Tech Done Right

Failure Management and Response with Nickolas Means TableXI is offering training for developers and product teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com. Guest Nickolas Means | nickol.as | VP of Engineering at MuveHealth Summary How can you learn from an engineering team's failure? Can you take the examples of how others have dealt with engineering problems to improve your team's day-to-day operations. Our guest is Nickolas Means, a software manager at Muve Health, who is fascinated by engineering failures. We talk about what you can learn from studying disasters, how to create a company culture in calm times that will works smoothly in stressful times, and how a successful engineering team communicates using stories and how they handle mistakes. Along the way, we talk about the recent incident at the Seattle Airport, the CitiCorp building in Manhattan, Three Mile Island and other engineering and team missteps. We have, I hope, a successful show about failure. Notes 02:12 - Learning From Engineering Team Failure Seconds From Disaster 04:49 - Self-Reporting of Near Accidents How a change in hospital policy saved thousands of lives 06:54 - First Story/Second Story RailsConf 2018: Who Destroyed Three Mile Island? by Nickolas Means The Field Guide to Understanding Human Error 2nd edition Edition 08:46 - How the Airline Worker Who Stole a Plane in Seattle Exposed a Security Risk 13:44 - The Design Flaw That Almost Wiped Out an NYC Skyscraper RubyConf 2016 - The Building Built on Stilts by Nickolas Means 99% Invisible Podcast: Structural Integrity 16:33 - Focusing on Blamelessness and Building a Learning Culture on a Team 21:04 - Overpaging Engineering Teams Charity Majors on overpaging 25:21 - Story Communication Jeff Bezos Banned PowerPoint in Meetings. His Replacement Is Brilliant 29:44 - Helping Team Members Make Better Decisions The Boring Software Manifesto Dan McKinley: Choose Boring Technology 34:29 - How to Behave When Things Go Wrong The Johnson & Johnson Tylenol Crisis Related Episodes Developers from the Perspective of Product Owners The Social Responsibility of Coding with Liz Abinante Agile Teams and Escaping Velocity with Doc Norton and Claire Podulka Special Guest: Nickolas Means.

Learning Programming Languages and Strategies With Katrina Owen Table XI is offering training for developers and product teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com or go to http://www.tablexi.com/workshops Guest Katrina Owen: Blog | Katrina’s Talks Summary What's a good way to learn a new programming language that focuses on solving problems and not merely syntax? Katrina Owen is the creator of Exercism, a tool for getting beyond "hello world" in new programing languages. She is also the co-author of 99 Bottles of OOP, and the presenter of a number of outstanding technical talks. We start off by talking about Exercism, how it started, how it evolved and what it’s good at, and then we talk about how the process by which it evolved, and how Katrina learned to analyze the project more strategically, and how that strategic thinking has helped her in other parts of her life and career. Notes 02:14 - Exercism 03:37 - Solving Programming Language Learning 99 Bottles of OOP Practical Object-Oriented Design: An Agile Primer Using Ruby 06:15 - Redesigning Exercism: Conceptually and Logistically 17:41 - Exercism Language Communities Exercism Language List Elixir Delphi CFML Coq Ballerina Pharo Haskell 23:45 - Gaining Control of an Open Source Community/Project 27:37 - Strategy and Priority Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters Mud Rooms, Red Letters, and Real Priorities Chad Fowler: Great Leaders Don’t Juggle Priorities 32:54 - Strategy vs. Tactics Related Episodes Rubyists in Other Languages with James Edward Gray II and Steve Klabnik Programming Languages and Communication With Kerri Miller The Elm Programming Language with Corey Haines Special Guest: Katrina Owen.

Rubyists in Other Languages with James Edward Gray II and Steve Klabnik TableXI is offering training for developers and product teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com. Guests Steve Klabnik: Blog James Edward Gray II: Blog Summary Ruby is great. But it's not the best tool for everything. On this episode, I talk to James Edward Gray II and Steve Klabnik. Both James and Steve have made substantial contributions to the Ruby and Rails community, and they now both spend lots of time using other languages. We talk about what makes Rust and Elixir interesting for Ruby developers to learn, what some other interesting languages might be. Notes 01:48 - Moving Towards Other Programming Languages from Ruby: Why? 03:39 - Rust The Rust Programming Language The Elm Programming Language The Rust Programming Language (Book) by Steve Klabnik 17:54 - Other Cool Programming Languages for Rubyists Scratch Logo GameSalad GameMaker Studio 2 Prograph Abstract Syntax Tree 29:22 - Elixir The Elixir Programming Language Erlang Prolog Pattern Matching Related Episodes Programming Languages and Communication With Kerri Miller React Native with Gant Laborde, Ed LaFoy, and Brent Vatne Ruby Tapas and Avoiding Code with Avdi Grimm The Elm Programming Language With Corey Haines Special Guests: James Edward Gray II and Steve Klabnik.

