Pursuit Podcast: Recent Episodes
Jessica Rose
The Pursuit Podcast offers advice and new perspectives on getting things done in tech through half hour conversations with tech's great thinkers each week. Want to learn to code? Land that great new job? Learn about how to manage your new reports? We've got you covered. This weekly podcast and carefully curated resources aims to leave you inspired and prepared to tackle that cool new thing.
Ever wonder what it's like building remote teams of folks who have never worked in the position you're offering them on your team? Dhawal Shah joins us to talk about what it's like running a portal on online education with a creative approach to hiring and management.
We're taking a moment out of season 2 to return to one of our most popular episodes of season 1. We're joined by Jess Lee to look at what's been happening with the Dev.to team and community since we chatted to them last year.
What if you're someplace that doesn't have the perfect tech job for you? Kemdi Ebi had an idea, saw a business opportunity and made his own dream job. Through Versus Africa Kemdi built a successful startup focused on supplying the world with African market intelligence. He joins us to talk startups, goals and more.
Finding a remote job can be a massive challenge. Android developer Moyinoluwa Adeyemi joins us to talk about the challenges that many looking for remote work will encounter, with a deeper look at challenges technologists in Nigeria face. She offers practical, structured advice on how to land a remote job from Lagos that should be helpful for devs around the world. She also gives us some insight into why companies should be looking to hire Nigerian technical talent and how they might get started.
After last week's episode on data breaches, we probably scared you enough about protecting your users' data against bad actors. We're going to try and help you better understand your day to day responsibilities for user data in the context of GDPR, Europe's data privacy regulations. TapMyData's Gilbert Hill joins us to talk about what GDPR is, what you need to do to stay compliant and how to exercise your own rights as users.
We're bringing you a bonus episode fresh from the headlines. Elissa Shevinsky and Brett Thomas from theFasterThanLight.dev security startup join us to talk about breaches from the basics to the aftermath. We talk passwords, user security, what may have happened in the Capital One breach and more.
They offer targeted advice for how to approach data security, presenting us with guidance for early stage startups, well funded corps and individual developers wanting to learn more.
If you're writing code of any kind, you're probably already aware that there should be some testing involved. This week the Ministry of Test's Richard Bradshaw joins us to talk about embedding testing into your software development, the roles open to folks interested in testing and the future of how we test what we build.
What would a resource for junior designers look like if it were rendered as a beautiful online magazine? Edoardo Rainoldi was unsatisfied with the resources for budding developers and created rooki.design to find out. Interviews, tutorials and more make up this beautiful weekly-ish new publication. We'll learn more about this work, the future for Rooki and his advice for junior designers and for those looking to support them.
How do we talk about, treat and work with mental illness within the tech industry. Julia Nguyen joins us to talk about her personal experience, offering both valuable insights into her journey and advice for those who may be working to manage their own mental health. While this episode will be looking at mental health in technology, the advice offered here is not intended to replace medical advice. Please seek appropriate support if you think you may be facing a mental health issue.
Are you working with designers as part of your daily life? Or you're a designer yourself? Or perhaps you're interested in getting into working in design? Today's guest Scott Riley is joining us to talk in detail about what it means to design for the diverse needs of a global user base. Scott will be talking to us about design, his new book and his approach to life in general.
Looking to get into working with design or looking to level up your design skills? It can be rough out there to go it along. We're joined by design advocate and organizer of Figma Africa to learn more about the value of being part of a design community.
Working in tech can be hard, but for folks just starting out the challenges are often compounded. How do you build a network? What advice can you trust? Keziyah Lewis joins us to talk about the challenges of being a junior technologist and the community she built to help them out. Check out juniorsintech.com to learn more
VM Brasseur is an international keynote speaker, renowned technologist and author of the newly released 'Forge Your Future With Open Source' joins us to talk about how open source can help you grow and grow into your career.
After a long holiday break, we're joined by Michelle Glauser to talk about her project to take involved, ethically responsible steps to help women and nonbinary folks in the bay area move into software engineering roles. Techtonica offers six month, full time engineering apprenticeships to low income learners with a living stipend and laptop provided. We'll hear about what they've accomplished, what's next and how you can help.
