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

Emily Patterson joins the show to talk about her origin story, how she went from a business analyst to a product manager and has loved it so much she now leads a group of product managers!

We discuss product management in general, how product platforms are helping with tech education. We venture into discussing how much easier it is to learn with all the different types of media available.

🔗 Discussed Links

• Miro
• Miro's Templates Library
• Mural
• FigJam - Figma's Whiteboarding Tool
• InTheLab's Twitter
• InTheLab's Website

🙋 Guest Links

• Emily's Twitter: @epatt6
• Emily's Blog

❓Listener Survey

If you have 3 minutes, take our short listener survey.

❤️ Reviews

If you could leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, that will help others find the podcast as well! You can share your favorite guest or topic!

Some other areas you can leave us reviews! Spotify, Podchaser.

🗺️ WebJoy Links

• WebJoy Website
• WebJoy Twitter
• WebJoy Instagram
• WebJoy TikTok
• WebJoy YouTube

To stay up to date, you can subscribe to Little Bit of WebJoy which sends out a monthly email letting you know what's new in the WebJoy community.

Kelly Harrop joins the show to talk about her origin story, starting as a professional gamer turned video game model, turned product manager turned UX Engineer, where she has settled in to her passion.

We discuss what UX Engineering is all about, and just how much she loves buttons. We talk about video games, including her current obsession, Elden Ring, before finding ourselves back in familiar territory discussing how video games relate to life.

Discussed Links

• Elden Ring
• Code and Pixels Podcast
• Kelly's Talk at Figma's Config Conference
• Kelly's Website
• Kelly's Twitter: @KellyCodesChaos

Previously on WebJoy

• S1 E1: Play Until it Pays
• S1 E5: Instead of Using Fire, I Use Ice

Michael Liendo joins the show to talk about his origin story, starting as a clothing model to attempting to learn iOS development, and shifting to web development before becoming a Developer Advocate.

We discuss how we experience failure as a part of learning and how viewing life like a video game can help provide a bit of perspective for persevering through challenges when learning something new.

Discussed Links

• AWS Amplify
• Focus Otter
• Michael's Twitter: @mtliendo
• Coding Crystals

Previously on WebJoy

• S1 E1: Play Until it Pays

Shawn Wang joins the show to talk about his origin story, starting in the finance industry and how feeling like just a code monkey in a system drew him to learn front-end engineering and start working on product development and ultimately become a developer advocate.

We discuss what the career path for a developer advocate might look like, as well as podcast listening tools Listen Notes and Listenbox and how they help allow people to look up and listen to podcasts on their own terms rather than being stuck in a corporate garden.

• FreeCodeCamp
• Listen Notes
• Listenbox
• The Coding Career Handbook
• Shawn's Twitter: @swyx
• Shawn's Website

Alex Karp joins the show to talk about his origin story, growing up being fascinated with tech, embracing the iOS development industry before moving into engineering management.

We discuss his passion for helping new engineers break into the industry. We talk about some of the common challenges and fears that can hold people back from applying to and going for the jobs that interest and excite them.

• Twitter Engineering Apprenticeship Program
• About Wayfair Labs
• The Collab Lab
• Alex's Twitter: @AutisticManager
• Running Start

Jessica Wilkins joins the show to talk about her origin story coming from being a musician to building a passion project to promote diversity in classical music and how she got pulled into the tech industry by warm, friendly communities.

We discuss a fun, approachable way to learn technology as we discuss Exercism, an online platform built to teach the joy of programming to everyone.

• (00:00) - Season 1, Episode 2: A Fun, Approachable Way (Jessica Wilkins)

• Black Excellence Music Project
• Exercism Learning Platform
• FreeCodeCamp

🙋 Guest Links

• Jessica's Website
• Jessica's Twitter
• Jessica's LinkedIn
• Jessica's GitHub

❓Listener Survey

If you have 3 minutes, take our short listener survey.

❤️ Reviews

If you could leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, that will help others find the podcast as well! You can share your favorite guest or topic!

Some other areas you can leave us reviews! Spotify, Podchaser.

🗺️ WebJoy Links

• WebJoy Website
• WebJoy Twitter
• WebJoy Instagram
• WebJoy TikTok
• WebJoy YouTube

To stay up to date, you can subscribe to A Lil' Bit of Joy which sends out a monthly email letting you know what's new in the WebJoy community.
Creators & Guests

Jason Lengstorf joins the show to talk about his origin story coming from a screamo band and learning design and development in order to help the band marketing. His somewhat accidental journey through internal developer experience into external developer experience at Netlify.

We discuss his approach to continuous learning and how flow state and enjoying the experience help shape the way we focus and our ability to develop ourselves through learning new skills and abilities.

• (00:00) - Intro

• Jason's Website: https://jason.af
• Jason's Twitter: @jlengstorf
• Netlify
• Netlify Edge Functions Blog Post
• Learn with Jason

Creators & Guests