Technical Speaking With Saron Yitbarek TableXI is offering training for developers and product teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com. Summary Presenting a technical talk can be an important part of a developer's career. In this episode, we're talking about how to perform a technical talk with Saron Yitbarek. Saron runs the CodeNewbie Podcast, and others, and organizes and coaches speakers for the Codeland Conference. Saron and I both have some thoughts and opinions about how to deliver a good technical talk. This episode has a lot of tips about how to prepare, what to do at the start of a talk, how to engage the audience, and why emoji are better for slides than videos? We'll give advice on how to give the talk that only you can give and how to get the best performance that you can. Guest Saron Yitbarek: Web, Podcaster: CodeNewbie, Base.cs Podcast, Command Line Heroes. Notes 01:46 - Saron’s Public Speaking Experience Prior to RailsConf 2014 Reading Code Good by Saron Yitbarek 03:02 - The Performance of a Technical Talk Transitions: The easiest way to improve your tech talk OSCON Talk: Ask More Questions 06:50 - Should you memorize or wing your talk? Deckset 11:58 - Knowing Your Audience Jen Simmons: It's Never Been A Better Time to Learn Layout CSS 21:20 - Designing Slides 28:17 - Talk Beginnings and Endings 37:11 - Practicing and Delivering Your Talk 40:43 - Moving Physicality and Talking Speed 46:45 - Giving The Talk No One Else Can Give Related Episodes Organizing Technical Conferences Conference Speaking and Diverse Perspectives with Carina C. Zona and Mark Yoon Special Guest: Saron Yitbarek.

Apprenticeship with Megan Tiu, Kara Carrell, and Alyssa Ramsey TableXI is offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com. Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques! Summary What is an apprenticeship program, how is it different from an internship, and how can your company benefit from having one? In this episode, we’re talking about technical apprenticeships with Megan Tiu of Women Who Code. Megan and I have both run apprenticeships at various companies. We’re also joined by Table XI’s current apprentice cohort, Kara Carrell and Alyssa Ramsey. Guests Megan Tiu: Engineering Manager with Women Who Code. megantiu.com. Alyssa Ramsey: Developer Apprentice at TableXI. Kara Carrell: Developer Apprentice at TableXI. Notes 02:18 - Apprenticeship: Defined 04:38 - Finding and Hiring People for Apprenticeships 05:21 - Interviewing For Apprenticeships 08:35 - Organizing Apprenticeships 14:13 - Making Use of Unstructured Time and Other Opportunities for Apprentices 17:39 - Career-Growth Support Apprenticeship Patterns by Dave Hoover and Adewale Oshineye 20:40 - Having a Sponsor and Getting Support Sticky Note Game 24:20 - Evaluating Apprentices 27:59 - Benefits For Companies That Have Apprenticeship Programs How to be a Better Junior Developer, by Katherine Wu Related Episodes Your First 100 Days Onboarding A New Employee With Shay Howe and John Gore Developer Bootcamps and Computing Education with Jeff Casimir and Mark Guzdial Managing For Career Development with Claire Lew and Dan Hodos Career Development With Brandon Hays and Pete Brooks Special Guests: Alyssa Ramsey, Kara Carrell, and Megan Tiu.

Diversity and Inclusion at Small Companies with Meara Charnetzki, Michael Donnelly, and Elena Valentine TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com. Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques! Summary What can a small company do to improve its diversity and inclusion practices when your company just isn't changing personnel quickly enough to improve via hiring? Here to discuss this are Meara Charnetzki from Table XI, Michael Donnelly from the FWD Collective and Elena Valentine from Skill Scout. We'll all about company values, supporting a wider community, using internal feedback, and what to do to encourage improvement at your company. Guests Meara Charnetzki of Table XI Michael Donnelly of The FWD Collective Elena Valentine of Skill Scout Notes 02:56 - Advice For Small Companies Interested in Being More Diverse 09:08 - Vetting Companies for Diversity & Inclusion Values 13:59 - Having a Healthy Company Feedback System Know Your Company Managing for Career Development with Claire Lew 17:02 - Building Relationships as a Company Leader 20:09 - Diversity and Inclusion Benefits Everyone 23:31 - Encouraging Companies to Start D&I Initiatives as an Employee 30:45 - Company Exit Interviews 32:26 - Salary Transparency 35:51 - Flexible Working Structures Related Episodes Diverse Agile Teams with Marlena Compton, Betsy Haibel, and Jennifer Tu Your First 100 Days at a New Company with Katie Gore and Elizabeth Trepkowski Hodos Managing for Career Development with Claire Lew Special Guests: Elena Valentine, Meara Charnetzki, and Michael Donnelly.

