Develomentor

Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Ala Shaban.

Ala Shiban is currently the Director of Product at Tube Science. He started his career as a machine learning engineer and pivoted to product manager after a few years. 

Ala got a bachelor’s and master’s of computer science from the University of Haifa and has held down a variety of roles across a variety of domains in tech. Along his journey, Ala has worked in domains like cancer detection using nano-sensors, developer tools and online gaming. He has held titles like software engineer, research engineer, teaching assistant, product manager, and director. 

Ala has worked for companies large and small, including Microsoft and Riot Games.  As if that isn’t enough, he has also co-founded a company, started a non-profit and also started a magazine focused on hardware. 

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Quotes

“For me computer science isn’t about programming. At least this is what I found out early on. I call it computational thinking. The mathematical side and the algorithmic side of computer science is the one I find way more important than how you program.”

“We founded this website that one of the largest independent gaming websites online and that was an unbelievable experience. I went on to create HardwareHell, which was the hardware spinoff of it.”

“We have engineers that are brilliant. If you put smart and brilliant people together to solve a technical problem, they will solve it. The minute you get them together as groups or as larger organizations, it becomes harder. Tech is easy, the people are hard.”

—Ala Shiban

Key Milestones

1. What inspired Ala to go into tech and to pursue a masters degree in computer science?
2. While you were at university, Ala was also quite busy with work as he started a magazine! How was he able to balance work and school life?
3. Ala spent some time doing cancer research as an engineer. What inspired him to get into that field and what was it like working as a research engineer?
4. After working as a research engineer, Ala decided to leave software engineering for product management. What was going through his mind at this time?
5. What are some of the key skills to be successful as a product manager?
6. Some key lessons learned from working at companies like Microsoft and Riot Games?

Additional Resources

Learn Python online with Visual Python! – https://visualpython.dev/

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 Ala Shiban
LinkedIn
Twitter

Follow Develomentor
Twitter: @develomentor

Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/develomentor)

Support the show

Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Ala Shaban.

Ala Shiban is currently the Director of Product at Tube Science. He started his career as a machine learning engineer and pivoted to product manager after a few years. 

Ala got a bachelor’s and master’s of computer science from the University of Haifa and has held down a variety of roles across a variety of domains in tech. Along his journey, Ala has worked in domains like cancer detection using nano-sensors, developer tools and online gaming. He has held titles like software engineer, research engineer, teaching assistant, product manager, and director. 

Ala has worked for companies large and small, including Microsoft and Riot Games.  As if that isn’t enough, he has also co-founded a company, started a non-profit and also started a magazine focused on hardware. 

If you are enjoying our content please leave us a rating and review or consider supporting us

Quotes

“For me computer science isn’t about programming. At least this is what I found out early on. I call it computational thinking. The mathematical side and the algorithmic side of computer science is the one I find way more important than how you program.”

“We founded this website that one of the largest independent gaming websites online and that was an unbelievable experience. I went on to create HardwareHell, which was the hardware spinoff of it.”

“We have engineers that are brilliant. If you put smart and brilliant people together to solve a technical problem, they will solve it. The minute you get them together as groups or as larger organizations, it becomes harder. Tech is easy, the people are hard.”

—Ala Shiban

Key Milestones

1. What inspired Ala to go into tech and to pursue a masters degree in computer science?
2. While you were at university, Ala was also quite busy with work as he started a magazine! How was he able to balance work and school life?
3. Ala spent some time doing cancer research as an engineer. What inspired him to get into that field and what was it like working as a research engineer?
4. After working as a research engineer, Ala decided to leave software engineering for product management. What was going through his mind at this time?
5. What are some of the key skills to be successful as a product manager?
6. Some key lessons learned from working at companies like Microsoft and Riot Games?

Additional Resources

Learn Python online with Visual Python! – https://visualpython.dev/

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 Ala Shiban
LinkedIn
Twitter

Follow Develomentor
Twitter: @develomentor

Support the show

Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Dinesh Shenoy!

