OfferZen Podcast: Recent Episodes

OfferZen

Be part of the conversation, and listen as host, Jomiro Eming, chats to some of the most successful thought-leaders in tech to discover how they hack their careers, and how they approach difficult tech problems. 🦄

The OfferZen Podcast unpacks the tips and tricks from the best in tech. Learn how other software makers think about their growth, how they lead their own tech teams, awesome projects they’ve worked on, and how they build out their careers.

We also learn how big tech companies are hiring tech talent, what the future of tech looks like, how remote-first tech teams are built and how they function, and how tech leaders approach hard-to-solve team-building challenges.

📚 If you enjoy the podcast, make sure to check out our blog for more epic content like this! You can find it here: https://bit.ly/2BuyXcQ

🚀 And, if you want to unlock your potential of your tech career, and join a community of +90 000 other software makers, find us here: https://bit.ly/2ZtRUEx

Many developers say that growth opportunities are one of the most important things for them when it comes to staying in a job. However, for a tech lead figuring out how to cater for everyone’s career goals can be hard. That’s why Julian Springer, Technical and Career Manager at Singular Systems, has set up ‘contribution sessions’ with his developers every month to track progress and solve any niggles before they become bigger problems. Here’s how he does this.

Watch the video, and read the blog post here! (http://bit.ly/3aPgiHM)

When scaling one’s responsibilities as a tech leader, it can be hard to not feel anxious about whether or not you have the leadership experience you need to thrive — be it moving from startup to enterprise, or vice versa. Calvin Hawkes, former Product Lead at Trivago, says that even though he moved from a startup to an enterprise, his experience as a product lead at a startup actually made him a better product lead at an enterprise. In this conversation, he shares the lessons he applied from his startup experience to his enterprise leadership role, and how it gave him a unique strength.

Watch the video here! (https://bit.ly/3aLNorQ)

Being a remote leader is hard enough, but being a remote leader in a different time zone is even harder. Ashley Sanders is Signific’s Director of Tech, and sits roughly eight hours behind his tech team, in another country. In this conversation, he shares the operating system he’s developed for himself, and his team, to ensure that he is not a blocker to his team’s productivity, that his team can still ask him for support, and that he can still provide his team with what they need to thrive.

Watch the video here! (https://youtu.be/5ZkPGJw4dRs)

As tech teams around the world embrace remote work to varying degrees, tech leaders need to adapt their leadership to suit the new environment. Understanding what that means in practice, however, is hard. Mike Scott, CEO and co-founder at NONA, learned an important lesson in his time as a remote leader, namely that: Remote leadership is not the same as remote work, and strategies for the latter won’t necessarily work for the former. Being a remote leader requires a new approach, and in this conversation Mike shares what he’s found effective for getting this right.

Watch the video here! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9IJuYS974I&feature=youtu.be)

When communication structures and organisation design happen by accident — ie. they are not set up in parallel to each other — it tends to result in greater cognitive loads on developers, slower development speeds, and suboptimal workflows and productivity. This is why Richard Bailey, Executive VP of Engineering at Entersekt, used intentional organisation design to construct a new team structure around Entersekt’s product architecture so that his teams’ communication could mirror their architecture’s communication structures, and reduce cognitive load on developers. Here's how he did that.

Watch the video, and read the blog post here! (http://bit.ly/2ORq4AC)

Being a leader can make it hard to take time off, and feel confident that your team will continue to thrive without you there. Chiedza Muguti, Head of Product at Penta, experienced this first hand when she had to take 10 weeks of medical leave, and saw how her team's systems failed when she wasn't around. Since then, she has set up a competency framework and a succession — or handover — plan that she uses to help her team succeed with or without her there. Here, she shares what this framework looks like and how it’s helped her team become more independent.

Watch the video and read the blog post here! (http://bit.ly/3olrwY1)

Many technical recruiters acknowledge that hiring developers is particularly hard. They often don’t have a background in tech, and traditional approaches to recruiting often don't work because of how a developer thinks and what they're looking for in their careers. That's why Mark Deubel, Senior Tech Recruiter at Elastic, has found it useful to collaborate with his hiring manager and their team to learn more about the candidates that he's reaching out to. Here's how he approaches this.