Organizing Technical Conferences TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, go to http://tablexi.com/workshops. Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques! Summary I've been attending technical conferences for years, and I've always wondered about the hidden challenges involved in putting a conference together. In this show, four of the best conference organizers I know join me to share their secrets and stories. Marty Haught, organizer of many conferences including RubyConf and RailsConf, Jen Remsik and Jim Remsik, who organize the Madison+ family of conferences, and Leah Silber, who organizes EmberConf and RustConf. Learn about budgets, picking talks, and managing facilities and vendors. Guests Marty Haught: President at Haught Codeworks, Director at Ruby Central organizing RailsConf and RubyConf Jen Remsik: Director of People Operations at Adorable.io, Organizer of Madison Ruby Jim Remsik: President of Adorable.io, Organizer of Madison Ruby. Leah Silber: CEO at Tilde Inc.. EmberConf, RustConf, and RailsConf Organizer. Author of Event Driven: How to Run Memorable Tech Conferences. Notes 03:12 - Getting Things Right and Having Empathy for Attendees 11:16 - Budgetary Aspects 14:53 - Planning Conferences in Other Cities 18:22 - Putting the Program Together and Selection Processes 29:25 - Crafting a Conference Proposal 31:12 - Encouraging and Enabling Attendee Interaction 40:03 - Conference Mentorship 41:26 - Words of AdviceSpecial Guests: Jen Remsik, Jim Resmsik, Leah Silber, and Marty Haught.

Diverse Agile Teams with Marlena Compton, Betsy Haibel, and Jennifer Tu TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com. Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques! Guests Marlena Compton: Organizer of PearConf. Betsy Haibel: CTO at Cohere. Jennifer Tu: Co-Founder at Cohere. Summary How do common Agile practices like pair programming and retrospectives work when you have diverse teams? How can you make sure that underrepresented team members have their voices heard, and how does doing so improve the way that your team delivers software? Besty Haibel, Jennifer Tu, and Marlena Compton discuss ways in which Agile practices can better serve your team in the real world. For more discussion, be sure to check out PearConf. Notes 02:05 - Pairing and Agile Development on Diverse Teams Betsy on Twitter 04:31 - Implicit Agreement, Teaching Vs Exploring, and Power Differentials in Pairing Ruby DCamp Code Retreat Allison McMillan 08:52 - Understanding and Improving Team Dynamics: Building a Library of Smells Pairing With Privilege Ping Pong Pairing Troll Pairing Table XI Pair-A-Palooza Station 17:57 - Good Agile Pair Programming Techniques + Retrospective Roles Running your unconference discussions effectively: AdaCamp session role cards 22:14 - Making People Comfortable When Speaking Up and Making Agile Healthier Dot-Voting 32:30 - Agile As An Institution Agile Manifesto 38:34 - Backing Away From The Idea of Perfection 42:42 - PearConf Details 43:55 - Bonus Conversation: The Practices Not Being the Manifesto The Winter Getaway That Turned The Software World Upside down by Caroline Mimbs Nyce Related Episodes Nonviolent Conversation with Nadia Odunayo How Set Design Can Inform Software Architecture With Betsy Haibel Agile Teams and Escaping Velocity with Doc Norton and Claire Podulka Special Guests: Betsy Haibel, Jennifer Tu, and Marlena Compton.

Your First 100 Days Onboarding A New Employee With Shay Howe and John Gore TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com. Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques! Guests John Gore: Founder of CultureScape; Everyone Onboard. Shay Howe: ActiveCampaign Design Team Leader; Lead Honestly Summary Tech Done Right is looking at onboarding from both sides. In this episode we talk with Shay Howe and John Gore about onboarding from the company side. We talk about what a new company can do to set a new employee up to be successful and how best to structure that support. How can you best give feedback? What are common onboarding mistakes? See Also Episode 36: Your First 100 Days At A New Company Notes 02:21 - Integrating a New Employee 04:36 - Balancing Technical and Cultural Needs 11:57 - Company Responsibility for Employee Integration: Feedback and Praise 15:34 - Sharing Expectations 18:15 - Soliciting Feedback and Making Connections 25:44 - Common Mistakes Made When Onboarding 27:24 - When It’s Not a Good Fit / Warning Signs 30:42 - Onboarding for Culture and Diversity 34:19 - Communicating Culture to New EmployeesSpecial Guests: John Gore and Shay Howe.

