Develomentor

Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Kiara Bickers

Kiara is a writer and SysAdmin at the Bitcoin company Blockstream. Her gateway into tech and Bitcoin started as a slight obsession with Austrian economics. After first hearing about Bitcoin, she spent the next few years learning how to code with the aim of understanding it. It was during this process that she learned: knowledge of how to code doesn’t automatically translate into an understanding of why a system works.

It wasn’t until she started working at Blockstream, with the cypherpunks who work on Bitcoin, that she got closer to real understanding. She documented these realizations in her recently published book, Bitcoin Clarity. The book is a guide to understanding Bitcoin with mental models instead of code, for the non-technical audience that’s been tempted to fall into the “learn to code” trap themselves.

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A note from Grant

Kiara Bickers is building a career at the center of one of today’s hottest trends: cryptocurrencies. She went from working at Stanford in the catering department to working as a self taught SysAdmin at Blockstream to authoring a book on bitcoin clarity.

Whether you are into bitcoin or think cryptocurrency isn’t ready for primetime, there are a lot of really interesting career opportunities and challenges in the field. Be sure to stay tuned as we catch up with Kiara Bickers and learn how she is crafting a career at the center of a potentially revolutionizing new technology. 

You can find more resources in the show notes
To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/
To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

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Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Jason Hughes.

Jason Hughes has spent over 10 years in the data and analytics space in roles ranging from BI developer to business analyst, business intelligence, and management.  He’s worked in a variety of industries and for Fortune 200 companies as well as companies with under 200 employees.  

Currently, Jason serves as the Director of Data & Analytics at Delta Dental of MN—a role he’s been in for the past year.  In his free time, Jason unwinds by playing guitar, running and spending time with his wife and two dogs.

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A note from Grant

From English major and professional musician to business intelligence and now Director of Data Analytics, Jason Hughes path into tech and data science started ten plus years after earning his English degree.  

Since finding his path in business intelligence, Jason has steadily gained experience holding down roles like business analyst, senior business analyst, business analyst developer, commercial analytics manager and now in the Director role.  

Along his journey, Jason has worked for the likes of Horizon Hobby, Audigy Group, Service Now, C. H. Robinson and now Delta Dental as well as earned an MBA from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.  Be sure to tune in as we welcome Jason Hughes to Develomentor and find out how this one time working musician built a career in tech.

-Grant Ingersoll

You can find more resources in the show notes
To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/
To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

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Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Andrei Lopatenko.

Andrei is Vice President of Engineering at Zillow Group. He is the head of search and discovery engines. This including search science, development, infrastructure, and operations. As part of this role, he heads Zillow Group’s conversational AI efforts, which consist of initiatives around natural language processing platforms, speech analytics, call center AI, and conversational interfaces. The goal is improving Zillow’s business and customer services using natural language processing and speech understanding. 

Before joining Zillow in 2019, Andrei led search science teams within eBay and Walmart. Prior to Walmart he worked at Google and Apple, serving as a core contributor to products like Google web search, Apple Maps, Apple’s AppStore, and iTunes search engines. He previously led engineering efforts for Recruit Holdings’ AI Lab. He also sat on the advisory board of Ozlo, a Conversational AI startup acquired by Facebook in 2017. 

Andrei earned a Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science from The University of Manchester, United Kingdom and Master of Science Degree from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.

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A note from Grant

Andre Lopatenko has worked around the globe in his career as a search and natural language processing expert. He turned an undergraduate and master’s degree in physics and a PhD in Computer Science into a long and successful career as a software engineer and engineering leader. 

Over the years, his specialties have carried him from his early days in Moscow to Italy, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Austria, California and now Seattle.  Along his journey, Andrei has risen the ranks from software engineer to Principal Software Engineer, to Director of Engineering, Head of Search Science and now VP of Engineering for the likes of Apple, Google, Walmart Labs, eBay and Zillow. 

Andre was also the co-founder and advisor of Ozlo, a company focused on conversational artificial intelligence that was purchased by Facebook. Andrei is also a long time public speaker often giving talks on how to build a career in natural language processing or how artificial intelligence is used in search.  Be sure to stay tuned as we catch up with Andrei Lopatenko and search for answers to his career in tech.

