I spoke with Christos Matskas. Christos is a Developer Evangelist at Microsoft working with the Identity Platform. 

After 2015, Christos started to do a lot of community speaking, conferences, user groups, blogging, open source contributions which all lead him to become a Microsoft MVP (most valuable professional). In turn, all of that activity culminated on him being invited to work at Microsoft in the UK.

During our conversation we spoke about community building and how challenging it is to do it right. We discussed the importance of being willing to speak as a developer and what that can do for ones career.

We also talked about his recent experimenting with TikTok, teaching people how to use Git via quick videos. I had a look and he is good! You can get the link in the show notes to check it out. You will learn quite a few things about Git from Christos videos.

Oh, did I mention that he wants to be Microsoft's CEO? Watch out Satya!

Enjoy the chat!

Full show notes and links: https://SoloCoder.com/100

I spoke with John Calderaio. John is as a technical writer currently working with Mosh Hamedani from Programming with Mosh.

If you haven't heard about Mosh, he is a great content and course creator. John writes for Mosh's website.

But John's story goes way beyond coding. As we discussed about his career, he revealed his troubled time from 12 to 20 years old when he dealt with drugs and alcohol, which lead to a car accident that got him in jail for 1 year. According to him, this was the worst time of his life.

Thankfully he got himself clean and he shared with me that after jail, he went back to University, got his bad grades removed and finished with a 3.9 GPA in Computer Science Engineering.

Unfortunately as a result of the car accident, he started suffering severe backpain which is still a constant in his life 24/7. Just to give you an idea of how bad the pain is, he was talking to me from his bed during the chat.

Nowadays, John is looking forward to a surgery that should fix the problems on his back. If all goes well, has plans to go to med school and combine technology with medicine.

I will leave you with the positive John Calderaio - technical writer and developer.

Enjoy the chat!

Full show notes and links: https://SoloCoder.com/99

I spoke with Rob Richardson. Rob is a veteran developer with over 18 years of experience in the field. Currently he works as a Developer Advocate for Cyral.

Originally coming from an Industrial Design graduation, he quickly moved on to a Masters in Computer Information Systems. Rob has worked with many technologies and has seen many patterns and cycles. For instance, he shared that one of the biggest adjustments within his career was to see and adapt to the client and server cycles. His fresh perspective on this topic was very insightful and easy to understand.

Rob shared with me that he always tries to bring the user's perspective to the center of the conversation. This is not very simple to do and most developers end up ignoring it and focusing way more in the technical details than what they should. To be a successful tech consultant, one must develop their empathy skills, otherwise they will not go too far.

As Rob said, it is not uncommon for people to believe they are the center of the universe and forget about other people's perspectives.

I will leave you with the eloquent Rob Rich, developer advocate, speaker and much more.

Enjoy the chat!

Full show notes and links: https://SoloCoder.com/98