on understanding how a user is interacting with your platform

New risks in cloud databases

Traffic to databases is now over the internet

Users care about confidentiality and predictability

New role: database programmers now need to build security controls.

Reliability concerns are security concerns

Any potential malfunction is a security concern

Support engineers: new dimensions. How much access do they need to provide the needed support vs. how much access is a customer comfortable providing to receive that support

Entryways into security route

* If not already working in security domain: find anything security adjacent

* exploit exercises

Step out of your comfort zone

Software engineers are not coming with a security background.  The way to bridge this gap is from an analysis mentality. 

Ask ‘what if…’

Program defensively. Expect errors and program to handle those errors

Records of truth vs. support systems. Technologies that are used on their own vs support other technologies

Location of data concerns

Sharding

Location agnostic: Serverless

Raphael on how to develop, find and create opportunities to a security path

Learn more about our guests.

What's on the agenda!?

• Intro
• Databases security focuses on warehouse data, keep save and available. (Aaron)
• How did Aaron get into security
• What does a security career trajectory look like
• What does Aaron do at security
• The joys of ‘beeper duty'
• Generalist vs. Specialist approach to tech
• Formal degree vs. self study for a career in security
• The importance of deep understanding
• The “tinkerers mind"
• White route and black route options for self study
• What is your background: both Aaron and Raphael
• High level of software vulnerabilities that leak information
• Decisions taken when creating software often have unintended
• Happy path doesn't lead to happily ever after
• Solution oriented approach vs. analytic approach
• Three skills needed for analytic approach
• Ticket driven work

Our first interview of the season. 

The accomplished and ever so humble, Marwan Fayed, joins us today.