#75 - From Pandemic Pastime To Real VC-Funded Startup, with David Khourshid

In this episode of The Work Item, I had a conversation with David Khourshid, founder of Stately.AI. You might know him as @DavidKPiano on social media. Today, we’re breaking new ground around unconventional paths of building an engineering career, entrepreneurship, and leveraging your audience as the potential first customers for your product. And of course - we talk a bit more about state machines (David is also the developer behind XState) and lessons learned from launching and growing a startup in the midst of a pandemic.

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The podcast was produced by Den Delimarsky. Music by Wataboi from Pixabay.

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Coming soon!

#83 - Don't Take The Easy Path - Jennifer Wong (Engineering Leader)

August 8, 2024

Jennifer Wong is a seasoned engineering manager who started her journey in civil engineering. The fast pace of the tech industry drew her in, and she stuck with it for years since making that call. In this episode, I chat with Jennifer about her transition from a non-traditional career path into software, reasons to take on management instead of being an individual contributor, and why taking the road less traveled in terms of career progression might just be the recipe for long-term growth and success.

#80 - Web Development Is Theatre - Miriam Suzanne (CSS Working Group, OddBird)

June 12, 2024

One of the things that Miriam Suzanne realized early in her developer journey is that web development is a tool - she wanted to build a website for her theater company and ended up building a career and a company around it. And not just that, but she also joined the CSS Working Group - the official standards body that determines how the CSS stack evolves. In this show, we talk about her early discovery of the power of the web, how she joins creativity with technical prowess, and how CSS is really like poetry written in the browser.

#79 - How To Get Promoted To Tech Executive - Lena Reinhard (VP Engineering, CircleCI, Travis CI)

May 28, 2024

We often talk about promotions and growth, but the moment the conversation shifts towards paths to staff or executive positions, the advice goes blank. There is very little actionable information out there that can tell you how you can get to the highest echelons of leadership. To get a clearer picture on this topic, I sat down with Lena Reinhard, a seasoned executive with an extensive track record at CircleCI, Travis CI, and more.