WebJoy: Real Stories from Tech About the Struggles and Delights That Made Us Who We Are Today

April Bowler joins the show to talk about her origin story, from her first career and taking a break to raise her kids, to discovering that she was actually really interested in software development while helping her daughter plan for college.

We discuss her journey learning to code and the encouragement and help she received along the way from the tech community around her. The challenges of debugging and the love/joy relationship developers have with their code. Finally, we talked about the communities that helped her along the way: Code Newbie, The Collab Lab and Outreachy.

Discussed Links

• Code Newbie
• The Collab Lab
• Outreachy
• April's Twitter: @A_Bowler2

Jay Miller joins the show to talk about their origin story, from dropping out of college and joining the military, to discovering military life wasn't for them, but the traveling was fun! How did they end up as a Cloud Advocate at Microsoft? We talk about that journey!

We discuss productivity frameworks a bit, before chatting about making career moves based on what brings you joy. We also talk about bonding through more inclusive methods, like eating ice cream instead of going out to a bar. Finally, we chat about diversity and how what might never come to mind for one person is just part of natural conversations for someone else.

Discussed Links

• Conduit (Jay's Podcast)
• DiversityOrgs.Tech
• Jay's Website
• Jay's Twitter: @kjaymiller

Hussien Khayoon joins the show to talk about his origin story, from accidentally becoming a software engineer, to getting an internship at IBM before working in the start-up world for awhile before joining Shopify last year.

We discuss getting into tech, and mentorship programs he’s been involved with.

Discussed Links

• Hussien’s Twitter: @hussien_coding

Zack Jackson joins the show to talk about his origin story, from not doing well in high school, to teaching himself programming and becoming a core contributor to one of the most essential front-end development tools available: Webpack, as well as being a co-creator of Webpack Module Federation.

We discuss the benefits of being involved in really technical work in open source, and the benefits it has on your day job. His passion for working on distributed architectures and how he accidentally built a self-healing server using Module Federation. We also discuss state management using Recoil and how that helps decouple your application logic from the state.

Discussed Links

• Webpack
• GitHub repos: Module Federation
• Module Federation Website
• Recoil State management library
• Zack's Twitter: @ScriptedAlchemy

Lauren Chilcote joins the show to talk about her origin story: from going to school for fashion design to learning design and front-end development to becoming passionate about design culture.

We discuss the challenges of moving across the country during a pandemic, the benefits and challenges of design culture and being in a profession in which everyone has thoughts and ideas on your work, especially in today's often fully remote environment. As well as listening to audiobook while supporting local bookstores with Libro.fm!

Discussed Links

• Lauren's thoughts on Design Culture
• Libro.fm Audiobooks
• CoHo Fellowships (OnDeck mentioned in the episode by Lauren is now known as CoHo)
• Lauren's Website
• Lauren's Twitter: @LaurenChilcote

Zach Leatherman joins the show to talk about his origin story: from learning programming in the early days of the web to being paid to build open-source software, it's been a wild ride!

We discuss the power of having your own website versus just relying on social media and algorithms, as well as the best way to get started building a website if you're new to it.

Discussed Links

• Eleventy
• Netlify
• IndieWeb
• Zach's Website
• Zach's Twitter: @ZachLeat

Taylor Desseyn joins the show to talk about his origin story, how he started as a musician where he made it to Nashville, and was on tour when something happened to make him give up on all of that. Starting from the start, Taylor utilized the power of networking to build an amazing career helping connect people with jobs.

We discuss the power of networking and how his dad used it to find a job after being out of the job market for years. How Taylor started content creation and how it's a superpower for introverts like us. Most importantly we discuss what ONE STEP you can do if you haven't really started networking yet.

Discussed Links:

• Taylor's Free Resource Page
• Guidance Counselor 2.0 Podcast
• Taylor's Twitter: @tdesseyn
• Taylor's Website

Kyle Shevlin joins the show to talk about his origin story from studying psychology and being a pastor, to working with jQuery and eventually getting cozy working on internet front-end tooling.

We discuss the differences between being a product engineer and being an internal tools-based engineer, before diving into more philosophical conversations about how everything can be improved.

Discussed Links:

• Kyle’s Twitter: @kyleshevlin
• Kyle’s Website

Kat joins the show to talk about her origin story from dropping out of medical school to learning programming while live streaming!

We discuss the hard decisions and inspirations along the way, and we talk about her joy for healthy living, the #FitDevs community, and how it all came together.

Discussed Links:

• #FitDevs
• Eddie’s Water Photo
• Kat's FitDevs links
• Kat's Twitter: @katalyst_katt

Joe Natoli joins the show to talk about his origin story, how he started in design before the internet was a thing. How he jumped into designing for the internet early on and ultimately realized real fulfillment comes from helping people learn.

We discuss his passion for helping people learn, how the rules and processes in tech companies can stand in the way of achieving what they want, and about being the Tony Robbins of UX!

Discussed Links:

• GiveGoodUX.com
• UX 365 Academy
• Joe's Twitter: @JoeNatoli