Building With People For People: The Unfiltered Build Podcast

Let’s say you work on a team and you have a bunch of services, how do you share knowledge about the important parts of how things work? I would hope documentation is the answer and not “tribal knowledge”. But good documentation can be hard. So is communication and so is continuing to grow your career when there are so many directions you could go.  In today’s show we are joined by a guest who gives us tips and tricks on better ways to create sustainable documentation, thoughts on how to communicate more effectively especially in an interview and shares a continuous learning framework he uses to help him grow.

Our guest today, Eddie Hinkle, believes the software we use should feel natively human and engage us both emotionally and cognitively. He has over 15 years experience managing engineers and designers and has worked in all sorts of industries including internet Saas, government contracting, cyber security, medical and health, education and more.  Currently he is an engineering manager at Glassdoor, is the host of the podcast Webjoy, and a mentor  for Collab Lab and ADPlist.org.

When he is not helping engineers grow their career with empathy he spends time with his three kids, a 5 month old, a 3 year old, and a 4 year old. He is also an avid reader and has even completed reading 52 books in one year. In his words if we aren’t learning we are stagnating.

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Building something cool or solving interesting problems? Want to be on this show? Send me an email at [email protected]

Podcast produced by Unfiltered Build - dream.design.develop.

Have you used Google search today? Or listened to music recommended to you? The results and suggestions you receive from these types of services are powered by Data Science. In today’s world, big data and insights are the new currency. While it's the machines that ultimately do the number crunching and provide the data, it's the human touch behind the scenes that make it all possible. In today’s episode we explore the field of Data Science and Machine Learning and how it permeates every walk of life and the endless possibilities it provides.

Our guest today, Ryan Valenza, is a scientist through and through. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Physics and Math from University of Maryland Baltimore County and his Master of Science in Physics from the University of Washington (PhD). He has held roles as a Data Engineer and Data Analyst at the Allen Institute for Brain Science and as Chief Data Scientist at Stackline, an e-commerce startup. He recently began a new job as the Director of Machine Learning at Bungie. If Bungie rings a bell it should, they created the gaming franchises of Halo, Destiny and Marathon to name a few.

When he is not teaching machines how to interpret data he is a big gamer himself with origins in Donkey Kong Country, a runner and an adventure planner for his three year old daughter.

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Building something cool or solving interesting problems? Want to be on this show? Send me an email at [email protected]

Podcast produced by Unfiltered Build - dream.design.develop.

Are you just learning to code or a self-taught developer? Need help with structured direction in your learning journey? Then you have to check out The Coder Coder!!  If neither apply check this resource out anyway, there is something for everyone. In today’s episode we examine the world of learning how to code from the perspective of the teacher and dive into what it’s like to sit in the driver’s seat creating content and running a successful Youtube coding community. We also discuss how to learn, tips on asking for help, best places to start your code journey, and much much more.

Our guest today is a beacon of hope for career changers everywhere. She is a self taught coder who began her coding career doing data entry and now creates extremely approachable, fun, entertaining and very educating tutorials for beginner web developers via her blog, online courses and videos. She is a Youtube sensation with a community of over 361K subscribers that she has built from the ground up. She has been in the industry for 8 years, recently quitting her full-time job to focus 100% on her Youtube community and has worked on every part of the development stack.

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Building something cool or solving interesting problems? Want to be on this show? Send me an email at [email protected]

Podcast produced by Unfiltered Build - dream.design.develop.

How are you ensuring your employees are happy and will stay with your company? Your employees are the most important piece to your business and as such you must learn what they want in their and career and enable it. In today’s discussion we focus on empathy as the future of business in tech, why it’s important for developers to gain business acumen for greater success in their role, how a new product, YugaHQ, can help companies predict and prepare for employee turnover and much more.

Our guest today, Kiran Kanakadandi, has an Electrical Engineering degree from Sreenidhi Institute of Science and Technology in Hyderabad, India, a MS of Computer Science from Clemson and has published a thesis on Graph Theory. He began his career as a kernel and distributed systems developer at NetApp. Our guest is a 2 time startup founder, founding Potatop Technologies and is currently serving as the founder/CEO of YugaHQ, an employee retention SaaS. Kiran believes empathy is the best business model. He is the author of a US Patent, speaks 4 languages, enjoys listening to deep Indian classical music, American classics like Towns Van Zandt, and is a movie trivia buff.

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Building something cool or solving interesting problems? Want to be on this show? Send me an email at [email protected]

Podcast produced by Unfiltered Build - dream.design.develop.

A Software Architect’s role is to contain complexity and an Engineer’s role is to manage optionality, but what is a Product Owner’s role? To perform at your best you must understand your value creation responsibilities. In this episode we’ll explore the primary responsibilities of key roles in software development, the three crucial values that provide significant boosts in morale and productivity, the meaning of technical empathy, foundational principles of leadership and more.

On today’s episode I am joined by Jeff Doolittle, a Software Architect who has designed software systems for over 25 years. Jeff is a transformational leader providing developer leadership and mentorship to software professionals. He holds an undergraduate degree in Business Administration, and a Master of Arts in Transformational Leadership. As co-founder and CTO first of a boutique software consultancy, then as CTO in a SaaS start-up serving the Agriculture industry, he has gained deep and broad industry experience. In his free time he plays guitar and spends time with his family. Jeff’s ongoing mission is to channel his expertise, experience and energy toward his driving passion: to help make good software professionals great!

