Tech Done Right

Small, Sharp Developer Tools With Brian Hogan TableXI offers training for developers and product teams! For more info, visit http://tablexi.com.workshops or email workshops@tablexi.com. Guest Brian P. Hogan (https://twitter.com/bphogan): Editorial Manager for DigitalOcean (https://digitalocean.com), Author of Small, Sharp, Software Tools: Harness the Combinatoric Power of Command-Line Tools and Utilities (https://pragprog.com/book/bhcldev/small-sharp-software-tools), teacher, student, and musician. More info at bphogan.com (https://bphogan.com/). Summary Developers use a variety of tools other than their programming language to get their jobs done. This week, we talk about those tools with Brian Hogan, an Editorial Manager for DigitalOcean. Brian's a prolific technical educator, writer, and editor and he's currently the author of the book Small, Sharp, Software Tools (https://pragprog.com/book/bhcldev/small-sharp-software-tools) from the Pragmatic Press. We talk about why command line tools in particular ar

Becoming a Senior Engineer with Jamey Hampton TableXI offers training for developers and product teams! For more info, visit http://tablexi.com/workshops or email us at workshops@tablexi.com. Guest Jamey Hampton (https://twitter.com/jameybash): Senior Software Dev at Agrilyst (https://www.agrilyst.com/) and panelist on Greater Than Code (https://greaterthancode.com). Blogs at jameybash.com (http://www.jameybash.com/). Summary On this episode, we're talking about becoming a senior engineer. When you first become a senior engineer, you suddenly have new job responsibilities that aren't coding and they aren't management. It's not clear how to balance your time or evaluate your success. Our guest this week is Jamey Hampton, a panelist on the Greater Than Code podcast and a Senior Engineer at Agrilyst. We talk about how to handle the changing responsibilities and perspective that comes from being promoted even when you're still the same person that you were the previous week. We also talk specifically about hiring

Your First Open Source Contribution with VM Brasseur TableXI offers training for developers and product teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com or go to http://tablexi.com/workshops. Guest VM Brasseur (https://twitter.com/vmbrasseur): Open Source consultant, Vice President of Open Source Initiative (https://opensource.org/), and Author of Forge Your Future with Open Source (https://pragprog.com/book/vbopens/forge-your-future-with-open-source). vmbrasseur.com (https://www.vmbrasseur.com/). Summary The Open Source world is large. It’s also complex and difficult to manage, especially for a novice. Our guest this week is VM Brasseur, who is the Vice President of the Open Source Initiative and the author of a new book from Pragmatic called Forge Your Future With Open Source. We talk how Open Source is different from free software, and how to get started in Open Source, how to pick a project, how to navigate a new project to make your first submission. We’ll also look at it from the other side, and talk

Accessibility With Luisa Morales TableXI is offering training for developers and product teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com or see our offerings at http://tablexi.com/workshops. The Table XI inclusive meeting Kickstarter is ongoing as this episode is released, see http://tablexi.com/kickstarter for more information. Guest Luisa M. Morales (https://twitter.com/luisamariethm), luisam.com (http://luisam.com/). Summary As many as 15 to 25 percent of your site’s potential users may have trouble accessing it due to some kind of disability. How can you design your site to allow your content to be usable by the widest variety of users? My guest today is Luisa Morales, an engineering fellow at the New York City Mayor’s office for Economic Opportunity. We talk about what accessibility means, how to design your site to be accessible, and what guidelines to use to help ensure success. We’ll also talk about a very literal form of accessibility — making your site behave in a way that it is accessible to

Meetings and Inclusion with Katie Gore and Mark Rickmeier The inclusion card deck discussed in this episode is now live on Kickstarter. Go to https://www.tablexi.com/kickstarter to get your deck. TableXI is offering training for developers and product teams! For more info, got to http://tablexi.com/workshops or email workshops@tablexi.com. Guests: Mark Rickmeier (https://twitter.com/MarkRickmeier): CEO of Table XI (https://www.tablexi.com/). Katie Gore (https://twitter.com/speechIRL): Founder and Director of speech IRL (https://www.speechirl.com/). Summary Today we are talking about meetings. Any group software activity is going to have meetings, and we’re going to talk about making them better, where by better we mean more interactive and able to get meaningful contributions from everybody without letting the loudest or most powerful voices dominate. My guests are Mark Rickmeier, the CEO of Table XI, and Katie Gore, of the communication coaching company SpeechIRL. As this podcast comes out, Table XI is run