Your First 100 Days At A New Company with Katie Gore and Elizabeth Trepkowski Hodos TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com. Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques! Guests Katie Gore: Founder and President of speech IRL. Elizabeth Trepkowski Hodos: Founder of Elizabeth Hodos: Corporate Improv Training Summary Tech Done Right is looking at onboarding from both sides. In this episode we talk with Katie Gore and Elizabeth Trepkowski Hodos about onboarding from the employee side. What can you do as a new employee to navigate the culture and environment of a new workplace? What are useful strategies? And what are some problems to watch out for? See Also Episode 37: Your First 100 Days Onboarding A New Employee Notes 02:27 - Group Integration: Observe First & Take Your Own Data 08:50 - Picking Up on Shared Context Between Coworkers 11:51 - Themes of Culture and Communication 16:43 - Presenting Yourself in a New Environment 24:11 - Building Credibility 30:49 - Red Flag SituationsSpecial Guests: Elizabeth Trepkowski Hodos and Katie Gore.

AI and the Future of Design and Development with Zach Pousman TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com. Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques! Rails 5 Test Prescriptions is updated, available, and shipping! Summary What does AI mean for the future of design, development? Can I be replaced by an AI algorithm? Today, we talk to Zach Pousman, from the consultancy Helpfully. Zach thinks a lot about artificial intelligence and how it might impact the future of different knowledge work. It's impossible to talk about AI without talking about the ethics of AI projects and how AI might affect the larger society. We'll talk about why AI started with chess and moved to facial recognition, what AI might and might not be able to do in the future, how we might deal with it, and how that will change the way you work. Guest Zach Pousman: Principal at Helpfully. Notes 02:28 - What is AI? 05:18 - AI Potentially Changing the Way Designers and Developers Work 11:40 - Development Biases and Algorithmic Failures Weapons of Math Destruction Carina C. Zona: Consequences of an Insightful Algorithm 16:12 - Taking Novice Performance to Expert Levels All Websites Look The Same 18:56 - Susceptible Knowledge Work at Risk Due to AI and Ethics; AI as “Parlor Tricks” Reddit Thread: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I’ve automated my job? McKinsey Article: What AI can and can’t do (yet) for your business I got the tic-tac-toe story from this tweet, which references this paper "The Surprising Creativity of Digital Evolution" with more examples Loebner Prize The ELIZA Program The Stanford Question Answering Dataset tf-idf 33:06 - AI Vs. Humans and Legislation Google Translate When an AI finally kills someone, who will be responsible? When Luddites Attack 43:09 - Human Skills That Aren’t Replaceable (4C’s: Critical Thinking, Communication, Collaboration, and Creativity)Special Guest: Zach Pousman.

Programming Languages and Communication With Kerri Miller TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com. Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques! Rails 5 Test Prescriptions is updated, available, and shipping! Guest Kerri Miller: Senior Developer at TravisCI and Ruby Community Member. Co-Organizer of the Open Source and Feelings Conference. Blog. Summary Why is Smalltalk the Elizabethan English of programming languages? Why has it been so influential, and how does the programming language you use affect the way you think about programming. On this episode, Kerri Miller and I talk about programming languages and communication, and what we've learned from our most recent programming language adventures. Notes 01:56 - Introduction Twitter Stream Creole Languages Pidgin 06:18 - SmallTalk is to Ruby as Elizabethan English is to Modern Day 08:11 - SmallTalk’s History Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age Squeak By the way, I did get the Squeak history partially wrong. The original work was done at Apple, and when they went to Disney after that, they downloaded their Apple work as Open Source to continue. (It is possibly named Squeak because they were being wooed by Disney). The technical details are basically right, though. 17:55 - Thinking About Programming and Software Projects in a Flexible Way Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis 22:01 - Object-Oriented Programming, Thinking, and Design The Overton Window 28:37 - Learning New Programming Languages, Concepts, and Techniques The Silmarillion by Tolkien Nothing is Something by Sandi Metz Much Ado About Naught by Avdi Grimm Related Episodes Back in the Testing Weeds with Sam Phippen and Justin Searls Ruby Tapas and Avoiding Code with Avdi Grimm The Elm Programming Language With Corey Haines Special Guest: Kerri Miller.