International speaker, writer and renowned technologist Sarah Drasner joins us to talk about Vue, picking a JavaScript framework and how to balance doing everything, all at once.
What is ethical hacking? And how can you best get started with it without risking it all? Ian Coldwater joins us to talk about hacking, hacker culture, capture the flag and more.
Ben Halpern knows a lot about founding and growing online communities responsibly. He joins us to share his knowledge and experience from turning a popular Twitter handle into the Dev.to online community platform.
For most open source projects to survive and thrive it takes contributions beyond just code. SRE, emoji maven and keeper of many hats Katie McLaughlin joins us to share how you can make acknowledgement of contributions part of your workflow. We also talk party parrots, emoji politics and ghosts in your machine.
Mozilla's Chris Hartjes joins us to talk about testing, language snobbery, PHP and what life is like as a (lovable) tech grump.
Serverless can't possibly mean there are no servers, right? Anthony Stanley joins us to unpick the unmagical magic of serverless and help us discover just who the hell Jeff is.
This week Clojurian and functional programming expert Abby Sassel joins us to teach you all about the joys of functional programming and point you at resources to learn yourself.
Wondering what functional programming is all about? Or just how to get paid for doing it? Clojurian and tech lead John Stevenson joins us to talk all about functional programming and work.
Algorithms are used across the American justice system as sentencing aids. As an undergraduate at Harvard Priscilla Guo examined the use of these algorithms, making stunning findings on their makeup and use.
Microsoft's Ashley McNamara joins us to talk about Go, adorable mascots, approaches to learning in tech and children's programming books.
Finding angel investment can be a mission for early stage startups. But what should you do if you want to be one of the investors? Karla Fraguada joins us to give tips on getting into angel investment and how to best pitch your project to angels. She also offers a guided tour of the Pipeline Angels program, designed to help women and femme nonbinary folks enter angel investment.
Humans have the will and desire for far space flight. But our fragile, fleshy bodies need technology to help us survive the journey. Rochelle Velho Academic Clinical Fellow in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine moonlights as a researcher into the medical technology we'll need to bring with us for the journey to Mars.
Web developer Katie Fenn joins us to look at how remote working is structured across the team bringing npm to the world. We discuss what you need to be a successful remote worker and what employers need to provide for great remote working experiences.
Operation Code is a nonprofit focused on helping veterans and military spouses transition into meaningful work in technology. Conrad Hollomon joins us to talk about the program, it's challenges and to look at ways the tech industry could better reach out to this pool of valuable talent.
Web animation specialist Rachel Nabors joins us to talk about the rules for getting started with animation for the web and sneaks in some valuable tips on international relocation, picked up through her recent move to Amsterdam.
Mozilla's Ola Gasidlo joins us to talk about her career path, offering tips and tricks for how you might be able to grow and leverage your skills to find sustainable paid work in open source.
Negotiations let you get more out of that new job offer, raise or the promotion you've been angling for. But they can be difficult to navigate. Join Amy and Gloria for an episode packed with practical advice you can start applying to your negotiations.
Through her work in academia Dr. Mbogho noticed vital skills being absent from computer science curricula. She founded KamiLimu, a six month structured mentorship program for students in Nairobi. Dr. Mbogho joins us to talk about the program and the skills new technologists need to best compete in the global tech industry.
Some of the most persistent problems in tech are human issues. Coraline Ada Ehmke and Naomi Freeman took a break from writing their upcoming book The Compassionate Coder to speak to us about empathy in technology.
We're joined by founder of the Scotland JS and Scotland CSS conferences to talk about what it takes to run big scale events and how to source speakers. As a part of sourcing speakers for his events, Peter started a global speaker training and outreach program designed to help underrepresented minorities from across technology get on stage and share their ideas with the world.
Carl Martin left a lucrative role and life in NYC to come back to the UK and build a beautiful, user centered alternative to LinkedIn. He built first a prototype and with help built a product that a core of users love. But the seed and VC funding needed to help PingApp never developed, leaving Carl to make tough choices on his future and the future of Ping.
