The Front End

For the final episode in season 1, Scott Spence, a good twitter friend, joins me to share his path into development from VBA analyst to front end coder. He's passionate about the JAM Stack and Gatsby JS and we chat about how a more streamlined, static driven web is rising up to improve both developer and user experiences alike.

A little bit of a different take for this episode as I take to the microphone to answer some of our listeners' most frequently asked questions. From freelancing, to portfolios, improving design skills and whether you need dev ops skills in the world of front end, I aim to give my most honest and helpful answers from my years of development experience.

In episode eight I'm joined by Emma Bostian, a prominent software engineer in the tech Twitter community who works at Spotify. Emma talks to us about the technical interview: the good, the bad, where it can be improved and how it can be useful in hiring the best developers. We also talk about increasing diversity in tech roles and how Emma got into software engineering.

A whole seven episodes in and this time, we're talking with Ben Furfie about his background in games journalism that led into a career in web dev. We're also digging into the state of CSS, specifically Tailwind CSS and how a shift towards utility-driven styling can improve code maintainability and how it compares to methodologies such as BEM.

This this sixth episode, Emily Beardshaw, a front end specialist recruiter, talks to us about the state of getting hired in today's front end market with everything that's going on with the global COVID pandemic. 

She's also sharing how she went from philosophy and politics into recruitment, and how to tailor your CV to maximise your hiring chances.

For episode 5, we have Bethan Vincent, a fellow podcaster from The Brave. On this fifth episode, Bethan and I discuss a range of topics including her winding career path, women in tech, the hiring process, and her very own podcast, The Brave.

Episode four features not one but two guests, Arjun Gillard and Simran Hundal, both very experienced recruiters with the firm, Understanding Recruitment. 

On the show they're going to cover a range of 'getting hired' topics including: how to get hired as a developer; how to help recruiters to help you; why you should use a recruiter; how can employers engage with and attract the best software engineers; and the age old question of 'do you need a software development degree?'. All this and more in episode four.

In episode three we have Chris Bertrand, a senior fullstack developer with Aldermore bank. Chris has a wealth of coding experience across different technologies and is filling us in on static code analysis, code linting and software development policies; what they are, why they're a good thing, and how you can implement them in your own organisation.

In this episode we're joined by Sam Beckham a Senior Front End Developer at GitLab. As a fellow all remote worker, Sam shares his experiences of life without an office, the good parts and the bad, as well as tips for those new to remote working. 

He also introduces us to his popular monthly meetup, Front End NE, and offers his thoughts on starting and growing a regular meetup, attending them as a developer, and what you can get out of them.

In the very first episode of The Front End podcast, I give an introduction to the show, talk about my coding origin story and answer one of the most common questions I get asked about life as a developer: do you need a degree to get hired?

I also mention a few names and resources in this episode that I've linked to here, check them out:

You can find out more about me, Rob Kendal, on my personal website, or follow me on Twitter. For more about The Front End podcast, you can read more on robkendal.co.uk/the-front-end-podcast