Tech Lead Journal

“You can run an organization where you communicate clearly, and you treat people fairly, and you try to set people up for success. I have seen it work, and I can make that happen, and I remember that it is possible."

Hongyi is the Director of Open Government Products, a division of the Government Technology Agency of Singapore. He leads an experimental team of engineers, designers, and product managers who build technology for the public good, such as Data.gov.sg, Parking.sg, FormSG, Go.gov.sg, and Isomer.

In this episode, I had an inspiring chat with Hongyi about the Singapore government’s challenges in adopting new tech, including some major hurdles that he needed to overcome at the beginning. Hongyi then shared more about his team, Open Government Products (OGP), how he started the whole initiative, scaled it up, and importantly built some cool products that have brought tremendous impact to the public good. Hongyi also outlined his visions for OGP, that include open sourcing the products that his team has built for other governments to adopt and implement. He also touched on Singapore government’s challenges in terms of cloud adoption and hiring engineering talent. Do not miss Hongyi’s explanation on “bureaucratic deadlock” that he beautifully explained as one of the major challenges that he faced when starting OGP.

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Li Hongyi’s Bio

Prior to joining the public sector, Hongyi worked at Google on the distributed databases and image search teams. He previously attended MIT, where he obtained degrees in computer science and economics. In his free time, he works on personal projects like typographing.com and chatlet.com.

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“Courage needs to be emphasized even more in software development context. That’s related with respect. We cannot expect the developers will be courageous, to tell the truth, to have integrity, unless the organization, the management respect them as a professional."

Joshua initially started his career as a software developer, but over time became more interested in the people aspect of software development, which then brought his interest in Scrum. He has a decade of experience as a Scrum Master and has been working with senior leaderships to improve enterprise agility.

In this episode, Joshua shared his views on how we can improve the people’s aspect of the software development by treating the people more humanely. He outlined how an enterprise should adopt agility, execute agile transformation, and use outcome instead of output to drive the behavior change. He also shared his observation on how the COVID pandemic brought forward the importance of adopting agility in business and personal life. Do not miss his anecdote on how he learned about self organization unexpectedly!

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Joshua Partogi’s Bio

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“As a leader, it’s not your responsibility to do. It’s your responsibility to teach and help your team to level up. Your job is to level up your team, so that you have a team of people who can do it better and faster."

Trisha Gee is a Java Champion, author, and the leader of Java Developer Advocacy team at JetBrains. She has an extensive Java experience with expertise in Java high performance systems, and she is exceptionally passionate about sharing things that help real developers. Trisha is an author of a few books: “What to Look for in a Code Review“ and “97 Things Every Java Developer Should Know“. Trisha also produces a monthly newsletter for JetBrains called “Java Annotated Monthly”, which is a great monthly summary for all things happening in the Java world.

In this episode, I had a chat with Trisha about the current state of Java, and how it stands compared to other programming languages. She also gave some good tips on how to transition from old Java version to the latest Java version. Trisha shared some code review best practices and explained why reading code is harder than writing it, and that we should put more effort in making our code more readable. She suggested why a developer should use an IDE, and how using an IDE could help in increasing productivity and producing a more readable and idiomatic code. Trisha also shared some of her lessons learned from her recent transition to becoming a team lead.

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Trisha Gee’s Bio

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“A Tech Lead is a person with a technical background, typically an engineer who is leading a team and particularly responsible and accountable for their technical direction."

Patrick Kua is a seasoned technology leader and is passionate about accelerating the growth and success of tech organizations and technical leaders. Before going independent recently, Pat was the CTO and Chief Scientist of N26 (Berlin, Germany), where he transformed the early stage startup culture and led the Product & Technology teams for hypergrowth. Before N26, Pat spent 13+ years in ThoughtWorks as a Technical Principal Consultant, where he researched deep into the Tech Lead role and became a thought leader about it. Pat is a frequent keynote and conference speaker and also an author.

In this episode, I had an amazing learning conversation with Pat about the Tech Lead role and discussed deep with him on what it takes to become a good Tech Lead. Pat also shared his journey as a CTO and Chief Scientist of N26, the challenges he faced there and what he did to transform the Product & Technology teams to align for hypergrowth. This is one of those conversations you definitely not want to miss to learn how to become a great technical leader!

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Patrick Kua’s Bio

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“There is no permanent failure and there is no guarantee of success either. What you define as success, what you define as failure is just a definition."