Back in the Testing Weeds with Sam Phippen and Justin Searls TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com. Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques! Rails 5 Test Prescriptions is updated, available, and shipping! Guests Sam Phippen: Tech Lead at DigitalOcean and member of the RSpec Core Team Justin Searls: Co-founder of Test Double Summary I'm back in the testing weeds with Sam Phippen, lead maintainer for RSpec-Rails, and Justin Searls, co-founder of Test Double and author of testdouble.js. We talk about long-running test suites: are they bad, or just misunderstood? Does parallel CI solve all testing speed problems, or just some of them? Then we move to a wider view, what does it mean to test your library as part of a larger ecosystem. And, how can we leverage coverage or CI information to make for more useful testing tools over the lifetime of a project. Notes 02:32 - Dealing with Longer and Longer Test Suites High Cost Tests and High Value Tests 09:43 - What causes people to get into this trouble? On Writing Software Well #5: Testing without test damage or excessive isolation 12:46 - If you had a fast test suite, would you still parallelize it in the CI? 15:12 - What does it mean for your library to still be functional? dont-break 21:35 - Bugs found via the dont-break style of testing GRPC 24:06 - Inferring which tests are run from a production code diff 29:31 - Coverage, what's it good for? RSpec 33:53 - What kind of features would you expect out of a CI-aware testing suite? Related Episodes Part I: Episode 004: In The Testing WeedsSpecial Guests: Justin Searls and Sam Phippen.

React Native with Gant Laborde, Ed LaFoy, and Brent Vatne Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques! TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com. Rails 5 Test Prescriptions is updated and available for purchase! Guests Gant Laborde: Chief Technology Strategist at Infinite Red. Gant on Medium. Ed LaFoy: Director of Mobile Development at TableXI. Brent Vatne: React Native and Expo Developer at Expo. Summary After many attempts at cross-platform mobile application tools, React Native seems to be the real deal, easy to use, powerful tools, and native look and feel. On this show, Ed LaFoy, Table XI's Director of Mobile Development, is joined by two longtime members of the React Native community: Gant Laborde of Infinite Red and Brent Vatne of Expo. We talk about why React Native succeeds, and how to be successful using it, and also give some resources for people who want to get started. Notes 02:18 - What is React Native and when would someone us it? 03:50 - The Competitive Advantage of React Native 05:48 - What makes React Native succeed as compared to other tools? JSX Redux redux-saga react-native-web 13:15 - The Immediate, Out-of-the-box Experience Snack React Navigation 20:23 - Limitations and Boundaries and Skills to be an Effective React Native Developer 29:18 - The React Native Core 38:03 - The React Native Community 38:52 - Resources The React Native Newsletter The React Native Conference (US) The React Native Conference (EU) React Native Express ReactEurope 2017 React Native Workshop with Expo (YouTube Playlist) Animated React Native Training react-native-storybook Related Episodes Navigating the JavaScript World: A Panel Discussion The Elm Programming Language With Corey Haines JavaScript: Islands, Sprinkles, and Frameworks with Zach Briggs and David Copeland Special Guests: Brent Vatne, Ed LaFoy, and Gant Laborde.

Building New Products With Neil Patel Guest Neil Patel: Co-Founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar, and Kissmetrics, Serial Entrepreneur, and Marketer. Blog. Things we Do TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com. Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques! Rails 5 Test Prescriptions is updated and available for purchase! Summary How can you take an idea, find a development team to realize your vision, and then improve it? And once the vision is realized, how do you get people to find the product? Serial entrepreneur and digital marketing expert Neil Patel joins Tech Done Right to talk about his process for repeatably going from idea to product. Notes 02:23 - What makes a good relationship with a development team? / Initial Interactions 04:22 - How do you know things are going well? What defines success and what causes delays? 06:29 - Boundaries Between Product Owners and Developers 07:12 - Red Flags and Bad Indicators of Future Results / What are indicators that things are going well? 09:31 - How/where do product owners start projects? Design Deliverables 12:35 - Launching Products / How is this process changing? 15:12 - Getting People to Use Your Product(s) 16:33 - Onboarding Flow and Improving First Experiences 18:02 - Use Cases and User Feedback 19:56 - Dealing With vs Acquiring Users 21:29 - Tips and Processes for Marketing and Improving Products 23:48 - Getting Excited by New Products Related Episodes From Idea To Company With Maci Peterson Design Sprints with Kai Haley and Zeke Binion Agile UX Product Design with Yana Carstens and Jeff Patton Special Guest: Neil Patel.Sponsored By: Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.