You can find more resources in the show notes
To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/
To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

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Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Ali Spittel

Ali loves teaching people to code, and is currently doing so as a Senior Developer Advocate at AWS. She have been employed in the tech industry since 2014, holding multiple software engineering positions at startups, and a Distinguished Faculty and Faculty Lead role at General Assembly’s Software Engineering Immersive. Ali is also a software blogger!

Ali blogs a lot about code and my life as a developer. Her blog posts have had over well over a million reads and have been featured on DEV’s top 7, the top spot on HackerNews, FreeCodeCamp, and in JSWeekly. You can hear about her new posts on her newsletter.

Ali also has a podcast with two other incredible women: Ladybug Podcast. They talk about the tech industry, their backgrounds, and they go in depth on code-topics. When Ali is not coding you can find her watching her favorite New England sports teams, taking runs with her dog Blair, or rock climbing.

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A note from Grant

Ali Spittel started down the computer science major route in college before deciding it wasn’t quite right for her. But she would return to coding in her first job as a means of automating some of her work and realizing that she really enjoyed it. 

From there, Ali Spittel, has steadily built a career in tech as a software engineer, developer advocate, and instructor for the likes of Amazon, General Assembly and her own venture, WeLearnCode.  In addition to all of her work coding and teaching people to code, Ali is the co-star of the popular Ladybug Podcast with Kelly Vaughn, Sidney Buckner and Emma Bostian.  If you’ve ever wanted to get into coding and aren’t quite sure where to begin, be sure to learn how Ali built a career in coding without a comp sci degree.

Quotes

—Ali Spittel

Additional Resources

Check out how Ali became a software engineer without a computer science degree or completing a bootcamp

Follow AWS Amplify on Twitter

Learn more about the Ladybug podcast

You can find more resources in the show notes
To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/
To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

Connect with Ali Spittel
LinkedIn
Twitter
https://alispit.tel/
https://dev.to/aspittel

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Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Philip Noyed. 

Philip Noyed is the tech creative director at Caring Bridge and a multimedia artist living in Minneapolis. 

Philip Noyed is an innovative multi-media artist living and working in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His art work represents the quintessential contemporary art movement making use of creative technology that is changing the way art is viewed today.  His artwork is often called “contemporary stained glass” and can be customized for a variety of architectural and design applications. The finalized artwork can be incorporated into acrylic, glass, tubes, fabric, wall coverings and can be customized to meet your design requirements.  While located in Minneapolis, he has shipped artwork across America and Internationally.

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A note from Grant

After 120+ episodes of Develomentor, I finally have the opportunity to interview someone who is in the very role that inspired this show in the first place: the creative director. All the way back in episode 1, I talked about how my son inspired this show through his love of both art and technology and how that led to wanting to showcase all the different ways people can participate in tech.  Today’s guest, Philip Noyed, has indeed combined a love of art and technology to build a successful career as a Creative Director.  As with all of our guests, there is of course more to the story.  

Philip started his journey by earning a degree in East Asian Studies from Hamline University before living in Japan for a number of years working as a communications specialist while studying Japanese and honing his artistic side.  Since returning to the United States and joining the tech revolution in the early 90’s, he has helped companies like Fingerhut, Schwan’s, Harland Clarke, Caring Bridge and Target establish and grow online presences with a deep focus on user experience and usability.  

Philip has also, along his path, developed and grown as an artist, combining the physical and digital, including virtual reality, into a deep and rich portfolio at the cutting edge of modern art. I’d also be violating my Minnesota heritage if I didn’t mention that he worked as a Production Assistant on Prince’s Purple Rain movie. 

Additional Resources

Check out Philip’s Vimeo – https://vimeo.com/user8614335

(Books)
Deep Work by Cal Newport

You can find more resources in the show notes
To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/
To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

Connect with Philip Noyed
LinkedIn
https://www.philipnoyed.com/

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Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Nick Burling. 

Nick Burling, has steadily built a career in tech working in Product Management.  He graduating Amherst College with a dual degree in French and History, a Master’s from Oxford University, also in history, and an MBA from Duke University. 