From graduating college with a double major in history and physics to changing oil at Jiffy Lube while he figured out what’s next to 7 years as an attorney for Aronson and Associates, Dinesh Shenoy has taken, in his own words “an unusual career path” to becoming a data scientist in 2016. 

Along that path, in addition to that double major in undergrad, Dinesh picked up a law degree from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and a PhD in Astrophysics from the University of Minnesota before deciding to see what data science is all about.  As a data scientist, he’s held down roles for Veritas and now CH Robinson. 

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Quotes

“By the time I finished my education I had my feet in both camps. I thoroughly enjoyed my physics education, I liked the value of it. But history opened up my mind to a broader perspective rather than thinking of just some technical path in life.”

“Outside of the team, people don’t need to see the math they want you to boil it down for them and help them make a solid business decision one way or another. And boil it down in a quick way.”

“I first started hearing the term ‘data scientist’ when I started thinking about ‘ if I’m not seeking an academic career path, what is there for someone like me in the job market?’”

—Dinesh Shenoy

Key Milestones

1. Dinesh took a year off after graduating from college, worked at Jiffy Lube and then decided to go to law school because it was “respectable”. What was going through his mind at that time?
2. Dinesh spent 7 years as an immigration attorney. What inspired that area of law?
3. After leaving law, Dinesh went back to school to become an astro-physicist. Why choose something so difficult?
4. Dinesh find himself in tech after studying to become an astro-physicist?
5. Dinesh’s experience as a lawyer and a physics PhD are definitely unique. How have they played into building a successful data science career?
6. Tech fuels Dinesh’s intellectual curiosity. How does the ever changing field 

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 Dinesh Shenoy
LinkedIn

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Twitter: @develomentor

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Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Mikolaj Pawlikowski!

Mikolaj Pawlikowski has been a chaos engineer for about four years. He began with a large distributed Kubernetes-based microservices platform at Bloomberg. Mikolaj is the creator of the Kubernetes Chaos Engineering tool PowerfulSeal, and the networking visibility tool Goldgpinger. He is an active member of the Chaos Engineering community and speaks at numerous conferences.

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Quotes

“I spent half of my time at the company that employed me and payed me roughly half of the money that I’d get if I was working there full time. During the other half of the time I had to cram in all the classes that you would normally have.”

“If you have your laptop and it runs for 10 years, you assume it is basically going to run forever. But if you have 1000 laptops, you’re going to start to seem them going down.”

“You can’t ever properly test things in any other environment than production. Because the data is going to be slightly different and the patterns of users will be slightly different.”

“We want to minimize the blast radius. The number of things that can be affected by what we do. In the practice of chaos engineering, it’s not completely crazy to introduce some of that failure to production systems.”

—Mikolaj Pawlikowski

Additional Resources

Sign up for Mikolaj’s newsletter for the latest on chaos engineering – https://chaosengineering.news/

Mikolaj’s Book – Chaos Engineering: Crash Test Your Applications – https://www.manning.com/books/chaos-engineering

Past Develomentor Episodes to check out:

Ep. 15 Kelsey Hightower – Tech Support to Dev Advocate to Keynote Speaker

Charity Majors – Systems Engineer & Cofounder of Honeycomb.io #66

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 Mikolaj Pawlikowski
LinkedIn
Twitter
https://mikolajpawlikowski.com/
https://chaosengineering.news/

Follow Develomentor
Twitter: @develomentor

Support the show

Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Kamil Sindi.

Biography

Kamil Sindi started his young professional career as a financial analyst before getting into tech.

