Meet Shaundai Person 🇺🇸! Shaundai is a senior software engineer at Netflix, but she hasn't always been a coder. She studied entrepreneurship and had a long, successful career in sales. After a decade in sales and running her own business, Shaundai discovered coding through customizing her business's Shopify website.

Shaundai realized she was ready for a career change to something she felt more passionate about. She also learned that you don't have to go back to school to become a software engineer and that much of engineering isn't NASA-level stuff. In fact, it's about listening to customers' needs and offering them solutions—just like in sales!

In this episode, you'll learn how Shaundai transitioned into the tech team of the company she was already working at. She leveraged her extensive sales experience and her passion for coding to create a personal brand within the company, building a reputation that preceded her. The key to a successful sale is believing in your product, and if you're learning to sell yourself, you are the product! Shaundai will teach you how to do just that while remembering that you're still human. Shaundai and Alex also discuss the often non-linear path to career change and why coding skills are nowadays a commodity (so you need to find a different way to stand out).

🔗 Connect with Shaundai

• 👩‍💼 LinkedIn
• 🌐 Website

⏰ Timestamps

• How Shaundai chose to study entrepreneurship (01:53)
• "I had never been in a position where I loved the thing that I was doing" (04:41)
• Selling software made Shaundai fascinated with software engineering (05:49)
• How Shaundai eventually taught herself to code on Codecademy (10:17)
• How Shaundai organized her studying... and went overtime (12:58)
• "I could make money AND be happy with that I'm doing" (13:25)
• "In this case, I'm selling myself!" (14:36)
• There are always more decision-makers involved in hiring, and here's what to do about them (16:57)
• Shaundai's strategy to win over her company's engineering team (18:31)
• You're always in a more powerful position when people think that something was their idea (20:07)
• Never start conversations with what YOU need (20:54)
• Shaundai started submitting projects to the engineering team's personal development form... and getting challenges (23:50)
• Put yourself in the shoes of the customer (26:02)
• Managers can't go through every single line of code of everybody who's applied. Here's how to tackle that! (26:21)
• Your coding skills are a commodity! Provide value instead. (27:31)
• What's a commodity? (28:16)
• If you're a career changer, you're a superset of a developer! (29:18)
• How Shaundai eventually got to switch teams (30:19)
• Shaundai started interviewing with Netflix less than a year into her new career, and it all started with a podcast (32:01)
• "In order to stand out, I need to show that I'm a human" (36:27)
• How to be human (38:10)
• How to get outside of the goal (while still keeping the goal in sight) (38:55)
• Sometimes we pick the more tangible thing, but ultimately you don't know what can help you in the long run (42:04)
• How to cultivate self-belief? (45:07)

🧰 Resources mentioned

• Front End Happy Hour

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You can also Tweet Alex from Scrimba at @bookercodes and tell them what lessons you learned from the episode so that he can thank you personally for tuning in 🙏 Or tell Jan he's butchered your name here.

Meet Alex Kallaway 🇷🇺🇨🇦! Alex is a Lead Full-Stack Developer, but he hasn't always been a coder. First, he was a violinist; then, he was interested in having a business; he worked in product management and digital marketing. At one point, he was determined to become a developer and was looking for a way to accelerate his learning, and he thought of a coding challenge you might have heard of. Believe it or not, Alex created #100DaysOfCode just for himself - he never thought it would become something that other people would want to do. But then Quincy Larson of freeCodeCamp got an idea...

You can also find Alex at https://www.discomfortacademy.com/, or read his newsletter.

In this interview, you'll learn about the origin story of #100DaysOfCode and Alex's career path. You will also hear everything about the challenge's rules and best practices. What do you do if you can't code for an hour every day? What should you do if you skip a day? How do you set goals? Can you do #100DaysOfCode more than once? How should you measure success?

Alex and Alex also discuss habits, procrastination, and "manifestations of resistance," as well as ways and tactics for overcoming discomfort and reaching goals. Does something really become a habit after a set number of days? Why is mindfulness important, and how do you define consistency? All this, and more, in today's episode.

