Suz, Feross, and Emma have an honest conversation about burnout. They ask questions like — How do developers deal with burnout? What is burnout? What are examples of burnout in open source? Plus they close the show by sharing tips for avoiding burnout and also how to manage burnout if/when it happens.
Jerod and Divya are joined by George Mandis to learn all about his “frivolous” JavaScript library that’s helped countless websites implement the beloved cheat code. Ten years later and still actively maintained, Konami-JS has stood the test of time and produced some epic stories along the way (you’ll love hearing how George broke Marvel.com).
Jerod, Suz, Divya, and Kball share their thoughts, opinions, and advice on developer strengths and weaknesses — compromise, communication, tool mastery, deep dives into dev history, and mentorship/sponsorship.
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We’re talking with Evan Conrad — for most of Evan’s life he has suffered from severe panic attacks, often twice per week. Eventually he stumbled upon a therapy method called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT for short, and saw positive results. This led him to create Quirk, an open source iOS app which allows its users to practice one of the most common formats of CBT.
On the show we mentioned a new podcast we’re launching called Brain Science — it’s hosted by Adam Stacoviak and Mireille Reece, a Doctor of Clinical Psychology. Brain Science is a podcast for the curious that explores the inner-workings of the human brain to understand behavior change, habit formation, mental health, and the human condition. It’s Brain Science applied — not just how does the brain work, but how do we apply what we know about the brain to better our lives. Stay tuned after the show for a special preview of Brain Science.
If you haven’t yet, right now would be a great time to subscribe to Master at changelog.com/master. It’s one feed to rule them all, plus some extras that only hit the master feed.
Panelists Mat Ryer, Ashley McNamara, Johnny Boursiquot, and Carmen Andoh discuss the process of getting hired, hiring, and job interviews. If people are the most important part of a team, how do we pick who we work with? What’s the process like? How can it better?
We’re talking with Emma Bostian about going from zero to thought leader in 6 months. We talk about the nuances of UX including the differences between an UX Designer and a UX Engineer, we touch on “the great divide”, and we talk about Coding Coach — the open source project and community that Emma and others are building to connect software developers and mentors all over the world.
We’re talking with Adam Barr, a 23 year Microsoft veteran, about his book “The problem with software,” sub-titled “Why smart engineers write bad code.” We examine that very idea, the gap between industry and academia, and more importantly what we can do to get a better feedback loop going between them.
Chris Coyier joins Suz and Jerod to continue the discussion on The Great Divide in front-end-land. We also use this as an opportunity to gush on how much CSS-Tricks has done for the community, get Chris’ perspective on the history of the website, and finish up by sharing some amazing Pens on CodePen.io.
Adam and Jerod are joined by JS Party panelist Nick Nisi and #causeascene advocate Kim Crayton for a deep discussion on ethics in the technology industry at-large and our roles as software developers. If you’ve never heard Kim describe what life is like online for underrepresented and marginalized folks, you have to listen to this show!
Laura Gaetano was born in Italy, and by my count has lived in at least four different countries. Her multicultural upbringing has had a huge impact on her life. In fact, she currently works at the Travis Foundation with a focus on diversity and inclusion.
We talk about her upbringing, her troubles with art school, the work she’s doing now, and changes that may be on the horizon.
Adam Clark and I met back in 2013. We started a podcasting company together (which we both left), he shut down his consulting business to move to California and work for Apple, and now he’s back in Tennessee. Last year he launched a new business, Podcast Royale, a company he says will afford him more freedom to do whatever he wants to do.
He talks to me about growing up in a cult, losing his father, marriage, and how being a parent gives him a purpose in life.
In our last episode of the year, I talk with Maria Boland Ploessl. Maria’s path to technology has been interesting to say the least. A Saint Paul native, she studied Spanish and Latin American studies in college. In 2016, after living in a few different cities (even a year-long stint in Brazil), she moved back to Minnesota. Now, she’s the Executive Director of Minnestar, a non-profit organization with the aim of supporting and growing Minnesota’s tech community.