Empowering Entry-Level Developers with Mercedes Bernard TableXI is offering training for developers and product teams! For more info, email go to http://tablexi.com/workshops. Guest Mercedes Bernard (https://twitter.com/mercedescodes): Senior Software Engineer at DevMynd (https://www.devmynd.com/). mercedesbernard.com (http://mercedesbernard.com/). Summary How can your company empower your entry-level developers to grow their skills and advance their careers? If you are an entry-level developer, what are skills that are important for growth. Mercedes Bernard, a Senior Software Engineer at DevMynd, joins Tech Done Right to talk about empowering entry-level developers. We talk about giving people scaffolding to support them in owning larger and larger parts of a software process, and how to align your entire company to support growth. Notes 02:15 - Misconceptions About What it Takes to Level Up and The Best Ways to Start Making That Journey 04:17 - On Being a “Domain Expert” or a “Sponsor” 07:52 - Job Switchin

20 Years of Web Development with Avdi Grimm and Sarah Mei TableXI is offering training for developers and product teams! For more info, visit http://tablexi.com/workshops. Guests Sarah Mei (https://twitter.com/sarahmei): Founder of RailsBridge (http://railsbridge.org/), Director of Ruby Central (http://rubycentral.org/), Software Architect at Salesforce (https://www.salesforce.com/). Avdi Grimm (https://twitter.com/avdi): Creator of the RubyTapas Screencast Series (https://www.rubytapas.com/) and author of Exceptional Ruby (http://exceptionalruby.com/) and Confident Ruby (http://www.confidentruby.com/). avdi.codes (https://avdi.codes/). Summary What has changed in web development in the last 20 years, and what do those changes say about the next 20? I recently realized that Avdi Grimm, the head chef of Ruby Tapas, Sarah Mei, of Ruby Central and Salesforce, and I all began our professional careers within a couple of weeks of each other in August 1998. I wanted to talk to them about what’s changed and what’s s

Failure Management and Response with Nickolas Means TableXI is offering training for developers and product teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com. Guest Nickolas Means (https://twitter.com/nmeans) | nickol.as (http://nickol.as/) | VP of Engineering at MuveHealth (http://www.muvehealth.com/) Summary How can you learn from an engineering team's failure? Can you take the examples of how others have dealt with engineering problems to improve your team's day-to-day operations. Our guest is Nickolas Means, a software manager at Muve Health, who is fascinated by engineering failures. We talk about what you can learn from studying disasters, how to create a company culture in calm times that will works smoothly in stressful times, and how a successful engineering team communicates using stories and how they handle mistakes. Along the way, we talk about the recent incident at the Seattle Airport, the CitiCorp building in Manhattan, Three Mile Island and other engineering and team missteps. We have, I hop

Learning Programming Languages and Strategies With Katrina Owen Table XI is offering training for developers and product teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com or go to http://www.tablexi.com/workshops Guest Katrina Owen (https://twitter.com/kytrinyx): Blog (http://www.kytrinyx.com/) | Katrina’s Talks (https://confreaks.tv/presenters/katrina-owen) Summary What's a good way to learn a new programming language that focuses on solving problems and not merely syntax? Katrina Owen is the creator of Exercism, a tool for getting beyond "hello world" in new programing languages. She is also the co-author of 99 Bottles of OOP, and the presenter of a number of outstanding technical talks. We start off by talking about Exercism, how it started, how it evolved and what it’s good at, and then we talk about how the process by which it evolved, and how Katrina learned to analyze the project more strategically, and how that strategic thinking has helped her in other parts of her life and career. Notes 02:14 - Exe

Rubyists in Other Languages with James Edward Gray II and Steve Klabnik TableXI is offering training for developers and product teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com. Guests Steve Klabnik (https://twitter.com/steveklabnik): Blog (https://www.steveklabnik.com/) James Edward Gray II (https://twitter.com/JEG2): Blog (http://graysoftinc.com/) Summary Ruby is great. But it's not the best tool for everything. On this episode, I talk to James Edward Gray II and Steve Klabnik. Both James and Steve have made substantial contributions to the Ruby and Rails community, and they now both spend lots of time using other languages. We talk about what makes Rust and Elixir interesting for Ruby developers to learn, what some other interesting languages might be. Notes 01:48 - Moving Towards Other Programming Languages from Ruby: Why? 03:39 - Rust - The Rust Programming Language (https://www.rust-lang.org/en-US/) - The Elm Programming Language (http://elm-lang.org/) - The Rust Programming Language (Book) by Steve