Throughout his career, Nick has held down titles like Consultant, Project Manager, Head Product Manager, VP of Product, Principal Product Manager, CEO and Co-founder, and Head of Product Strategy working for the likes of IBM, Blue Stripe, Microsoft, and ACME General.  Nick has also started two different companies Stackforce and Illume Hire.

Additional Resources

Learn about Nick’s company Illumehire – https://www.illumehire.com/about-us/

Pragmatic Marketing – https://www.pragmaticinstitute.com/ 

Additional Resources

You can find more resources in the show notes
To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/
To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

Connect with Nick Burling
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Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is David Wong.

David Wong is a security engineer working on the libra Blockchain at Facebook. He is an active contributor to internet standards like Transport Layer Security and to the applied cryptography research community. 

David is a recognized authority in the field of applied cryptography; he’s spoken at large security conferences like Black Hat and DEF CON and has delivered cryptography training sessions in the industry. He is the author of the soon-to-be-published Real-World Cryptography book.

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A note from Grant

If you like math, secrets, privacy and cryptocurrency, today’s guest is right up your alley.  David Wong is a security engineer currently working for Facebook, with deep expertise in blockchain and more generally cryptography.  

After earning his bachelor’s in Math and his masters in cryptography, David has worked for the likes of Matasano Security, NCC Group and now Facebook.  In addition to his day job, David is the author of the upcoming Manning Publications book titled “Real-World Cryptography”, which you can purchase now in early access from manning.com.

As always, we are doing a give away with this episode.  For the first 5 people who email us here at [email protected], we will give you a code good for one free ebook copy of David’s book.  If you don’t want to email, you can use the discount code poddevmen20 for 40% of David’s book as well as all Manning books.  

Quotes

“Cryptography started as a military thing in the beginning. But today everybody is using it without even know it. It all started with how we can hide communication from observers.”

“Especially if you’re in tech, understand that if you have one offer you’re probably going to have several offers. It’s not true for every field but tech is hiring and we’re in a good position. Keep going, don’t be afraid to say no or to ask for more time to decide.”

—David Wong

Additional Resources

David’s book – https://www.manning.com/books/real-world-cryptography

David’s blog – https://cryptologie.net/

Course on how to learn on Coursera – https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn

Additional Resources

You can find more resources in the show notes
To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/
To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

Connect with David Wong
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Twitter
GitHub

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Twitter

Support the show

Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Peter Mckee.

Peter McKee is the Head of Developer Relations and Advocacy at Docker and maintainer of the open source project Ronin.js. Originally from Pittsburgh, PA but currently residing in Austin, TX, Peter built his career developing full-stack applications for over 25 years. He has held multiple roles but enjoys teaching and mentoring the most. When he’s not slapping away at the keyboard, you can find him practicing Spanish and hanging out with his wife and seven children.

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A note from Grant

Peter Mckee is currently a developer relations manager for Docker, the de facto standard in software containers, but his career has taken a number of turns throughout the years.  After working on a comp sci degree from Point Park College and then leaving early, Peter has held down a variety of roles in the tech industry including programmer, software architect, principal engineer, front end engineer, director of technology, and senior software engineering manager.  

Over the years, Peter has worked for the likes of Dell, Perficient, MarketVine, SuperNaut and ClickVine.  He’s even co-founded his own company, Checkmate Technologies and served as their Chief Marketing Officer.  

Quotes

“Folks coming out of boot camps or learning on your own, you’re writing a lot of things from scratch. In the real world, you don’t do that a whole lot. That’s rare, especially in larger companies. So I learned how to read code, how to understand code and how to hold a lot of information in my head.”

“What really drives me now is mentoring and teaching. I love research, I love to build things. I’m a great starter but not a great finisher. But I found that I could explain technical things to lay people and to more junior technologists and even to senior technologists.”

“I do about 5 or 6 people at a time and take them through about an 8 month program. I can tell you what to do, but having someone there alongside you and mentor you will 10X your development.”