Currently, Kamil oversees engineering, data science and design at JW Player, the world’s largest independent video platform. Prior to being promoted to CTO, Kamil served as VP of Engineering responsible for infrastructure and data at JW Player, Lead Data Engineer at Better Mortgage, and as a senior technologist at a quantitative hedge fund. Kamil received a B.Sc. in Mathematics with Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

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A note from Grant

It’s often said that the best way to get the CTO title at a company is to found the company.  In fact, that’s exactly how I did it, but it’s not the path Kamil Sindi, our guest on today’s show took to get into that role.  In fact, Kamil worked his way up at his current employer JW Player from Data Science Manager to Director of Engineering to VP of Engineering before taking on the CTO role last year.  

Kamil’s journey, however, didn’t start at JW Player.  Prior to there, Kamil did a degree in math and comp sci at MIT before launching his career as an Analyst at Goldman Sachs.  Along his journey, he’s also spent time at Nebula Capital Management as an Analyst and Better Mortgage as Lead Data Engineer. 

-Grant Ingersoll

Quotes

“When I was graduating from MIT, I think I was 19 years old. A lot of my focus was in math and I was really interested in theoretical math. But I also wanted to make sure that I was employable long term. So I also did a focus in computer science.”

“I really wanted to specialize in quantitative finance. Over time I started realizing that I really wanted to be not a specialist but a generalist. You get to wear many hats and be good at many things, maybe not necessarily an expert.”

“I still sometimes code in my free time if its side projects. But for me I’m just so interested in the business aspect of things and the product that I never felt like I was giving up coding too much because I could always do it on the side.”

“When you think about your career path, 5-10 years from now how does that look like? How immune is it to the changing technology landscape?”

—Kamil Sindi

Key Milestones

1. Why did Kamil pursue a math and comp sci degree?
2. Kamil’s first few roles had the title of Analyst and were at financial companies. How did he end up in finance?
3. Why did Kamil decide to transition into tech?
4. Kamil tells us about his path moving up the management chain.
5. What’s been the most surprising thing about joining the C Suite?

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 Kamil Sindi
LinkedIn
Twitter
GitHub

Follow Develomentor
Twitter: @develomentor

Support the show

Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Ryan Latta.

Ryan Latta is an agile coach and independent software consultant. He has held tech roles including software engineer, CTO and scrum master. But there is more to the story, as this NC State Computer Science graduate actually started his career as an English teacher before launching his career in tech.  

Along his journey, Ryan has worked for the likes of Appia, Thoughtworks, Amplify and several other companies before venturing out on his own as a freelance consultant.  

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Quotes

“I always wound up in these unrecognized leadership positions. So I knew there was something there for me but I didn’t know what shape it would take.”

“I wasn’t the smartest kid in the room and I wasn’t sure if I loved programming. What I did realize though is when we did group work, we got our groups going.”

“I became this kind of like ‘when no shoe fits, you call me’. And that meant I started doing agile coaching gigs within the company and then from then on it stuck as my title and profession.”

“Find people that make you better than who you are. Do not go through your career alone. If you need a mentor, find them. Find people who have done this before that you can listen to and take what they have to say seriously.”

“My fear was mostly financial. So if you’re preparing to go start a new venture, have a few months of savings set up for when things go bad. Have a line of credit. Life has a funny way of kicking you.”

—Ryan Latta

Key Milestones

1. Ryan taught English coming out of college. What inspired this decision and what brought him back into tech?
2. After your time teaching, Ryan’s career has seemingly had 3 phases: a phase as a software engineer, a phase an agile coach and now as a consultant. How did he know when was the right time to make a change?
3. What is an agile coach and what does it take to be successful in such a role?
4. What’s the day to day look like for an agile coach?
5. Going on your own can be a big leap, as there often is now safety net.  How did Ryan prepare to become a freelancer and what are some tips for anyone considering a similar move?

Additional Resources

Your Money or Your Life, by Vicki Robin – https://www.amazon.com/Your-Money-Life-Transforming-Relationship/dp/0143115766

Ryan’s book, ‘Land the Job: Six Months to Start Your Software Career’ – https://www.amazon.com/Land-Job-Months-Software-Career/dp/1734486139

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 Ryan Latta
LinkedIn
Twitter
Website

Follow Develomentor
Twitter: @develomentor

Connect with Grant Ingersoll
LinkedIn

Support the show

Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Taylor Poindexter.