-For those just starting on their computer science journey, there are more options than ever. Traditional degrees, apprenticeships, bootcamps and self teaching are all routes for beginners into meaningful work in technology. Github's Joe Nash joins us to look at these different options, as well as education for mid-career and senior technologists.
Raising funding for your startup can be stressful and confusing. Anthony Rose from SeedLegals joins us to look at what you need to know about the legal side of funding. Anthony details the terms and processes you need to know before signing anything as well as showing off how his own startup can streamline the legal processes.
As part of our month's look at funding routes, we welcome guest Danielle Robinson to look at how grants can help fund your project of company. We look at how grants have enabled Code For Society to fun open source projects and build their own products. Best suited to help fund projects for social good, grants can offer a valuable funding stream for growing projects.
Working out where to get the money to get your startup built and launched can be a massive challenge. We're joined by Katerina Pascoulis, CEO of Personably to learn more about the paths they took to funding. With a journey covering almost every funding route imaginable, Personably shares valuable learnings for startups just getting started on their journey.
Coming back into the tech industry from a career break can seem like a daunting task. Select companies like CapGemini have begun returnship programs, internship-like support programs aimed at getting talented technologists back into work. Tricia Driver joins us to teach us more about the structure of these programs and what those on a career break should look for when coming back. We also look at the value of these programs and how companies can leverage these for new talent and perspectives.
What if the way we build software could be more focused on human needs? What if the way we build and run teams could be more sustainable and healthy? These are the questions April Wensel sought to answer in founding Compassionate Coding. She joins us to look at how tech could better to work to serve humans in an outside the industry.
Dame Products set out to rethink how technology could enable sexual experiences in accessible, meaningful ways. The brainchild of a clinical psychologist and a mechanical engineer, Dame's offerings are wearable sextech built and tested in data driven, iterative ways. Co-founder and CTO Janet Liberman joins us to talk about their journey.
Stem cell scientist Rachel "Konichiwakitty" Wong has a high tech, high fashion hobby. In this episode she'll take us through her passion for building her own fashionable wearable technology and helps walk us through how we might be able to take our first steps building our own wearable projects.
We've had a lot of guests on to look at different aspects of learning to code, or learning new technical skills. But what happens when it's time to use these skills to get your first tech job? Software engineer Linh Nguyen My joins us to talk about selling your skills, the job hunt and keeping up hope.
In the rush to learn the technical skills needed to get into work, many of us skip the deeper understanding of what makes our work possible. Vaidehi Joshi is the founder of BaseCS, a collection of podcasts, writing and videos aimed to teach you what you fear you should already have known about computers and computer science.
This week's episode features Jenn Schiffer talking about the aesthetics and creative community of the Glitch platform. This online platform allows code newbies and experts to remix and share their web and node.js projects and invites meaningful community collaboration. Learn more about the value of creativity in tech education and exploration.
The Guild of Makers came out of an idea: what if there was a way for makers of all manner of physical objects could come together, share knowledge and professionalize their work building beautiful, useful, sometimes strange things. Lucy Rogers joins us to talk about the Guild of Makers as well as a look at some of her work as a host of Robot Wars.
For folks looking to enter the tech industry, learning to code is often presented as the one sure fire route in. But what happens when learning to code doesn't work out? We're joined by tech journalist and accessibility technology specialist Kit Englard to talk about her experiences. As a Deaflblind student Kit found materials and working practices in physics and programming poorly adapted for her needs. She went on to carve out her own space in the tech industry.
This episode is part of a cross over special with the Hanselminutes podcast. Scott Hanselman and Jessica Rose air some of the worst advice listeners have sent in and talk about bad advice in technology. To listen to the first half of this podcast, visit hanselminutes.com
For people learning to code, feeling alone on their learning journey can be one of the biggest challenges. Join Saron Yitbarek, the founder of the CodeNewbies community to learn about how emerging developers are getting together to support each other on their journey. Learn more about CodeNewbies, learning to code and creating your own supportive communities.
