I have benefited greatly in my career from the help of others (and implicitly from being a white man). At this point, I would like to find more ways to contribute back to the community. I'm trying an "Office Hours" model where I spend several hours a week advising on any topic I feel competent to help with.
In general, I’m willing to help anyone who could use support in programming or software engineering. My skills are probably best suited to supporting mid-stage career software engineers, who are past the "student" phase but want help developing their skills or career (either by increasing impact or depth). I'm also happy to try my best to help people who are trying to land their first tech job.
Below is a list of areas I feel (somewhat) competent to mentor on, or at least discuss.
- C
- C++
- Swift
- Python
- (partially) HTML/CSS/JavaScript
- LLVM
- SQL
- POSIX
- Software Design & Layering
- Testing
- Performance
- Speaking
- Preparing a conference talk
- Cross-functional projects
- Debugging
- Performance optimization
- Contributing to open source
- Programming interviews
- Linux & macOS
- Version control (Git)
- Burnout
- Job Fit/Performance (or perceived performance)
- Toxic Work Politics
I believe working in tech provides a great, lucrative, and fulfilling career. At the same time, I am very frustrated by the amount of injustice and inequality I see in the world. I'd like to help support others find their way into our field, particularly people who could & would go on to share those skills & knowledge to support less priviledged groups than the one I came from.
I am happy to talk about just about anything, but this is something I am doing in my spare time and want to keep completely divorced from my work. For that reason, I am not willing to talk about anything directly related to Apple's products and services or my professional work. I am happy to talk about our open source projects!
If you want to specifically ask techical questions about things like Xcode or Apple's build systems, you can try tweeting at me and I will help if possible, or you can submit a feedback request. The motivation of this is to support others, not to provide tech support.
Please use this link to book time: https://calendly.com/daniel_dunbar
If this is the first time we've talked, please set up a 30-minute slot so we chat and see if/how I can help. You can also DM me on Twitter if you want to chat prior to a meeting.
Right now, I only have times in the late evening after the kids are asleep. If you want to talk, but can't make those times, please DM me.
I am a software engineer at Apple; there I've worked on compilers, build systems, & the Swift package manager. Prior to Apple, I've also done research into bug finding tools (symbolic execution) as well as work in computer graphics. My resume has a more complete list of the projects I have worked on.
Great idea!