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:
- Jobs in software engineering, how careers are rarely linear, how Coronavirus has affected job availability, remote work
- Designing and building open-source software such that it’s easy to submit patches / start developing
- UI testing on mobile (it’s… not as easy as it should be)
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!
Topics, by timestamp
The timestamps are links; you can click them 👀
| Timestamp | Topic |
|---|---|
| 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 |
Links and Things we mentioned!
- Robert Heaton - How to come up with blog post ideas
- Hillel Wayne - Instructive and Persuasive Examples
- Jones & Okun - White Supremacy Culture (pdf)
- Ongaro & Ousterhout - In Search of an Understandable Consensus Algorithm (aka The Raft Consensus Algorithm, pdf)
- The Raft class that Chelsea took - Rafting Trip
- Chelsea’s Raft implementation blog series
- The Scottish Gaelic Tattoo Handbook
- Chelsea Live Streams all Development on the Scottish Gaelic Tattoo App
- One of the quickest blog posts I’ve ever written, How to ask questions well, asynchronously
- Probably the longest blog post I’ve ever written, How Does Lossless Compression in Fuji RAF Files work?
- Techniques for setting boundaries around your remote job
- Sendwave, my former company, working on remittances. They’re great, and they’re hiring remotely!
- The Recurse Center
- Julia Evans on blogging principles she uses and “advice” for aspiring tech bloggers
- Charity Majors – The (Real) 11 Reasons I don’t hire you