The Solo Coder Podcast

I spoke with Christos Matskas. Christos is a Developer Evangelist at Microsoft working with the Identity Platform. 

After 2015, Christos started to do a lot of community speaking, conferences, user groups, blogging, open source contributions which all lead him to become a Microsoft MVP (most valuable professional). In turn, all of that activity culminated on him being invited to work at Microsoft in the UK.

During our conversation we spoke about community building and how challenging it is to do it right. We discussed the importance of being willing to speak as a developer and what that can do for ones career.

We also talked about his recent experimenting with TikTok, teaching people how to use Git via quick videos. I had a look and he is good! You can get the link in the show notes to check it out. You will learn quite a few things about Git from Christos videos.

Oh, did I mention that he wants to be Microsoft's CEO? Watch out Satya!

Enjoy the chat!

Full show notes and links: https://SoloCoder.com/100

I spoke with John Calderaio. John is as a technical writer currently working with Mosh Hamedani from Programming with Mosh.

If you haven't heard about Mosh, he is a great content and course creator. John writes for Mosh's website.

But John's story goes way beyond coding. As we discussed about his career, he revealed his troubled time from 12 to 20 years old when he dealt with drugs and alcohol, which lead to a car accident that got him in jail for 1 year. According to him, this was the worst time of his life.

Thankfully he got himself clean and he shared with me that after jail, he went back to University, got his bad grades removed and finished with a 3.9 GPA in Computer Science Engineering.

Unfortunately as a result of the car accident, he started suffering severe backpain which is still a constant in his life 24/7. Just to give you an idea of how bad the pain is, he was talking to me from his bed during the chat.

Nowadays, John is looking forward to a surgery that should fix the problems on his back. If all goes well, has plans to go to med school and combine technology with medicine.

I will leave you with the positive John Calderaio - technical writer and developer.

Enjoy the chat!

Full show notes and links: https://SoloCoder.com/99

I spoke with Rob Richardson. Rob is a veteran developer with over 18 years of experience in the field. Currently he works as a Developer Advocate for Cyral.

Originally coming from an Industrial Design graduation, he quickly moved on to a Masters in Computer Information Systems. Rob has worked with many technologies and has seen many patterns and cycles. For instance, he shared that one of the biggest adjustments within his career was to see and adapt to the client and server cycles. His fresh perspective on this topic was very insightful and easy to understand.

Rob shared with me that he always tries to bring the user's perspective to the center of the conversation. This is not very simple to do and most developers end up ignoring it and focusing way more in the technical details than what they should. To be a successful tech consultant, one must develop their empathy skills, otherwise they will not go too far.

As Rob said, it is not uncommon for people to believe they are the center of the universe and forget about other people's perspectives.

I will leave you with the eloquent Rob Rich, developer advocate, speaker and much more.

Enjoy the chat!

Full show notes and links: https://SoloCoder.com/98

I spoke with Garrick Crouch. Garrick is a Software Engineer working for Deka Solutions. Technology wise, his focus is React in the frontend and Laravel in the backend, which is a combination that he has been working with for a few years now.

But coding was not always on his radar. In his early career he was an electrician. He almost got a degree, but in his final semester he dropped out as a result of his substance abuse.

We have explored how he was able to move on with his life after 12 years of drug addiction.

During the time he was in recovery, he came in touch with web development and it was the starting point of a complete turn around in his life. Garrick attended a coding bootcamp and got himself in College studying for a Computer Programming degree.

So many lessons learned from Garrick's experiences. It shows that no matter what kinds of struggle we are going through, there is a light at the end of the tunnel as long as you are willing to move forward.

I will leave you with the inspiring story of recovery and persistency from Garrick Crouch, Software Engineer.

Full show notes and links: https://SoloCoder.com/97

I spoke with Jan. Jan is a Shopify ecommerce specialist based in Germany.

Originally graduated as a mechanical engineer, he started his career with robotics, developing automation robots for product manufacturing assembly lines.

However, after just a few month in the job, he quickly realized that this was not what he wanted. He wanted to code but not robots. That lead him to web development. He started then a freelancing career initially using WordPress, but moved on to Shopify as he was interested in helping clients with their ecommerce needs and in his opinion, Shopify is a better solution.

Now he is on a journey to help other developers and aspiring developers to start their freelancing careers focused on assisting clients with Shopify needs. Him and his partner launched a site called Freemote where you can learn how to build your freelancing business from the ground up. They have training content including videos and worksheets as well as a community to help each other.