Technical Speaking With Saron Yitbarek TableXI is offering training for developers and product teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com. Summary Presenting a technical talk can be an important part of a developer's career. In this episode, we're talking about how to perform a technical talk with Saron Yitbarek. Saron runs the CodeNewbie Podcast, and others, and organizes and coaches speakers for the Codeland Conference. Saron and I both have some thoughts and opinions about how to deliver a good technical talk. This episode has a lot of tips about how to prepare, what to do at the start of a talk, how to engage the audience, and why emoji are better for slides than videos? We'll give advice on how to give the talk that only you can give and how to get the best performance that you can. Guest Saron Yitbarek (https://twitter.com/saronyitbarek): Web (http://bloggytoons.com), Podcaster: CodeNewbie (https://twitter.com/CodeNewbies), Base.cs Podcast (https://www.codenewbie.org/basecs), Command Line Heroes

Apprenticeship with Megan Tiu, Kara Carrell, and Alyssa Ramsey TableXI is offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com. Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques! (https://stickynote.game) Summary What is an apprenticeship program, how is it different from an internship, and how can your company benefit from having one? In this episode, we’re talking about technical apprenticeships with Megan Tiu of Women Who Code. Megan and I have both run apprenticeships at various companies. We’re also joined by Table XI’s current apprentice cohort, Kara Carrell and Alyssa Ramsey. Guests Megan Tiu (http://twitter.com/megantiu): Engineering Manager with Women Who Code (https://www.womenwhocode.com). megantiu.com (http://www.megantiu.com/). Alyssa Ramsey: Developer Apprentice at TableXI (https://www.tablexi.com/). Kara Carrell: Developer Apprentice at TableXI (https://www.tablexi.com/). Notes 02:18 - Apprenticeship: Defined 04:38 - Finding and Hiring

Diversity and Inclusion at Small Companies with Meara Charnetzki, Michael Donnelly, and Elena Valentine TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com. Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques! (https://stickynote.game) Summary What can a small company do to improve its diversity and inclusion practices when your company just isn't changing personnel quickly enough to improve via hiring? Here to discuss this are Meara Charnetzki from Table XI, Michael Donnelly from the FWD Collective and Elena Valentine from Skill Scout. We'll all about company values, supporting a wider community, using internal feedback, and what to do to encourage improvement at your company. Guests Meara Charnetzki (https://twitter.com/m34ra) of Table XI (https://www.tablexi.com/) Michael Donnelly (https://twitter.com/realmdonnelly) of The FWD Collective (https://fwdcollective.io/) Elena Valentine (https://twitter.com/Elena_Valentine) of Skill Scout

Organizing Technical Conferences TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, go to http://tablexi.com/workshops (http://tablexi.com/workshops). Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques! (https://stickynote.game) Summary I've been attending technical conferences for years, and I've always wondered about the hidden challenges involved in putting a conference together. In this show, four of the best conference organizers I know join me to share their secrets and stories. Marty Haught, organizer of many conferences including RubyConf and RailsConf, Jen Remsik and Jim Remsik, who organize the Madison+ family of conferences, and Leah Silber, who organizes EmberConf and RustConf. Learn about budgets, picking talks, and managing facilities and vendors. Guests Marty Haught (https://twitter.com/mghaught): President at Haught Codeworks (https://haughtcodeworks.com/), Director at Ruby Central (http://rubycentral.org/) organizing RailsConf and RubyConf Jen R

Diverse Agile Teams with Marlena Compton, Betsy Haibel, and Jennifer Tu TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com. Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques! (https://stickynote.game) Guests Marlena Compton (https://twitter.com/marlenac): Organizer of PearConf (https://pearconf.splashthat.com/). Betsy Haibel (https://twitter.com/betsythemuffin): CTO at Cohere (https://www.wecohere.com/). Jennifer Tu (https://twitter.com/jtu): Co-Founder at Cohere (https://www.wecohere.com/). Summary How do common Agile practices like pair programming and retrospectives work when you have diverse teams? How can you make sure that underrepresented team members have their voices heard, and how does doing so improve the way that your team delivers software? Besty Haibel, Jennifer Tu, and Marlena Compton discuss ways in which Agile practices can better serve your team in the real world. For more discussion, be sure to check out PearConf

