I'm on my way back to New York from Berlin, trying to not sleep on flight so I can beat jet lag. Here are some questions I answered to stay awake.
How are you? (asked by @johest)
I'm great. I just survived JSConfEU weekend and gave one meetup talk in Berlin. On my way back home to New York City.
machine: iPad Pro 9.7 inch with matte screen protector
stylus: apple pencil
app: "Paper" by @FiftyThree (I use diagram tool almost exclusively)
sometimes I air drop drawing to my laptop and do some edits on photoshop
post-production: translucent to avoid twitter's aggressive JPEG compression.
How to survive a CS degree (asked by @alpasfly)
I don't know! I don't have a CS degree.
How do you get to be in developer relations at Google? (asked by @steveworkman)
You receive Twitter DM from a stranger who claims to be working for Google asking to grab coffee with you. You check the person's twitter profile and finds 23k followers. At this point you are convinced this is some kind of recruiter spam, but check with friends who work at Google just in case. Turns out that person is real deal and the manger of many dev rels. Have coffee, send resume, phone call, go to interview, phone call, more interview, more phone call, more more phone call, lots of "do I really want to do this?" coffee chats and dinners, sign paperwork, have sad meeting to leave the job you adore, quit the job you adore, go on vacation, go to Google onboarding → then you are somehoew dev rel.
More seriouse answer is "It's a mystery".
To specialize or not to specialize? (asked by @AdinoyiSadiq)
Should I try to become a "full stack" developer or find a niche and stay there?
I like the idea of T-shaped person. You should have understanding of various technologies but also have one area you are particularly focused on.
One thing that seems to be clear (at least in modern web development) is staying curious is important. With technology trend changing every few hours (you know... JavaScript fravor of the month), I don't think you need to be jumping to new things all the time but being open to and excited about something you are not familiar with seems to work well for job survival.
How do you stay motivated to work on personal projects, despite lots of other things going on in life? (asked by @michielsikma)
The answer for me was "unbeliebable amount of support from day job".
I was VERY fortunate to work for the company that advocated everyone to have side projects and have life outside of work. I took lots of time off to go to conferences and blagged about things I made in work chat time to time. Nothing is more fulfilling than coworkers and managers acknowledging "That thing you did/wrote/tweeted/made is SUPER COOL."
Day job is a big chunk of our life and definetly has huge impact on personal life. I did 0 creative project in April largely due to starting new job and haven't found balance yet.
How to overcome/deal with imposter syndrome? (asked by @benlau85)
Ask questions. You'd be surprised how many times person who you thought perfect reply back "I don't know it either"
When I feel like I'm not good enough, I start conversation with "This might be too basic but..." "Hey n00b question!..." "Tell me if it's too dumb but how about..." a lot. These starting words makes me feel a lot easier to ask questions or throw out what's on my mind when I'm feeling like a imposter. It might sound too self deprecating sometimes, but I find it a lot more valuable to ask question this way than to keep quiet and try to pretend I know lots of things.
It will not going to be easy. It's sad, but you don't want to work for a compnay that thinks particular background defines one's ability to make quality software anyways. You really don't want to deal with co-workers who score you lower because of your age or gender either.
That being said, here are some practical suggestions.
Look for larger team with history of hiring junior developers. Taking on junior developer is a lot of work, you are less likely to get hired in a team of 3 if they are busy building product & don't have capacity to support juniors. Also, company that has focus in hiring junior dev tends to be more open to non-traditional (hard to quantify) background.
Never apply to a job, get referred. If you are spending time writing cover letters and sending resumes, I'd stop that and go to meetups to meet people who work at a company you are interested in or send emails to them asking to grab coffee with you. I was once a minority women in late 20s who self taught programing, applying to job yielded 0 offers in 2 months but one referral got me offer within a week. I got all of my tech job since then thru referral.
What is the most difficult part of being a woman developer? (asked by @ClaudiaLagosR)
The week when you are menstruating
What are you excited for? (asked by @JamieCrisman)
I'm darn excited about sleeping on my bed tonight (I've been traveling). Also, brand new couch arrives tomorrow, can't wait.