I laughed FAR more than I have in any interview so far. But I also managed to pocket more lessons along the way.

In this interview with Bond, James B... wait. Wait no. That's the infamous Taha Hussain!

Taha was an absolute pleasure to talk with for this interview. Truly, I spent so much time laughing and being engaged by his amazing story-telling.

But it's not just some fictional tale -- These are lessons from Taha's impressive career journey. Group Engineering Manager at Microsoft. Senior Director. Head of Engineering.

And now -- Career Coach.

You're going to love this one. Thanks so much, Taha!

----

You can get in touch with Taha Hussain:

- Brain-Powered Goal Setting: https://www.topengineermethod.com/offers/S9pRMBKs

- Top-Engineering Method: https://www.topengineermethod.com

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tahahussain/

- Links: https://linktr.ee/Tahasmethod

----

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There's one thing for sure that I know about Eric Roby.

This guy knows how to do remote work.

He also:

- Understands how to navigate customer interactions

- Knows the benefits of soft skills for developers

- Has success with digital courses

- Is an awesome content creator

- Has my next haircut

Eric was an absolute pleasure to talk to in this interview, and I'm sure you'll learn a lot from his experiences. Many engineers go most if not all of their careers without ever having to directly interact with customers.

It's a shame.

You can hear first-hand from Eric what these experiences are like along with all of his great advice!

----

You can get in touch with Eric Roby:

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/codingwithroby/

- Website: https://www.codingwithroby.com/

----

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Fuel that brain with interesting topics to stay on top of! And that's exactly what Alex Zajac does with his approach for Hungry Minds!

I had the pleasure to sit down with Alex and hear his story about how he found an interest for coding. He was able to take that interest and transform it into starting his career at Amazon with some of his close friends.

Not only that!

Alex is a successful content creator focusing on software engineering and artificial intelligence! He's been doing an awesome job with his newsletter, Hungry Minds, so make sure you check it out!

Thanks for the talk, Alex!

----

You can get in touch with Alex Zajac:

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandre-zajac/

- Newsletter: https://www.hungryminds.dev/

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You fear Friday Deployments. We live for them.

We are not the same.

I had the pleasure of sitting down to talk with Vasilii Oleinic about his career journey, his focus on software architecture, and how he approaches testing.

He had many interesting perspectives that I really enjoyed hearing about, including how to frame up a proof-of-concept vs software systems that need to be robust. Of course, Vasilii also explained his testing philosophies and how his career has helped shape them.

Stay tuned and learn how you can deploy on Fridays! Thanks for the talk, Vasilii!

----

You can get in touch with Vasilii Oleinic:

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vasilii-oleinic-822096184/

- YouTube: https://youtube.com/@vasiliioleinic

- Course: https://vasiliioleinic.com

----

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I've said it a million times and I'll say it a million more: Communication is a critical skill for software engineers. And if you don't want to listen to me, listen to Maria Glazunova who I had the pleasure of interviewing in this video!

Maria coaches many software engineers and tech professionals on how to improve their communication skills. Many of these people have English as their second (or third) language -- but the fundamentals of what we discuss regarding communication apply to EVERYONE.

Thanks for the awesome chat, Maria!

----

You can get in touch with Maria:

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maria-glazunova/

- Website: https://www.mariaglazunova.com/

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My journey through software engineering was pretty traditional: go to college/university directly after high school to study... then go into the workforce. But it's important that we keep an open mind about the different paths that aspiring software engineers can take to get into the industry.

In this video, I was joined by Brooke Sweedar who shared with me her journey through coding Bootcamp. It's great to hear about her successes going through such a program and understanding what made this such a valuable experience for her.

Thanks for the awesome chat, Brooke!

----

You can get in touch with Brooke:

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brooke-sweedar/

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I was joined by Jade Wilson in this video interview! Jade is not only a senior software engineer at Microsoft, but a successful content creator. When we got to talking, it was really cool to hear that we have very different experiences with how our teams approach building software:

- My teams go through a pseudo-agile / waterfall hybrid (i.e. we try to be agile but commitments are done on larger horizons)

- Jade gets to work DIRECTLY with customers quite regularly

A huge takeaway from Jade in this video was that it's *NOT* just about picking Scrum or Kanban... The entire point is to find things that work well for your team. Copy+pasting some process and blindly following it without adapting things is probably not going to be ideal.

Thanks for the awesome chat, Jade!

----

You can get in touch with Jade:

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jade-codes/

- Newsletter: https://jadecodes.substack.com

- Jade Codes YT: https://www.youtube.com/@jade-codes

----

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Imposter syndrome is something that affects many people -- especially software engineers! But imposter syndrome is not just limited to aspiring programmers or junior software engineers... In fact, the more success you have, often the more imposter syndrome that you encounter.

In this video, I was joined by a previous intern of mine (Woohoo Magnet Forensics!), Julia Hohenadel, who knows allllll about imposter syndrome. Julia is a great speaker on imposter syndrome, and I've even had her come to speak at Microsoft for us!

Thanks for the awesome chat, Julia!

----

You can get in touch with Julia:

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-hohenadel-1a1898160/

----

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In this interview, Bhavana Hindupur enlightened me with some different perspectives about the challenges going through tech. She explained how cultural background and expectations from society can create additional barriers when navigating how to progress in the workplace.

One of the great points that Bhavana brought up was about her turning point in her career going from senior to principal level -- You need to be the one driving the change!

Thanks for the awesome chat, Bhavana!

----

You can get in touch with Bhavana:

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhavanahindupur/

- Newsletter: https://thepeoplessoftwareengineer.substack.com/

----

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Don't worry though -- the aliens won't hurt you. I confirmed this with Mohamad Dbouk when we sat down to discuss his journey in software engineering and he surprised me with an awesome little demo of a Blazor game!

Not only was this the very first show-and-tell code we got to see from a guest on the channel, but Mohamad had other very insightful things to share.

One of my biggest takeaways?

You can have an amazing and fulfilling career without having to chase down higher and higher levels. In fact, by being honest with yourself about where your passion is and how skilled you feel you are, you can have an excellent trajectory AND have a very rewarding career.

Thank you so much for the chat, Mohamad!

----

You can get in touch with Mohamad:

- Channel: https://youtube.com/@mdbouk

- Website: https://mdbouk.com/

- Twitter: https://twitter.com/mhdbouk

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mdbouk/

----

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