Sau Sheong is the CEO of SP Digital, an energytech company, part of SP Group, the leading energy utility in Asia Pacific and one of Singapore’s largest corporations. In this episode, Sau Sheong shared with me about the digital transformation journey that he embarked in SP Digital, including some success and failure stories. His achievements during this transformation journey led him to winning the “Executive of the Year for Utilities” award at SBR Management Excellence Awards 2019. Sau Sheong also shared his interesting career journey from being a software engineer, to being a CTO, and to becoming a CEO in SP Digital. Sau Sheong has written multiple programming books, and he mentioned what drives him to write those books, and why he is also very active in the tech communities. Don’t miss his sharing on some unique experiences that he had with his readers!

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Chang Sau Sheong’s Bio

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“Continuous Integration is when you are integrating with the other developers on the code base as soon as possible. Continuous Delivery is when your code is in a deployable state and functionally correct."

In this episode, I had a long deep conversation with Sriram Narayanan (Ram for short), a Principal Consultant at ThoughtWorks Singapore. Ram is one of my mentors and someone that I always enjoy listening to for all his wisdom and vast amount of experience in the industry. Ram has an illustrious versatile career, successfully transforming his role repeatedly, from being a developer, build & release engineer, system administrator, Agile consultant, and recently Continuous Delivery consultant. We discussed in depth about what Continuous Delivery is, including several important concepts in the DevOps world, such as Testing Pyramid, Value Stream Map, and Segregation of Duty. Ram also gave his valuable tips on how to become a successful consultant and how to manage client stakeholders well. We also touched on a few fun discussions on how one should keep up with the rapid changes in technology and deal with a plethora of industry buzzwords. Do not miss the insightful archery analogy anecdote in our conversation!

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Sriram Narayanan’s Bio

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“The thing about becoming a Tech Influencer is, content is Queen and consistency, quality and value matter. That’s the trifecta of creating content that sticks."

In this episode, I had a fun conversation with Stephanie Wong, a Developer Advocate from Google Cloud. Stephanie is well known for her online developer contents ranging from YouTube videos, podcast and blog posts. She also hosts her own YouTube channel called “Steph You Should Know” where she talks about career, tech and productivity tips. Stephanie shared her story on how she started in technology even without technology education background and what led her to her current role. She also shared great tips on public speaking, storytelling, building a personal brand, and CV writing. She also gave her view on how to empower women to thrive in technology and dealing with imposter syndrome.

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Stephanie Wong’s Bio

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"With Infrastructure as Code, you’re not trying to kind of reverse engineer or understand what ended up somehow onto each system, you’re actually saying, this is how the system is built and because it’s built from that code. So there is no difference."

In this episode, I had an in-depth discussion with Kief Morris, the author of the O’Reilly “Infrastructure as Code” book. We started from what is Infrastructure as Code and why we should implement this important concept for managing our infrastructure, especially in the cloud era. We also discussed Infrastructure as Code principles, patterns, anti-patterns, pipeline, testing, and also recent new tools in this space. Kief also mentioned about his upcoming 2nd edition of the Infrastructure as Code book and what new changes that he is introducing. Do not miss our Pet vs Cattle discussion!

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Kief Morris’s Bio

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"With the kind of security breaches and attacks that we are witnessing in this era, it becomes of prior importance that we prioritize security at the top."

In this episode, I am joined by Neha Malhotra who has recently been awarded one of the Top 20 Women in Cybersecurity in Singapore 2020. Neha is deeply passionate about cybersecurity and has an extensive experience in driving initiatives across multiple cybersecurity domains. She is also very active in the cybersecurity community groups and kindly volunteers her time to promote cybersecurity awareness to more people and also to champion for women in cybersecurity and technology.

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Neha Malhotra’s Bio

She works as a Cybersecurity Program Manager and volunteers to serve as a Communications Director on the Exco board of (ISC)²Singapore chapter, & is actively involved with the Singapore community across initiatives driven by Cybersecurity Agency of Singapore, (ISC)², WoSec Singapore, AISP (Association of Information Security Professionals), Division Zero, Cyber Risk Meetups, Google Developers Space. She was on the Judges Panel for The CyberSecurity Awards (TCA) 2019.

Neha holds CISSP, CISM, PMP certifications and is currently researching on cloud, container security, blockchain security and IoT security.

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“Knowing and understanding are very different things. Unless I practice it along with good guidance, I may not increase my understanding."

There are several Agile misconceptions in the industry lately. It has even come to a point where people are being skeptical and starting to doubt the actual value of Agile methodologies and practices.

In this episode, I had a conversation with Stanly Lau, one of the early leaders of the Agile Singapore community, about these Agile misconceptions and what we can do to bring back Agile to what it was originally intended for. Stanly is an Agile Coach in Odd-e and he enjoys helping others to produce better quality software sustainably. Stanly also shared Odd-e unique culture and how it is challenging the status quo by experimenting for other ways of building and operating a successful company.

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Stanly Lau’s Bio

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