For this episode I brought Ken Fowler. Ken is an ex student of mine and he was the one who recommended me to talk to Jan. So the other person asking questions is Ken.

I will leave you with Jan, Shopify and freelancing expert.

Full show notes and links: https://SoloCoder.com/96

I spoke with Ottawa based Ihab El-Waly. Ihab has a Computer Science background, but nowadays he works mostly with Digital Marketing.

Ihab caught my attention as he was the one who reached out to me to be part of the podcast. Usually I'm the one inviting guests and the proactive approach that Ihab took was an interesting surprise which made me want to talk to him even more.

I spoke with Ihab about his time as a Computer Science student and how he transitioned from University to becoming a freelancer website developer to then moving to digital marketing.

I have worked with many digital marketers in the past as my clients, but never had the opportunity to talk to one for the podcast and this looked like a good chance.

Ihab said that he was not cut out to be a super tech developer because of his business interests. He sees himself more as a middleman between technology and business. I think many of you listing to this might be in the same boat.

We also talked about the fact that Ihab's family and friends didn't support him much initially but now, after positive results, they are more convinced that this was a good career choice for him.

I will leave you with the soft-spoken digital marketer Ihab El-Waly.

Enjoy the chat!

Full show notes and links: https://SoloCoder.com/94

This was a different episode and we had a live audience asking questions. I think we will be doing this more and more over time and I would love to hear your opinion about this format. Do you like it? Don't like it? Hit me up on LinkedIn or Twitter - Links can be found @ SoloCoder.com.

We spoke with Cristian Florea. Cristian is a Frontend Developer working for Novartis, the big pharma company.

The format was a bit different from the traditional one and Cristian delivered a lot of valuable insights about the industry, getting experience as a frontend developer and many tips to help people landing their first job as a developer.

Aside from working at Novartis, about 2 years ago Cristian started helping aspiring developers by creating a coaching program to give them a hand on landing their first job.

Coming from a different background - Cristian studied Law - he has first-hand experience of how someone with non-traditional experience, can break into the industry.

We have also explored the fact that Cristian is a bit nomadic right now, going from country to country for only a few months at a time. Sounds like a dream come true to many people who love to travel.

From electronic music producer to barista to coder, you will take away a lot from this chat with Cristian Florea, coach for aspiring developers.

Full show notes and links: https://SoloCoder.com/93

I spoke with Chris Eidhof. Together with his business partner Florian Kugler, he runs objc.io where you can find books, courses, videos and resources in general about iOS and macOS development.

Nowadays it focus mostly on Swift, but at some point in the past before Swift it was all about Objective-C as their site name suggests.

We spoke about his origin story around Objective-C and the fact that he doesn't have a LinkedIn profile, making my life as I researched about him, a lot harder.

Burn out is a topic that I'm always curious about. Chris spoke openly about it and how he was able to get to the other side of that challenging time.

We spoke about objective-c.io and their approach to business which basically focus on creating great resources and letting the content do the rest of the work, instead of focusing too much on promoting the business. It seems to have worked really well for them.

In the end he mentioned that currently they plan to release some of their own apps so they can stay hands-on to be able to talk proficiently about all aspects of mobile development and not just focus on teaching.

Whether you are a mobile developer or not, Chris shared lessons and career tips in this episode that are applicable to all kinds of coders, no matter what their specific tech stack might be.

I will leave you with Chris Eidhof, iOS developer and educator.

Full show notes and links: https://SoloCoder.com/92

I spoke with the dual Matt Lawrence and Mike Karan. Together they run a web development agency in Hamilton, Canada called "Digital Dynasty Design".

Beyond that, they also run their own podcast show called "HTML All The Things" where they talk about web development, design and running a small business.

I was interested in speaking to them about how and why they started their own web development company. I wanted to shed some light into this as a career opportunity. They were very candid about it. They covered the feast and famine cycles that are so common when running a small business.

They also spoke about their focus on trying to create some sort of passive income stream that can help to minimize the ups and downs of the business.

Of course we also talked about their own podcast and how they are able to keep it going with so much consistency.

It was great to be able to talk such a good combination of business partners. They have so many complementing skills to add to each other. This is key when picking someone to go in business together.

I will leave you with Matt and Mike from Digital Dynasty Design.

Enjoy the chat!

Full show notes and links: https://SoloCoder.com/91