Learning a new skill can be a daunting task, with programming being especially tricky. But what can you do when most learning materials and tools aren't accessible to you? Blind backend developer Parham Doustdar joins us to talk about how he taught himself to program, the challenges he faced and his advice for other visually impaired developers. We also look at the ways educational resources and programming as a whole can be made more accessible, opening up technology to eager new learners and makers.
For people learning programming languages for the first time moving beyond in browser tutorials can be a major hurdle to success. Quincy Larson joins us to look at his free, open source learning platform FreeCodeCamp.org and talks us through the challenges he faced founding the project. We also look at common challenges to learners and how the tech industry can better support new coders.
As part of our series looking at working for yourself, the founder of WeddingLovely and publisher of the popular Hello Web Books series Tracy Osborn joins us to talk about balancing writing a book while working for yourself. Tracy talks us through the logistics of writing, publishing and marketing a book in detail while sharing how she balances running her own business alongside her writing.
Thinking about getting into freelancing and wondering what the long term impacts of working for yourself might be? Or perhaps you've been working for yourself for some time and want to see how your experiences stack up? Battle-scarred veteran freelancer Remy Sharp of Left Logic joins us to talk about the challenges of working for yourself long term. We'll look at isolation, avoidance and motivation, offering tips and tricks to help you do more.
One of the hardest parts of working for yourself can be moving on from an idea or project you love. This week, internationally renowned speaker and consultant Kim Crayton joins us to talk about her moves through several industries into technology, onto conference stages around the world and her most recent pivot into business skills consulting.
Want to start working for yourself but not sure how to fit it all into a workday? Or you're already working for yourself and want to better manage your busy schedule? Expert consultant, internationally recognized speaker and co-founder of Perch CMS Rachel Andrew joins us to talk about being busy, fitting it all in and work/life balance.
Ever wanted to quit your job and work for yourself, on projects of your choosing? International speaker, trainer, consultant and front end expert Sara Soueidan joins us to talk about the benefits and challenges of becoming a contractor. We'll look at contracting advice born of her experiences that you can apply to your escape from the rat race or just to learn more about tech contracting.
Ever wonder how to walk away from the open source project you've built, loved and maintained? John Resig, the creator of jQuery, joins us to talk about how to say goodbye. We'll look at what leaving your project feels like, how to do it in a healthy way and what moving on can bring to your life.
Dan Abramov a maintainer and of the popular React JavaScript library joins us to talk about the challenges and rewards of maintaining a popular open source project. He offers insights into the way the Facbook react team works to support React and respond to user needs, while offering you advice for your own large or small open source projects.
Love open source? Looking to break into the tech industry? Oracle's Vaishali Thakkar joins us to talk about how you can leverage your open source involvement to find work in the tech industry. We'll look at programs like Rails Girls Summer of Code and Outreachy that could be able to pay you as you upskill intro the industry alongside Vaishali's own professional journey.
Ever wondered how to take that first step into open source?
Nadia Odunayo joins us to talk about 24 Pull Requests, her work with open source and speakerline.io, her project to make public speaking more accessible. We'll look at what newbies need to know, as well as how open source projects friendlier and more welcoming for folks new to open source.
Love your side project, but still need to pay the bills? This week we talk with Suw of Ada Lovelace Day She talks us through the process of experimenting to find what works and monetizing your projects to become stable, income producing work. Learn more about her work with findingada.com and share in the learnings from her path to make her passion for inclusive representation her full time job.
Bureaucracy can be soul destroying. Finding ways to navigate (or even to subvert) it before it destroys you is the only way forward. Terence Eden talks us though his battle with the Unicode Consortium as part of a bid to have new emoji/characters added. Did he succeed? Did he survive? Listen to find out.
Ashley Bischoff joins us this week to look at accessibility in writing for the web and across technology. Writing in ways that can be easily understood by readers and users of varying literacy skill levels, from different language backgrounds and cognitive challenges allows as many people as possible to share your vision and access what you’ve built. We’ll examine techniques and tooling for writing accessibly, including bit.ly.com/readabilityanalyzer
Ashley can be found on the web at handcoding.com/ and on Twitter at @handcoding
International speaker, consultant and lauded CSS expert Harry Roberts joins us to talk about his experiences in entering the tech industry without a degree. He talks us through the value of blogging as a way to build an audience, the challenges of getting into the tech industry and more.
