I had a conversation with Chelsea Troy last week; it’s really fun to talk with someone you know of and respect from The Internet but have never met in real life before. We were planning on having a conversation about blogging process, and we did! But we also covered a bunch of other interesting topics, including:

I learned a lot from this conversation and we’re sharing it with the hope that there’s something useful in there for you, too 💝

🔊 Here’s the audio!

🔊 Here's the audio!

Topics, by timestamp

The timestamps are links; you can click them 👀

TimestampTopic

00:00:00 | Intros, Berlin, Chicago, Where is ‘home’? |

00:02:35 | Chelsea’s current software engineering work, projects, live-streaming development |

00:05:40 | Storyboarding and mobile UI, Starting with screens, Why is UI development always so fiddly, Huge evolution in Android over the last 4 years |

00:08:20 | Fabian’s transition from Android to Backend, “Full Stack Development” |

00:10:00 | Fabian’s job search, criteria, jobs with meaningful products. |

00:11:45 | Has it been easier to find remote jobs because of Coronavirus? |

00:13:20 | Chelsea’s trajectory, work-life balance, burnout, limits to concentration, productivity flux throughout the day |

00:18:00 | High- vs Low-pressure software development, software development for fun, Terrible Sourdough |

00:24:15 | Corona and work-life balance and staying inside all the time, weather in Chicago (US), Berlin (DE), Wollongong (AU), climate change |

00:29:00 | “What a situation we’re in” – 2020 is the year of all the other shoes falling, Mercury stuck in retrograde etc |

00:32:15 | Blogging! Writing Process, Robert Heaton on how to come up with blog ideas |

00:35:10 | People don’t read code; how to prevent people’s eyes from glazing over |

00:36:10 | Hillel Wayne on using appropriate examples |

00:38:00 | Different types of blog posts and their motivation |

00:46:15 | Blog posts in job applications, hiring |

00:50:00 | Hiring and interviewing in general, resumés, “interview shape” |

00:52:45 | Open source work, making it easy to contribute |

00:56:30 | Splitting responsibility between management and individual contributor work |

00:58:25 | Intersection between social / cultural issues and technical work |

01:08:00 | From amorphous idea to blog post |

01:14:25 | Making sure your work is seen by people, motivation |

01:20:00 | Testing on mobile