Maria talks to me about what Minnestar does, the work they’re doing to bring more people of underrepresented groups into tech, married life and how she’s grown from it, and parenthood.
Jeremy Fuksa has had a rough few years. After deciding to go out on his own, his third year in business was filled with anxiety. Going back to working a full-time job may sound like a failure to some, but Jeremy doesn’t look at it that way.
He talks to me about his unique skill set, dealing with anxiety and depression, and how his recent experience has taught him some great lessons.
Adam, Jerod, and Tim get together to put a spotlight on Apple’s October 30th Mac/iPad event from a developer’s perspective. They cover the specs of the new MacBook Air and the viability of having it as a development machine, the new Mac Mini in the ever popular Space Gray, and whether or not Tim will be able to stop pulling his hair out to find an affordable, yet powerful desktop machine with it, and the gorgeous new iPad Pro.
Almost eight years ago, Suz Hinton made one of the biggest decisions of her life: move away from her home in Melbourne, Australia and move to the United States. After amicably breaking up with her boyfriend, another decision lied ahead: would she stay?
Suz talks to me about culture shock, the hoops she had to jump through to get her visa, her parents, and dealing with burnout.
Mahdi Yusuf worked a startup in his twenties and wasn’t worried too much about his health. When he quit that job, he decided to take better care of himself and lost fifty pounds. Now, he’s the CTO of Gyroscope, a startup that aims to be the operating system for the human body, but ever since joining, has gained weight back.
Mahdi talks to me about how Gyroscope is trying to help people understand their bodies better, growing up with a love for computers, and trying to be healthy with a busy life.
After a very difficult 2014 that put Justin Dorfman in the hospital, he vowed to never go back. Justin has Bipolar I disorder, so coming to terms with his limitations and the sacrifices he needs to make to stay healthy hasn’t been easy. He talks to me about his early BMX dreams, his transition from engineering to marketing, and the stigma around mental health.
Adam and Jerod talk with two members of Segment’s engineering team: Co-founder and CTO, Calvin French-Owen, as well as Software Engineer, Alex Noonan, about their journey from monorepo to microservices back to monorepo. 100s of problem children to 1 superstar child.
We talk with Ben Halpern the founder and webmaster of dev.to — a community for developers to talk about software. Last Wednesday they open sourced the codebase of the dev.to platform, so we wanted to talk through all the details with Ben. We talked through the backstory, how Ben realized this could become a business, how the team was formed, their motivations for open sourcing it and why they didn’t open source it from the start, the technical stack, and their vision for the future of the site.
On this special bonus episode of The Changelog, we’re playing the latest episode of Away from Keyboard with Jeff Robbins. While some dream of having a successful career, Jeff Robbins has already had several. Once the lead singer and guitarist for Orbit, Jeff has worked on some of the most famous Drupal websites. He talks to Tim about his early interest in computers, starting Lullabot, and adjusting to life after leaving the company he built and ran.
While some dream of having a successful career, Jeff Robbins has already had several. Once the lead singer and guitarist for Orbit, Jeff has worked on some of the most famous Drupal websites. He talks to me about his early interest in computers, starting Lullabot, and adjusting to life after leaving the company he built and ran.
Jerod, Nick, and Chris talk with Jeff Lembeck about his tweets, the people behind npm, the need for empathy, and things they’re excited about.
Thirteen years ago, Ashley Baxter inherited the family insurance business when her Dad passed away. Even though she’s a talented photographer, and built a successful photography business, the insurance industry kept calling her name. Ashley talks about what excites her about insurance, the challenges of running a business, and how burnout forced her to focus.
Adam and Jerod are on location at OSCON and talk with Camille Eddy about recognizing biases in AI, Jerome Hardaway about the work he’s doing to prepare veterans for jobs in software, and Abby Cobunoc Mayes about the work she’s doing at Mozilla for open science.
In this special episode of JS Party, we’re sharing a full-length episode of our new show, Away from Keyboard. This show explores the human side of creative work. In this episode, Tim talks with Justin Jackson about his parents, dealing with depression, and a new business he’s co-founded.