🔗 Connect with Alex

• 👨‍💼 LinkedIn
• 🌐 Website
• ✉️ Discomfort Academy
• 📹 Youtube

⏰ Timestamps

• How Alex like coding but became a violin player (02:01)
• Alex moved to Canada via Japan (05:18)
• "Codecademy is like Duolingo" (06:59)
• How a product role turned into a marketing role, and that marketing role lead Alex back into coding (07:59)
• Breaking out of tutorial hell with freeCodeCamp (11:37)
• Community break with Jan The Producer (13:25)
• You have to be frustrated to motivate yourself (15:02)
• How #100DaysOfCode was born (16:55)
• The basic rules of #100DaysOfCode (19:50)
• Alex Booker's GitHub activity streak (20:39)
• Procrastination, rationalization, and manifestations of resistance (21:32)
• We are a little bit too addicted to comfort (24:44)
• There's no quick way to break your own resistance and discomfort (25:45)
• How to maintain your momentum (27:05)
• What happens if you break the streak of #100DaysOfCode? (29:22)
• If in the course of 120 days you've coded for 100 days, it's better than if you gave up on day 30 (30:51)
• Amateur vs professional mindset (31:50)
• Top tips for making it to the end of #100DaysOfCode (35:28)
• How to plan your coding challenge (36:21)
• Following rules blindly is not the answer (37:29)
• Create a positive feedback loop (39:24)
• Tutorials should have to include mistakes (40:09)
• Managing your willpower: there is no plan B (40:53)
• What is Discomfort Academy? (45:49)
• Next week on the show, Shaundai Person! (47:32)

⭐️ Leave a Review

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You can also Tweet Alex from Scrimba at @bookercodes and tell them what lessons you learned from the episode so that he can thank you personally for tuning in 🙏 Or tell Jan he's butchered your name here.

Meet Rachel Lee Nabors 🇺🇸🇬🇧! They are an award-winning cartoonist who transitioned to become a developer with a passion for teaching the world how to code. Rachel has worked at major tech companies such as Microsoft, AWS, and Meta. At Meta, they were a pivotal contributor to react.dev, the award-winning version of React documentation.

Rachel is also the author of the Tech Career Survival Guide, a series of Substack essays that may or may not become a book. In these essays, they teach readers about emotional resilience, managing change, and the practical aspects of working in tech. In this episode, Rachel will share their secret for landing high-profile tech jobs, as well as advice for owning your non-linear career path, especially if you're a career changer. You will also discover how to deal with a job market where opportunities may seem scarce and what you can do if nobody seems to be hiring. Plus: why you shouldn't email Dan Abramov, who to reach out to instead, and why collecting feedback from people directly is often better than staring at analytics.

🔗 Connect with Rachel

• 🧑‍💼 LinkedIn
• 🌐 Website
• ✉️ The Tech Career Survival Guide
• 🐦 Twitter
• ꩜ Threads
• 🧑‍🚀 GitHub

⏰ Timestamps

• How Rachel became a developer while being a cartoonist (01:29)
• How Rachel handled the career shift into professional development (03:08)
• Code can make things come to life (05:48)
• Very few people are given jobs just because they're popular (09:22)
• Break (11:07)
• How Rachel gets her FAANG roles (12:28)
• What to do if nobody's hiring (14:48)
• How can a new developer create value in the community? (16:28)
• How Alex did the same (18:41)
• Great Recession was tough, but it brought up some great engineering (21:17)
• Increase your chance to get lucky later (25:43)
• What to do if you don't have a linear career path (27:38)
• When changing career paths, it can feel like starting from scratch (31:26)
• Developing expertise is not a good thing! (32:14)
• Are your skills out of date, and how Rachel transferred her old skills into new roles (33:33)
• Barista engineering (36:52)
• Don't be ashamed of your previous work experience, however unrelated (38:40)
• How Rachel adjusts to change and challenges and helps others do the same through The Tech Career Survival Guide (40:56)

⭐️ Leave a Review

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You can also Tweet Alex from Scrimba at @bookercodes and tell them what lessons you learned from the episode so that he can thank you personally for tuning in 🙏 Or tell Jan he's butchered your name here.

Meet Dominik Piątek 🇵🇱🇬🇧! Dominik moved to the UK from Poland in search of career opportunities. He worked odd jobs, acquired a varied set of skills, and became a partner in a digital agency at the age of 23. That's where he got interested in front-end development, and more than a decade later, Dom is still in London. He's a staff developer who has also led cross-functional teams, worked with complex JavaScript applications and multiple times served as a tech lead.