—Peter McKee

Additional Resources

Learn more about Peter’s mentoring – https://codingadventures.io/

Books:
Please Understand Me: Character and Temperament Types – by David Keirsey & Marilyn Bates

What Color Is Your Parachute? 2019: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers – by Richard N. Bolles

Additional Resources

You can find more resources in the show notes
To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/
To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

Connect with Peter McKee
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Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Luc Constantin.

Luc Constantin, our guest today, represents so much of what this show is about: there is a path for you in tech.  Luc grew up in Romania, one of the poorest of the old Soviet Bloc countries.  At 13 years old, Luc dropped out of school.  By the time he was 18, he was addicted to drugs and fulfilling his country’s military service obligations.  At 21, in his own words, he was finished with the military and had “no hope, no future, no desire to live”.  Luc had no idea that he would one day become a programmer or be in the tech space at all. 

At 23, Luc decided to go back into the military.  From age 29 until 42, he worked in logistics for a packaging and bottling manufacturer in Toledo Spain.  At 42, he started learning to code and landed a full time junior web development role by the time he was 43.  These days, he’s a front end developer having held down roles for the likes of Gadacons World and Bioclimatic Green Home in Spain.  If you think its too late for you to get into coding, be sure to tune in!

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Quotes

“I was one hopeless drug addict in the 90s, I got 4 kids, I’m 43 years old, I live in a foreign country. Of course it’s challenging [to learn how to code], but it can be done!”

“What is the internet? How does it work? What is Google? The way I understood how HTML works is by understanding how a browser works.”

“I was waking up at 4 or 5 AM and for 2 to 3 hours I was coding, learning and studying. Then I would go to my daily job until 3. Coming back, I would eat and have time with my family for 3 and 4 hours. During evening time I was doing the same – coding, learning and programming!”

—Luc Constantin

Key Milestones

Check out Luc’s personal blog about his journey into tech – https://blog.accolades.dev/

Free Code Academy lets you learn how to be a programmer from your home – https://www.freecodecamp.org/

Additional Resources

You can find more resources in the show notes
To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/
To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

Connect with Luc Constantin
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Twitter

Connect with Grant Ingersoll
LinkedIn
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Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Jennifer Byrne. 

Jennifer is currently an independent advisor, speaker, and author. A lot of her work is centered around digital transformation. 

Previously, Jennifer was Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft US. She infused innovation practices into Microsoft’s technical field teams which led to high-value and well-publicized digital transformation strategies with top global companies.

Jennifer led the fifteen Microsoft Technology Centers across the US, hosting thousands of customers and community events each year. In previous roles at Microsoft, Jennifer was responsible for market expansion initiatives leveraging business model and technology innovation for government, healthcare, and education providers around the globe. She joined Microsoft as the Chief Security Officer for the Worldwide Public Sector Division in 2014.

Prior to Microsoft, Jennifer was a leader in Cybersecurity, having held technical, sales and executive positions at companies such as Intel, McAfee and Symantec. She began her career in technology as an Information Security Analyst and Engineer serving US Government clients.

In high tech or any role, Jennifer Byrne is an advocate for applying original thinking and an innovator’s mindset to create opportunities for success in work and life. Advances in technology can create as much risk as opportunity. Jennifer uses wisdom gained from twenty years in the tech industry to advise startups and mentor young women and leaders on topics related to making the most of today’s fast-changing, tech-infused world.

Quotes

“I think you need to find the place inside yourself that actually cares deeply about the people on your team. It’s ok that it doesn’t come naturally and its ok that you have to work hard at that with some people. But however you get there, you gotta get there.”

“As a pre-sales engineer you have to make everything work. You’re always running the demos. And you’re highly accountable for deeply understanding your technology.”

“What I finally figured out is that you’re not trying to sell them [customers] the value of the product as it is today. What you’re really selling is an investment. They’re not making a purchase, they’re making an investment. And investments are all about what’s going to happen in the future. Where is this technology going? How is this technology going to help me do the things I want to do?”

—Jennifer Byrne

Additional Resources

You can find more resources in the show notes
To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/
To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

Connect with Jennifer Byrne
LinkedIn

Connect with Grant Ingersoll
LinkedIn
Twitter

Support the show