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Building something cool or solving interesting problems? Want to be on this show? Send me an email at [email protected]

Podcast produced by Unfiltered Build - dream.design.develop.

You just hired a new engineer. How do you reduce their time to productivity? How do you give back hours of time to engineering leaders spent prepping and training the new hire? You examine your onboarding process and you use Pathlight to help.

Today’s show marks the 10th episode of Building With People For People!! I am very excited for our show today as we explore how a pre-med molecular biologist found her way into software and is building a startup addressing the software talent bottleneck. We also discuss proving your product through an MVT (minimum valuable test), the importance of diverse backgrounds, and how each of us can work together to create a more inclusive tech landscape.

Our guest, Lizzie Matusov, had the startup life in her blood at a young age when as a kid, she and a friend started a dog walking business. She began her software career working on open source for Red Hat and has worked at Invitae as a Full Stack Engineer and Technical Product Manager. Currently, she is the co-founder of Pathlight, a product helping technical teams hit their goals and grow faster by re-imagining the onboarding experience. Additionally, she is an MS/MBA Candidate at Harvard Business School and Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, has spoken at conferences, describes herself as a community builder, is a plant lover, and is on a mission to change what it means to be a technologist for the better.

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Building something cool or solving interesting problems? Want to be on this show? Send me an email at [email protected]

Podcast produced by Unfiltered Build - dream.design.develop.

Want 7 proven steps on how to become a software engineering manager? Or what about an effective communication tool to track your teams progress over time? Listen in as we answer these questions and explore ways to grow your career with actionable steps, become a more effective engineering manager, tips on giving effective feedback and much more.

Our guest today,  Mitra (pronounced Myth-raa) Raman, is a Sr. Engineering Manager at Glossier in New York City. She is always posting great actionable advice on twitter and is a force of nature becoming an Engineering leader and manager in just two years after graduating from Carnegie Mellon University with a bachelors in computer science.

She has worked at Amazon, has founded her own direct to consumer business - The Buttermilk company, managed an engineering team at Ro, has consulted for 10+ e-commerce businesses, is an angel investor, and was nominated for Geekwire’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year. In her free time she is a co-host on a podcast, writes product reviews, is a die hard Beyonce fan and a pop culture guru.

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Building something cool or solving interesting problems? Want to be on this show? Send me an email at [email protected]

Podcast produced by Unfiltered Build - dream.design.develop.

What traits do you look for when hiring engineers for your team? What does fundraising look like in a startup. In today’s episode we talk about what it takes to build great teams and fundraising specifically in the startup world and much more.

Our guest, Randy Sears, brings more than 20 years of experience designing and implementing scalable distributed systems in domains as diverse as education and scientific computing, and has held technical leadership roles for more than a decade. Previous to his current role at DemandStar as the Head of Engineering, he worked at many seed and pre-IPO startups, participating in IPOs, acquisitions, and fundraising with Zulily, Loudeye, IBM, Isilon (now part of EMC) and Stackline. Our guest has studied computer science and music at Boston University, and loves sailing and scuba diving. In building teams, Randy favors empowerment and collegiality combined with an eagerness to learn.

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Building something cool or solving interesting problems? Want to be on this show? Send me an email at [email protected]

Podcast produced by Unfiltered Build - dream.design.develop.

When was the last time you got frustrated writing code? How about sad? What if I told you learning how to recognize and harness your emotions would make you a better engineer and a better coworker? Today on the show we explore the journey of a Senior Software Engineer, how emotions make us better developers not worse, things you should do to be a better teammate, a peak into life at Netflix and more.

Our guest, Jenn Creighton, has worked at companies like ClassPass, Apollo GraphQL and has been a guest on the React Podcast, has spoken at many conferences including React JS Girls: the Conference, React Conf, and JS Conf Mexico. She is also a co-organizer for useReact NYC.  Currently she is a Senior Software Engineer at Netflix working in the developer productivity org, host of her own podcast - single threaded, and truly a positive force in the tech community.

Jenn will be giving her Debugging in JS talk IN PERSON at React Miami April 18-19 and Reactathon in May - Don’t Miss It!!

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Building something cool or solving interesting problems? Want to be on this show? Send me an email at [email protected]

Podcast produced by Unfiltered Build - dream.design.develop.

What do Goldilocks and Engineering Management have in common? The “just right” strategy can be used to motivate and grow employees. Tune in today as Drukwerkdeal Engineering Manager, Jelle Smeets, from Apeldoorn Netherlands walks us through this management theory and other ideas on employee motivation. We also talk about applying scrum methodologies, simple ways to avoid burnout, the importance of getting to know each other’s cultures, and learning in public.

As a kid, Jelle discovered engineering through his love of Dragonball Z and dove head first into building his own HTML fan site. His passion for solving puzzles lead him to become a full time software engineer with a Bachelors in computer and information science, to a certified scrum master, to now an engineering manager where he sees himself as a football (soccer) coach and strives to lead by example. Jelle is also a fair-weather runner, a blogger and a gardener.

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Building something cool or solving interesting problems? Want to be on this show? Send me an email at [email protected]

Podcast produced by Unfiltered Build - dream.design.develop.