Dominik interviewed Alex for a job in their previous company. Today, the tables have turned, and Alex interviews Dom. In this episode, you'll learn what Dom looks for in a candidate, what's the difference between a senior developer and a tech lead, and whether or not whiteboard interviews can actually be useful. Dominik also talks about company values and explains the notion of a culture fit once and for all. You'll find out if the hiring processes are getting better, what are the current interview trends, and how different companies optimize their interviews so that they select just the candidates that are right for them.

🔗 Connect with Dominik

• 👨🏻‍💼 LinkedIn
• 🌐 Website
• 👨‍🚀 GitHub

⏰ Timestamps

• In an interview, you only get one shot (01:34)
• Sometimes you get nervous, but sometimes you're too relaxed (02:45)
• How Dominik became a developer (04:19)
• Why Dominik left Poland (05:21)
• "This is not like C!" (06:56)
• It's going to take five years to become comfortable with coding (11:26)
• Don't be buzzwordy! (12:13)
• Community break with Jan the Producer (15:50)
• What do companies want to see in a beginner developer (19:39)
• If your PR gets destroyed, don't be emotional (23:49)
• What's a culture fit? (24:39)
• Can you codify culture? (26:34)
• A lot of time, values are aspirational (28:13)
• Why do people tend to hire people like themselves? (29:12)
• Should you vibe with your job interview? (30:38)
• Is your ability to interview more important than your coding skills? (32:54)
• Are whiteboard interviews a culture test? (34:15)
• Who needs whiteboarding as a skill? (39:33)
• Do you need computer science fundamentals? (43:54)
• Closing advice: The job market always ebbs and flows, focus on your own growth! (45:31)
• Next week on the show: Rachel Lee Nabors (46:45)

⭐️ Leave a Review

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review here and tell us who you want to see on the next podcast.
You can also Tweet Alex from Scrimba at @bookercodes and tell them what lessons you learned from the episode so that he can thank you personally for tuning in 🙏 Or tell Jan he's butchered your name here.

Meet Ian Douglas 🇺🇸🇨🇦! Developer, DevRel, Tech Educator, Career Coach, and author of The Tech Interview Guide, Ian Douglas, has been coding professionally since 1996. During that time, he worked at seventeen different companies! So, he probably knows a thing or two about how to transition companies in the most productive and secure way.

Whether you're a new or more experienced developer, sooner or later, the time will come to change companies. How can you be sure it's time to quit your job? How do you hand in your notice, and what do you even write in a resignation letter? Why is a manager who gets surprised by your leaving the company probably not a good manager? How do you hand off your projects, and when do you tell your coworkers you're moving on from the company? When should you publicize your new role on LinkedIn, why do some recruiters hit you up 90 days after you've changed jobs, and ultimately, how should you navigate all this in today's job market?

If you need help moving on from your role - or at least renegotiating it, listen to this episode!

🔗 Connect with Ian

• 👨🏻‍💼 LinkedIn
• 🌐 Website
• 🐦 Twitter

⏰ Timestamps

• Alex changed jobs recently! (01:58)
• "The first thing you really need to understand is why you want to leave the company" (03:16)
• Have a direction in mind (05:02)
• It takes six to twelve months to hit your stride at a new job (07:13)
• With all the info you have currently, could you see yourself being at the new company for at least two years? (09:29)
• Sometimes the company changes, and that's okay (10:00)
• Should you feel guilty when quitting your job? (10:49)
• What you need to know about notice periods (12:46)
• The risk of resigning (14:42)
• Get all your paperwork signed first (16:34)
• What if your current company wants to keep you? (17:31)
• Even if they manage to keep you, they might not trust in your loyalty (18:59)
• Always communicate with your manager (21:00)
• If you leave a job, it shouldn't really surprise your manager (22:29)
• What if your company can't make the accommodations you need (23:20)
• You need to be able to trust your manager (25:45)
• How to communicate your resignation (26:27)
• How to write your notice letter: it's just a notification email! (28:53)
• Should you tell the team you're quitting (30:21)
• Be prepared to lose access to company stuff (31:31)
• Can you work for a competitor? (32:06)
• Should you tell your current employer about the new company (33:48)
• When should you share the news about your new job on LinkedIn? (37:58)

🧰 Resources Mentioned

• Our previous shows with Ian: An Expert Guide to Technical Interviews, and This Is How You Onboard: Actionable Tips for Developers On a New Job

⭐️ Leave a Review

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review here and tell us who you want to see on the next podcast.
You can also Tweet Alex from Scrimba at @bookercodes and tell them what lessons you learned from the episode so that he can thank you personally for tuning in 🙏 Or tell Jan he's butchered your name here.