Taylor Poindexter is the co-founder of Black Code Collective, an organization that strives to provide a safe space for Black Engineers to collaborate and grow their skills. In addition to this, she is a Senior Back End Engineer for a startup called tech co. A company that is working to make a more participatory democracy. Some awards she’s received include: 2019 Power Woman of DC Tech, DC Fem Tech’s 2018 Power Woman in Code, DC’s 2017 Top Technologist, and 2017 Power Woman of DC Tech. In her spare time she enjoys traveling, working out, whiskey tasting, and spending time with her two amazing nephews.

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A note from Grant

Taylor Poindexter is a proud University of Virginia alumni, earning her degree in computer science  before launching her career in tech where she’s held down roles like automation engineer, test engineer, back end engineer and now senior software engineer.  

Never one to slow down, Taylor also co-founded the Black Code Collective, an organization that strives to provide a safe space for Black Engineers to collaborate and grow their skills in the Washington DC area. She has collected several awards including being selected as one of DC’s Top Power Women as well as DC’s Top Technologist in 2017. 

-Grant Ingersoll

Quotes

“The amount of imposter syndrome I’ve felt until the last 6 months has been at times overwhelming and there were genuine times when I thought that I couldn’t make it in tech.”

“On the back end I’m handling all the data that is passed to the front end for you to be able to see and manipulate. I also write the algorithms to potentially be able to save that data to the database and then serve to the user when they come back.”

“I have several mentors I’ve picked up along the way but they’ve all happened very naturally. And I think those are the best types of mentor relationships because they genuinely care about the advancement of my career.”

“While I may have my own tickets to complete, I have to also make sure to be thinking of the broader vision and the implication of the tickets we’re working on now so we’re set up for success.”

—Taylor Poindexter

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 Taylor Poindexter
Twitter

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Twitter: @develomentor

Connect with Grant Ingersoll
LinkedIn

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Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Pardis Noorzad. 

Pardis is Head of Data Science at Carbon Health, a technology-enabled healthcare provider designed to make world-class primary and urgent care accessible to all. Her team’s mission is to improve health outcomes and increase operational efficiency. 

Previously she led Connect Data Science at Twitter—covering Search, Trends, Explore, Events, Moments, Topics, and Notifications. Pardis reestablished the Product Data Science function at the company, ushering its expansion for the first time in four years. At Paytm Labs, she designed and built a fully automated fraud detection engine for Paytm—the P2P payments and marketplace app serving India. As an early employee at Rubikloud, Pardis proposed and built a promotions allocation system for retailers. 

Pardis studied random graph models of online social networks at Ryerson University. At Amirkabir University, she published on music genre recognition and sparse linear classifiers. She holds a degree in Software Engineering from the University of Tehran, where she served as ECE Representative for three years. Pardis also served in the Ryerson Senate for a year.

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Quotes

“The internet was just so fascinating that I really felt like I need to know how this works. It looks like magic. And I was spending so much time on the internet that I had to find out how this works.”

“Honestly the problem with University is it tires you out. But it also humbles you to the point of no return. It takes a lot of years to build that confidence again.”

“Every time an opportunity came up in the bay area, I tried to make up some excuse to not make it happen. Even though I knew it would be a great experience. But ultimately when twitter came up, it was very difficult to say no.”

—Pardis Noorzad

Additional Resources
Check out Pardis’s personal website – https://djpardis.com/

Management Best Practices – by Pardis Noorzax – https://medium.com/@djpardis/management-and-coaching-best-practices-as-a-list-of-n-things-7a6d9c7f0fa5

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 Pardis Noorzad
LinkedIn
Twitter

Follow Develomentor
Twitter: @develomentor

Connect with Grant Ingersoll
LinkedIn

Support the show

Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Andrew Montalenti

Andrew is the co-founder and Chief Product Officer (CPO) of Parse.ly. Andrew was Parse.ly’s founding CTO, and he led the company through its early R&D, fundraising, and initial scale-up growth/hiring periods. He now leads the company’s product strategy and vision as CPO.

