The Scrimba Podcast
Alex Booker
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🎙 About the episode
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
⏰ 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
⏰ 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
⭐️ 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
⏰ 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
- 👩🚀 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.
Meet Parul Singh 🇬🇧! Parul is a Tech Careers & Neurodiversity Consultant, ADHD advocate, board member at Manchester Tech Festival, Public Speaker, and a former recruitment marketing partner and tech recruiter. The last time she was on the show, she gave us advice on how to stand out and land a role in tech.
Today, we're talking about neurodiversity! What does it mean, why do we need it, why do tech companies seem to attract neurodivergent talent, and how can we create a more inclusive workplace? In this episode, you'll find out why neurodivergent conditions aren't superpowers (but sometimes feel like they are), why some people get diagnosed late, and whether self-diagnosis is valid. Parul is passionate about these topics because of her own lived experience with ADHD and autism, which intersects with her being a woman of color. But even if you're not neurodivergent yourself, chances are you've worked with or managed somebody who is... so tune in!
🔗 Connect with Parul
⏰ Timestamps
- What are they: neurodivergent, neurotypical, neurodiversity (02:22)
- The medical model of neurodivergent conditions is deficit-focused (04:13)
- Stereotypes and internalized ableism (05:53)
- What is masking? (08:16)
- Are neurodivergent conditions classified as disabilities? (09:02)
- Is being neurodivergent a superpower? (10:08)
- What are the challenges for an employer in working with neurodiverse employees? (12:43)
- How many people working in tech are neurodivergent? (14:01)
- You have probably already worked with neurodivergent coworkers (15:43)
- On setting expectations, handling challenging situations, and sharing personal stories (16:43)
- Double empathy problem (20:20)
- Modern corporate culture and delivery pressure (22:09)
- How Parul got diagnosed with ADHD at 25 (24:56)
- Misdiagnosis, and why autism and ADHD mask each other out (26:34)
- You are diagnosed based on how much you inconvenience other people (28:13)
- ADHD medication (30:26)
- The importance of intersectionality (32:29)
- Learned skills vs. habitual skills (34:10)
- Is self-diagnosis valid (37:22)
🧰 Resources Mentioned
- Annual Report: Diversity in Tech in the UK
- Parul's Dopamine Diaries Newsletter
- Parul's previous interview
⭐️ 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.