Your First 100 Days Onboarding A New Employee With Shay Howe and John Gore TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com. Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques! (https://stickynote.game) Guests John Gore (https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnrgore/): Founder of CultureScape (https://everyoneonboard.io/); Everyone Onboard (https://everyoneonboard.io/pages/culturescape). Shay Howe (https://twitter.com/shayhowe): ActiveCampaign (https://www.activecampaign.com/) Design Team Leader; Lead Honestly (https://leadhonestly.com/) Summary Tech Done Right is looking at onboarding from both sides. In this episode we talk with Shay Howe and John Gore about onboarding from the company side. We talk about what a new company can do to set a new employee up to be successful and how best to structure that support. How can you best give feedback? What are common onboarding mistakes? See Also Episode 36: Your First 100 Days At A New Company (

Your First 100 Days At A New Company with Katie Gore and Elizabeth Trepkowski Hodos TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com. Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques! (https://stickynote.game) Guests Katie Gore (https://twitter.com/speechIRL): Founder and President of speech IRL (http://www.speechirl.com/). Elizabeth Trepkowski Hodos (https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-trepkowski-hodos-ba3721157/): Founder of Elizabeth Hodos: Corporate Improv Training Summary Tech Done Right is looking at onboarding from both sides. In this episode we talk with Katie Gore and Elizabeth Trepkowski Hodos about onboarding from the employee side. What can you do as a new employee to navigate the culture and environment of a new workplace? What are useful strategies? And what are some problems to watch out for? See Also Episode 37: Your First 100 Days Onboarding A New Employee (http://www.techdoneright.io/37) Notes 02:27 - Group In

AI and the Future of Design and Development with Zach Pousman TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com. Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques! (https://stickynote.game) Rails 5 Test Prescriptions (https://pragprog.com/titles/nrtest3) is updated, available, and shipping! Summary What does AI mean for the future of design, development? Can I be replaced by an AI algorithm? Today, we talk to Zach Pousman, from the consultancy Helpfully. Zach thinks a lot about artificial intelligence and how it might impact the future of different knowledge work. It's impossible to talk about AI without talking about the ethics of AI projects and how AI might affect the larger society. We'll talk about why AI started with chess and moved to facial recognition, what AI might and might not be able to do in the future, how we might deal with it, and how that will change the way you work. Guest Zach Pousman (https://twitter.com/thinky)

Programming Languages and Communication With Kerri Miller TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com. Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques! (https://stickynote.game) Rails 5 Test Prescriptions (https://pragprog.com/book/nrtest3/rails-5-test-prescriptions) is updated, available, and shipping! Guest Kerri Miller (https://twitter.com/kerrizor): Senior Developer at TravisCI (https://travis-ci.org/) and Ruby Community Member. Co-Organizer of the Open Source and Feelings Conference (https://www.osfeels.com/). Blog (http://kerrizor.com/). Summary Why is Smalltalk the Elizabethan English of programming languages? Why has it been so influential, and how does the programming language you use affect the way you think about programming. On this episode, Kerri Miller and I talk about programming languages and communication, and what we've learned from our most recent programming language adventures. Notes 01:56 - Introductio

Back in the Testing Weeds with Sam Phippen and Justin Searls TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com. Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques! (https://stickynote.game) Rails 5 Test Prescriptions (https://pragprog.com/titles/nrtest3) is updated, available, and shipping! Guests Sam Phippen (https://twitter.com/samphippen): Tech Lead at DigitalOcean (https://www.digitalocean.com/) and member of the RSpec (https://github.com/rspec) Core Team Justin Searls (https://twitter.com/searls): Co-founder of Test Double (http://testdouble.com/) Summary I'm back in the testing weeds with Sam Phippen, lead maintainer for RSpec-Rails, and Justin Searls, co-founder of Test Double and author of testdouble.js. We talk about long-running test suites: are they bad, or just misunderstood? Does parallel CI solve all testing speed problems, or just some of them? Then we move to a wider view, what does it mean to test your library as p