Based in NYC, Andrew is a regular speaker on topics including real-time analytics, open source software, fully distributed teams, and product management. He also spends time with Parse.ly clients, who include premium news publishers, high-growth digital startups, world-renowned entertainment brands, and corporate marketers making the transition to content marketing. Those customers use data to inform some of the web’s smartest content strategies at places like Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, Condé Nast, HelloFresh, WeddingWire, Policygenius, and Slate.

Andrew created Parse.ly in 2009 with co-founder and former NYU roommate Sachin Kamdar. Prior to starting the company, Andrew graduated with a Computer Science degree from NYU; focused on distributed systems and web services as a software engineer at Morgan Stanley; and ran a boutique software consulting firm that served clients in NYC and beyond. He enjoys reading and writing at the interaction of media, tech, open source, and startups. You can read his writing on the Parse.ly blog and on his personal website, amontalenti.com. You can also find his latest thoughts on Twitter at @amontalenti

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Quotes

“There was this huge tradition of almost applied research in operating systems and I just became fascinated by that history.I think that drove me to go into the study of operating systems where I could do things like learn about the history of operating system kernels but also implement my own kernel in C.”

“We pivoted the business from indexing content and giving analytics to anyone about it to actually being a direct measurement approach for content for the worlds largest media companies. So we turned Pars.ly to a software as a service company some point around 2011.”

—Andrew Montalenti

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 Andrew Montalenti
LinkedIn
Twitter

Follow Develomentor
Twitter: @develomentor

Connect with Grant Ingersoll
LinkedIn

Support the show

Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Sean Melody

Sean Melody has held a variety of roles across a several companies since he started his career almost 20 years ago.  He’s been an engineer, architect, team lead, dev manager, CTO, and now works for a small company as a Chief Technologist where he focuses on bringing new products to market in the automotive space.  He does product development, especially with web front ends, and has done various back end and mobile projects throughout his career.  He’s passionate about mentoring young and old, technical and non technical folks alike.   Sean is an extrovert in a world of introverts and loves building things which is why he keeps finding himself close to the code, while still thinking about business and product concerns so that he can advise C level executives.  

Sean is an avid gardener and loves being outdoors with his family.  He turned his passion for trivia and “fun facts” into an appearance on Jeopardy in 2019. Sean serves as volunteer Care Pantry Director for a local food pantry.  He holds a BS in Computer Science from Northwestern University and is a big supporter of the Wildcats.

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Quotes

“We were tasked to build the final size of the organization, like 120 people, very rapidly.  Within 3 to 4 months we had to hire all of these people across 3 locations and bootstrap everything.” (originally by Katie Thompson of Rally)

“We were tasked to build the final size of the organization, like 120 people, very rapidly.  Within 3 to 4 months we had to hire all of these people across 3 locations and bootstrap everything.”

“When you’re the son of teachers, there’s definitely this environment where you’re always learning something.”

—Sean Melody

Key Milestones

1. Sean was a guest on Jeopardy! What was your experience like?
2. What inspired Sean to get into tech?
3. The eternal question for many engineers often centers around deciding to go into management.  How did Sean approach that question and what was his first engineering management job like?
4. What is the role of a senior architect?
5. Sean has also held very senior technical roles over the years, with titles like architect and principal software engineer.  What are some of the key skills that you had to develop to function in those roles?

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 Sean Melody
LinkedIn

Follow Develomentor
Twitter: @develomentor

Connect with Grant Ingersoll
LinkedIn

Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/develomentor)

Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/develomentor)

Support the show