Discover the collection of The Work Item podcast episodes with the Engineering tag. Go to the Episodes page to listen to the latest releases, find interesting guests, or navigate through the history of the show.
Engineering Podcast Episodes
#51 - Finding Your Engineering Passion, with Vicente Plata of 500 Startups LatAm, Shopify, and More
March 11, 2022
Vicente Plata is doing way more than one would expect from an engineering leader - not only is he an engineering manager, but he also advises startups and communities, is deeply involved in various mentorship programs, and is someone who is always eager to help. In this episode we sit down to chat more about his aspirations, how he balances time between all the responsibilities, and what someone working in tech can do to accelerate their career on an exponential trajectory.
#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.
#47 - 2021 Reflections, Creativity, and More, with Mayuko Inoue
December 8, 2021
The end of 2021 is almost here, and it's time to wrap up the second season of The Work Item. And what better way to do that than to invite a good friend on the show to talk about their journey through the past 12 months? In this episode, I am chatting with Mayuko Inoue about all things 2021, the best choices in comfort foods, McDonalds french fries, thoughts on the content creator career path, and more. We wanted to make this episode very informal, yet informative. To borrow Mayuko's intro to her own podcast, Muko's Corner (which you should subscribe to) - sit down, get cozy, grab a cup of tea, and enjoy the show!
#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.
#42 - Building The World You Want To See, with Jeff Atwood
October 31, 2021
Whether you are new in the tech industry or are a veteran developer, chances are that you've used a product that Jeff Atwood worked on. I'm talking about Stack Overflow and Discourse, of course. When it comes to building communities and fostering good conversations, Jeff took an unusual position - steer the conversation towards finding the best in people, argue ideas and not people, and ultimately, contribute to a world that's just a bit better. How does it all work? Jeff elaborates in this episode.
#40 - Engineering and Team Empathy, with Amro Mousa
October 17, 2021
Management, and especially engineering management, is way more than just telling others what to build. Talking to Amro Mousa, an engineering manager at Twitter, it becomes evident that a key ingredient to a good team is empathy. In this episode, I learn from him on what the best way is to lead with empathy in a team, and how one should think about the management track as a potential avenue in their career.
#39 - Focus on Delivering Value, with Dan Shaw
October 7, 2021
In the sea of shiny technology objects (I am talking frameworks, tools, libraries, and many others), Dan Shaw has been pretty opinionated - focus on delivering value to the customer first, and tools second. In this episode, I sit down with Dan to learn more about this approach, and how he applied it in his career and work with the Node.js community - after all, he’s known as the Godfather of Node.js.
#36 - Diving Into Open Source Engineering, with Jenn Creighton
June 13, 2021
There is a bit of a chasm between requirements for building open source projects and those that are designed to be closed. Not surprisingly, it also requires a different set of skills altogether if you want to do it right. To learn more about this, I sat down with Jenn Creighton, Senior Staff Open Source Engineer at Apollo GraphQL. Jenn has been building scalable web experiences at companies such as Ralph Lauren, Chartbeat, and ClassPass, and is now leading the work on one of the most interesting and active open projects out there.