Meet Jean Lee! She was the nineteenth engineer at WhatsApp (that was even before it got acquired by Facebook!) and then worked at Meta as an engineering manager for six years after the acquisition. She helped set up WhatsApp's London office and also worked on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Her coding journey didn't start there - she discovered tech almost by chance after her family moved to California. She wanted to study art - but after taking art courses at her university, she realized that coding was her thing. She worked at a tiny startup competing with YouTube and a huge corporation, IBM, before she realized which company size suited her best. She became an engineering manager at Meta without ever planning to become one - but when an opportunity arose, she took it. Because how are you ever going to know what you like doing or not if you don't try things? Today, Jean is a cofounder of Exaltitude, providing resources and coaching to software engineers navigating the ever-changing tech landscape and cultivating a community where everyone can grow together.

In this episode, Jean shares her best career advice. You'll also find out what it was like to work at WhatsApp during the expansion, why company culture always changes when a company is scaling up, why inclusive hiring practices are important, and what is one thing that juniors never remember they need to do.

🔗 Connect with Jean

• 👩‍💼 Linkedin
• 🌐 Website
• 📹 YouTube

⏰ Timestamps

• "I had never really met adults who were so into their work before" (01:08)
• How Jean decided to learn to code (02:50)
• Should you go to university to become a developer (03:52)
• Jean's first role: internship at a Youtube competitor (05:14)
• Jean's second role was at IBM! (05:41)
• Are bigger companies better? Was WhatsApp a happy medium? (06:49)
• Is there a difference in how startups and big companies hire? (08:21)
• The startup scene then vs. now (09:40)
• Should you follow trends and disruptors? (12:20)
• Community Break with Jan the Producer (14:50)
• The challenges of joining WhatsApp early on (16:57)
• How Jean progressed into a management role (19:19)
• Give it a go! (21:32)
• Alex's personality type, and how personality types relate to work (22:21)
• What was it like to set up the WhatsApp London office? (24:28)
• "Whenever there's growth, you have to shift the culture" (27:57)
• Why we need diversity, equity, and inclusion (28:52)
• "Siri would not understand me, and I was offended" (31:04)
• How can we support the professional growth of underrepresented people in tech? (32:23)
• What is Exaltitude (34:05)
• The number one thing developers struggle with (36:02)
• Make a brag journal! (39:38)
• Next week on the podcast: Ian Douglas! (41:44)

🧰 Resources Mentioned

• Exaltitude
• Exaltitude YouTube channel

⭐️ Leave a Review

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review here and tell us who you want to see on the next podcast.
You can also Tweet Alex from Scrimba at @bookercodes and tell them what lessons you learned from the episode so that he can thank you personally for tuning in 🙏 Or tell Jan he's butchered your name here.

✨Use this link for a free month of O'Reilly Learning and read Anna's book and any other resource on the platform! ✨ Meet Anna Skoulikari! She's a UX designer turned front-end developer, senior technical writer, and the author of "Learning Git" - a book published by O'Reilly Media that teaches Git in a simple, visual, and tangible manner so that you can build a solid mental model of how it all works.

Anna started teaching Git because she had to understand it herself. It's powerful but not the most user-friendly of tools. Yet, Git is what we all have in common, whether we're working on back-end or front-end development, on Windows or a Mac. Even GitHub's lawyers use Git!

If you're learning to code, you probably have many questions. Should you use GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket? What's the difference between a merge request and a pull request? Does it make sense to use Git from your command line, or is a GUI good enough? Where are all those files? And how, for the last time, does any of that work? This episode will help you understand Git and provide you with plenty of practical insights to navigate its complexities effectively.

