entrepreneur

#74 - Books, Remote Work, and Q&A, with Adrienne Tacke

March 15, 2024

Welcome back to The Work Item. Today we're exploring the ins and outs of remote work, writing, and community engagement with a show veteran, Adrienne Tacke. I'm delighted to welcome Adrienne back to the show, especially considering that since our last recording we received quite a few follow-up questions. Just like last time, Adrienne brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to our discussion, especially when it comes to remote work culture. And today, we're adding a new twist: a dedicated Q&A segment where Adrienne will be addressing your burning questions directly.

#73 - Put The Passion Aside And Go For The Market, with Rob Walling

February 12, 2024

If you’ve ever listened to Startups For The Rest Of Us (which, by the way, is approaching seven hundred episodes), you might already be familiar with the energetic host of the show - entrepreneur, bootstrapper, and podcaster extraordinaire Rob Walling. Rob and I chat about his early days as an employee, the transition from the more traditional path of working for someone to starting his own business, building MicroConf, and how the trifecta of skill, hard work, and luck can help folks be on a more predictable path to success.

#72 - Give People What They Came For, with Jerod Santo

February 5, 2024

Today I got the pleasure to chat with Jerod Santo, the Managing Editor at Changelog Media. Picture this – a podcast that not only uncovers the intricacies of Jerod's career but also shares some unconventional lessons learned from his work. From navigating the ever-evolving tech landscape to spearheading Changelog, Jerod brings a wealth of experience that transcends your typical engineer expectations and taps into the heart of what it means to build a sustainable developer community.

#67 - Building Design Communities, with Grace Ling, UX Designer at Electronic Arts, and Founder of Design Buddies

December 21, 2023

Grace Ling is a UX designer at Electronic Arts and the founder of the Design Buddies, one of the world’s largest design communities.

#64 - Diving Into Industrial Design, with Anson Cheung

December 12, 2023

Anson Cheung worked as an industrial designer with brands like Lyft, Google, Roku, and HunterDouglas. We sat down to learn more about his career.

#62 - Building Sustainable Practices, with Jason Fried

October 23, 2023

Jason Fried is the co-founder and CEO of 37signals, the company behind Basecamp and Hey. I chat with Jason about his path to entrepreneurship, the lack of value in a lot of meetings, and generally building sustainable practices that enable businesses and their employees to thrive.

#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.

#27 - How to Build a Career in Human Resources, with David Daniels

March 20, 2021

There is a certain air of mystery around careers in Human Resources (HR), and David Daniels, who is a veteran HR leader in tech, is here to bring some clarity about the work. David has extensive experience being in HR at Microsoft, Pinterest, and now - Snapchat. He shares his insights about going from education to leadership in some of the most prominent tech companies, fighting against the fixed mindset, and uncommon recommendations for folks wanting to get started with their careers.

#25 - How to Build a Career in Design and Pitch Gary Vee, with Jack Zerby

March 7, 2021

Jack Zerby is not your typical designer. His experience producing music, working at Pentagram and Frog, building startups, pitching to Gary Vee, and now - building tools for creators at Gumroad, puts him square in the middle of a very uncommon career path. In this episode, I chat with Jack to learn more about what motivated him to grow his career, how to break into design, how to make the transition from a big company to a startup, and what does it mean to build compelling narratives in deck form.

#24 - Building Communities with Jess Lee

February 28, 2021

Jess Lee is the co-founder of dev.to - a developer community that emphasizes the importance of a friendly approach to guiding folks through the tumultuous waters of software development. In this episode, we chat about Jess’ career, the journey to founding Forem - the open-source platform powering large communities, and her experience building successful distributed teams.