Discover the collection of The Work Item podcast episodes with the Career tag. Go to the Episodes page to listen to the latest releases, find interesting guests, or navigate through the history of the show.
Career Podcast Episodes
#63 - Beyond Just Engineering Skills, with Adrienne Braganza Tacke
November 8, 2023
If you want to be intentional about your career and become a multidisciplinary professional, this conversation with Adrienne Tacke is for you.
#61 - Career Moats And Beyond, with Cedric Chin
October 9, 2023
In this episode, I am chatting with Cedric Chin - the founder of the CommonCog blog and business series. You might've read some of Cedric's writing on career moats before.
#60 - Defining A Force Multiplier, with Sam Saccone
December 28, 2022
When we choose our career path, we often try to optimize for one specific bucket - you're a product manager, or a project manager, or a UX designer, or any other variation of an expertise area in tech. Sam Saccone defies the expectations of a single role and instead believes in being a "plumber" - doing whatever work is necessary to enable others to do their own version of great work. I sat down with Sam to learn more about his path to a Senior Staff Engineer at Google, what it means to brute-force your way through problems, and what the best avenues are to become a force multiplier for your team.
#59 - Building On Your Own, with iOS Developer Donny Wals
December 22, 2022
Leaving your full-time job behind and starting your own business based on your own brand is a somewhat scary proposition. And yet, this is exactly what Donny Wals, a prolific iOS developer and technology teacher, is doing. In this episode I sat down with him to talk more about his work, what was his thinking in going solo, and what one needs to learn quickly in an ever-changing technology space.
#54 - From Apple to Netflix, with Carola Nitz, Sr. Software Engineer at Netflix
May 20, 2022
Carola Nitz is a seasoned engineer who has been involved in a variety of complex projects - from VLC, to Apple Maps, and now working at Netflix on their iOS app experience. She also started her career by learning medical computer science - what a way to jump in! In this episode, we're learning about her career, what helped her be successful, and how she thinks about the importance of jumps between projects and companies.
#50 - Problem And Product Management, with Isaac Hepworth
March 3, 2022
Today I chat with a good friend, mentor, and an all-around great person - Isaac Hepworth. Isaac is the person you should go to if you want to learn more about what it means to be achieving excellence in the product management space. We chat about the role of a problem solver, what it means to be a PM across different companies and titles, and what one can do to better prepare for an industry that changes by the day.
#48 - The Story of Working In Developer Relations, with Dan Shaw
February 7, 2022
This is the brand-new start of the third season of The Work Item podcast, and to make the kick-off even better I sat down with our good friend of the show, Dan Shaw, to learn more about their career. Dan shares the story of bootstrapping a Developer Relations arm at PayPal, wisdom around career decisions, and much more in this episode.
#44 - So What Is Product Marketing, with Isaac Levin
November 11, 2021
You've probably heard of the many types of PM - project managers, product managers, and even program managers. But did you also know that there is a PMM - product marketing manager? I wasn't quite sure what the responsibilities of one would be, so I reached out to Isaac Levin - Principal Product Marketing Manager at Elastic, and asked him to talk about his work.
#43 - Ins And Outs Of Developer Advocacy, with Brian Douglas
November 1, 2021
Developer Advocacy is a relatively new field, but when it comes to knowing how to navigate it, Brian Douglas' knowledge is second to none. As Director of Developer Advocacy at GitHub, he is at the forefront of a lot of the developer engagement efforts - from understanding the pain points of those that use GitHub, to advocating for new initiatives and programs. I sit down with Brian to learn more about what it takes to be a great developer advocate, how one can break into the field, and how you measure success in the role. Suffice to say - it was a packed conversation and we needed more time and maybe even a future follow-up to cover everything.
#38 - Becoming a Polymath, with Salman Ansari
July 11, 2021
From the early days - when we are growing up, to when we go to school, we tend to be involved in a lot of activities. From sports, to music, painting, coding classes. But as we grow up, we tend to specialize. One is a product manager, or a Python programmer, or even a doctor. According to my good friend Salman Ansari, this is where we have an opportunity to break out of the typical norms and become a polymath - a person with extensive knowledge in several domains. In this episode, I learn more about Salman's career, as well as his take on how someone can become a polymath.