🔗 Connect with Anna

• 👩‍💼 Linkedin
• 🌐 Website

⏰ Timestamps

• Anna’s journey into coding via UX design (01:44)
• How Anna decided to conquer her fear of Git (02:25)
• What is Git? (03:28)
• What can you use Git for? (04:38)
• What is GitHub, and what other platforms are out there? (05:35)
• GitHub’s lawyers also use Git (07:58)
• Should you use Git for your own projects, even if you’re not collaborating with anyone? (08:27)
• What is branching? What is merging? (10:39)
• How do companies typically use Git? (12:14)
• Community Break with Jan the Producer (16:47)
• When should a new deveoloper start learning Git? (18:36)
• Git is a unifying technology (20:27)
• Why is the terminology around Git so confusing? (21:38)
• How Anna teaches Git: the colors of the rainbow (23:08)
• Making the four areas of Git tangible (25:12)
• How to use git: command line or GUI? (28:04)
• What are merge conflicts and how to handle them? (33:24)
• How to practice merge requests and conflicts? (35:47)
• How Anna decided to write a book on Git, and how O’Reilly chooses animals for the book covers (37:57)

🧰 Resources Mentioned

• Use this link for a free month of O'Reilly Learning!
• Learning Git

⭐️ Leave a Review

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review here and tell us who you want to see on the next podcast.
You can also Tweet Alex from Scrimba at @bookercodes and tell them what lessons you learned from the episode so that he can thank you personally for tuning in 🙏 Or tell Jan he's butchered your name here.

✨Use this link for a 20% discount on the Scrimba bootcamp! ✨ Meet Michaella Rodriguez! If you're already in the Scrimba Discord community, you probably know her. If not, she's a career changer who discovered Scrimba while learning, like many; she was active in the Scrimba community when Guil recruited the first-ever code reviewers for our bootcamp. Now, she's a bootcamp lead at Scrimba. And no, she never thought she would be a coder - but a friend made her try it.

Yes, Micha and Alex do talk about the Scrimba bootcamp in this episode. But even if you're not interested in the bootcamp, this interview brings a wealth of information that can help you if you're learning to code. You have probably already heard that trying and teaching somebody else is the best way to solidify your learning. Well, in this episode, you'll find out how to do that as a junior, why you should be able to talk about and explain code, and whether you can bring anything to the table in a discussion or a code review if you're not an expert. Also in this episode: group projects, GIT, accountability, (not) letting yourself slide, and Alex's unorthodox StackOverflow strategy.

🔗 Connect with Micha

• 👩‍💼 Linkedin
• 🐦 Twitter
• 👩‍🚀 GitHub
• 🤖 michaellala on Scrimba Discord

⏰ Timestamps

• How Micha started to learn to code after a friend told her he thought she'd be good at it (01:57)
• Micha used freeCodeCamp but turned to Scrimba for JavaScript (03:19)
• Eventually, Micha started working at Scrimba! (04:42)
• What is the Scrimba Bootcamp? (06:07)
• What challenges do coding students typically face? (09:45)
• How Scrimba bootcamp keeps students accountable (10:57)
• Community Break with Jan the Producer (15:04)
• Why code reviews are important (17:03)
• Why you should look to give code reviews and not just get them (18:29)
• Pay it forward, learn by teaching, and foster community (20:25)
• How Alex used StackOverflow while learning to code (21:39)
• Why you should be able to talk about code (22:42)
• Can beginners actually help someone with their code? (23:28)
• The best person to teach a subject is somebody who just learned it (26:01)
• ELI5 (26:54)
• Some teachers love sounding smart, and that's not always the best for students (28:03)
• The common traits of successful self-taught developers (29:09)
• Where to learn more about the Scrimba Bootcamp (30:53)
• Do group projects as a learner! (33:38)
• Next week on the show: O'Reilly author of Learning Git, Anna SKoulikari! (35:02)

🧰 Resources Mentioned

• Use this link for a 20% discount on the Scrimba bootcamp!
• Scrimba Bootcamp
• From Lab Coat to Code: Vanessa's Path from Lab Scientist to Developing Lab Software
• Anna Skoulikari

⭐️ Leave a Review

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5-star review here and tell us who you want to see on the next podcast.
You can also Tweet Alex from Scrimba at @bookercodes and tell them what lessons you learned from the episode so that he can thank you personally for tuning in 🙏 Or tell Jan he's butchered your name here.