Ever wondered if you have the skills to make the jump into management? We're joined by Davide Casali of Automattic to learn about the skills and motivations a good manager bring to their team. Davide is a speaker, writer, mentor and technologist of many talents currently working to design better product experiences. You can find more of Davide's wisdom at https://intenseminimalism.com/
This episode we're joined by international speaker, open source maven and startup founder Safia Abdalla. She walks us through her experiences founding and running Tanmu Labs and the challenges behind delivering Zarf, her subscription content platform. Safia offers her advice for new and hopeful startup founders, looking at work/life balance, user feedback and more.
Last week we talked about writing and researching a talk to get you onto a tech conference stage. This episode we're joined by speaking coach and leadership consultant Andrew Lightheart to talk about his work and how to confidently get through your first talk. Andrew walks us through what makes a great talk and small hacks to make your talk pop on stage as well as looking at leadership, coaching and the pressures of writing a book. If you wanted more of Andrew's advice his book on speaking skills Presentation Now is available on Amazon.
Ever wanted to get on stage and share what you know with the world? Guest Stuart Langridge joins us to talk about writing, researching and giving your first talk. We look at the value of meetups and local community events in your speaking career, how to get up on that first conference stage and how to stay cool up there. Stuart is a web expert, writer, consultant and podcaster based in the UK. Our next episode will look at tips and tricks for giving a great talk once you've gotten to that big stage. Join us next Tuesday as we're joined by Andrew Lightheart.
Katie is the Last Nerd Standing (CTO) at a startup that focuses on language and education. She spoke with us about dropping out of college, working as a NASA contractor and becoming a CTO. Katie offers a perspective on getting into and staying in tech without a degree based on incredible talent, great timing and hard work. When she's not coding or trying to remember what the heck a gerund is, she knits, sews, and writes fantasy novels that will probably never see the light of day. She lives in the DC area with her husband, two kids, and a very spoiled dog and can be found online at therealkatie.net
Alvaro Videla works with Migros, one of Switzerland's largest supermarket chains. Originally from the countryside in Uruguay, Alvaro self taught himself development skills while selling food door to door. With the help of friends, family and his own determination he overcame a series of challenges to become a developer in the capital. He's continued to grow and learn, authoring books on RabbitMQ and being a leading developer, speaker and one of tech's best loved thinkers. You can read more about his journey at this blog post he's written for FreeCodeCamp.
This episode we look at another profile of a technologist who got into the digital technology industry without a degree. Thayer Prime is a self-taught programmer, who now works in organisational design and digital technology recruitment with her company Team Prime. She joined us to talk about her journey into tech, recruitment and more.In this episode we talked about getting into the digital technology industry without a degree, best practise ideas for hiring processes and found out about Thayer's path into the industry as a self taught developer. Some companies that were mentioned: MillerHare Hypothesis Outlandish Team Prime
A look at how to select great recruiters and avoid the sleazeballs when jobhunting in tech with guest Hannah Mitchell from Technical Team Solutions.
Bruce Lawson and Jessica Rose talk about developer relations. What is developer relations, how you can break into the industry and the pain points contextualized within Bruce's story of working in developer relations.
A look at the challenges and rewards of running your own tech events from Mike Elsmore, the founder of the Hackference conference and hackathon.
A look at Tanja Lichtensteiger's experiences getting into technology as an apprentice without a university degree as well as her current work as a tech lead.
Jessica Rose and Steven Pitchford look at what a great portfolio site for junior developers needs and look at some fantastic examples of existing sites.
Noted Afrofuturist Florence Okoye and Ed-tech darling Nadeem Shabir talk about their motivations in entering the technology industry and the path they travelled into the industry. Advice and cautions, warnings and rewards of getting into the tech industry, alongside the question of you need a degree to work in tech.