EPISODE SUMMARY

In today's episode, I got the chance to sit down with my friend and Stride's CTO, Alex Kuzmin. Alex has been in software formally for almost 10 years but his intro into the world of software started long before that when he began hacking some of his favorite games as a kid. Alex started his professional career in hardware, then moved to android and eventually to Unity where he began working in game development. Most recently Alex has been working as co-founder and CTO of his own company, Stride.

EPISODE NOTES

• microcontrollers & working with assembly language
• Working remotely before it was "popular" in 2014
• learning how to code when English isn't your first language
• Knowing your limits when exploring new avenues of study.
• deciding to pick up his life and move to Taiwan & the experience of building a company from the ground up while in a foreign country
• the challenges of being a technical co-founder
• the importance of delegation to empower your team for success
• important career milestones: 
  • Great leadership that taught how to review code and support other developers in their coding - the importance of mentorship.
  • making architectural decisions for a team - the importance of a larger perspective
  • expanding his scope via conferences
• Three biggest takeaways 
  • Find someone to mentor you - ask them to review your code, pick their brain, learn from them
  • Do personal projects - it's really about finding something that keeps you excited and exploring. It pushes you to learn your craft. Find problems in your life that you can solve with your code
  • Try at least once to build a full-stack project - It will give you a better appreciation for the challenges each "side" will face.

Featuring

Alex Kuzmin — Twitter, Github, Linkedin, Website, Stride

Andrew Locke — Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn, Medium

Links

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