Watch the video and read the blog post here! (http://bit.ly/3pLklts)

Technical interviews are part of most companies' hiring process, and are one of the most important stages. But Ed O’Reilly and David O’Reilly, COO/Co-founder and CTO at NONA respectively, have found that they’re often limited in focus, and treated as a screening procedure more so than an engagement opportunity. In their experience, this reduces their efficacy and negatively impacts candidate experience. Here are three ways they make their tech interviews more interactive, get a better understanding of a candidate, and still leave them with an engaging experience.

Watch the video and read the blog post here! (http://bit.ly/3r1nSEx)

While your talent pool for high quality developers increases when you open up your hiring remotely, so does the competition. Now, companies across the world — from small startups, to ‘big tech’ — are trying to attract the same developers. In this audio documentary, we get advice from the best in tech hiring at Codility, Recruitee, and co., and unpack what companies getting remote hiring right are doing. Here is what it takes to hire top tech talent in a remote world.

To read OfferZen’s full ‘Developer Remote Work’ report, download it here! (http://bit.ly/3iGqFA5)

And check out the blog post here! (https://bit.ly/3sRumHM)

Undergoing a tech transformation is a big undertaking for any tech team. Sadhana Gopal, Engineering Manager at Independer, has learned that being able to measure the value of the transformation is just as important as the technical roadmap you create for actually carrying out the transformation. She unpacks how she measures the value of a tech transformation while it’s happening, so that her team can stay agile and adapt to changes as they arise.

Watch the video and read the blog post here! (http://bit.ly/34fnau9)

Every team has a mix of roles, and a range of technical to more non-technical people. This can make it challenging for software developers and data scientists to communicate effectively with each other, as well as with other people in their broader team, in a way that they understand. Daphne Cheung, Data Scientist at Disney, has used her background in business to hack communication in a way that lets her communicate better with anyone. This is her advice to help leaders help their teams do it too.

⭐️ You can download Daphne’s 5-slide presentation template here! (https://bit.ly/3gqYSlQ) ⭐️

And you can watch the video and read the blog post here! (https://bit.ly/3m3xP18)

If teams aren't given the right environment to thrive, they will be unmotivated and won't perform to their best. Arjen de Ruiter, VP of Engineering at Sendcloud, has found ways to let his team be creative and vulnerable, which has made them more motivated to excel. In this conversation, Arjen shares how he helps motivate his team, as well as the positive impact this has for his business.

Watch the video, and read the blog post here! (https://bit.ly/36rMm22)

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🤔 Curious to know how developers feel about working from home and the 'remote revolution'? Download OfferZen's 2020 Developers Remote Work Report here:
🔗 https://bit.ly/3joTIaC
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Leading a team and managing one’s focus effectively can be a tricky balance to strike. Not to mention keeping up a day job, working on side projects, building up a professional profile, and still finding new ways to stay relevant as a developer.

That’s why we spoke to Antoine van der Lee, Team Lead and iOS Dev at WeTransfer, about how he approaches delegating tasks, managing his time, and winning at team leadership. We also touched on how he manages his career, personal brand and avoids burnout.

🔗Are you a team lead? Watch the video, and read the Q&A here! (https://bit.ly/2V1zOb6)
🔗Are you a developer? Watch the video, and read the Q&A here! (https://bit.ly/379chKX)

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🤔 Curious to know how developers feel about working from home and the 'remote revolution'? Download OfferZen's 2020 Developers Remote Work Report here:
🔗 https://bit.ly/3joTIaC
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Being an attractive company for tech talent is ever more important in a remote world where candidates can work for any tech company from anywhere in the world. Peter Ferreira, Head of Recruitment at Dariel, has found that focusing on authenticity is the key to attracting great talent in our new online world. He shares some of the ways he has been doing this, and why it's proved more effective than just scrubbing job boards.

Watch the video, or read the blog post here! (https://bit.ly/38TQ2ew)

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🤔 Curious to know how developers feel about working from home and the 'remote revolution'? Download OfferZen's 2020 Developers Remote Work Report here:
🔗 https://bit.ly/3joTIaC
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Recruitee’s 2020 State of Remote Hiring report shows clearly that companies that are successful at remote hiring all get one thing right: Candidate experience. Here's why that's so important in a remote world, and some suggestions for improving candidate experience in your hiring process.

Watch the video, or read the blog post here! (https://bit.ly/3pVAwVM)

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🤔 Curious to know how developers feel about working from home and the 'remote revolution'? Download OfferZen's 2020 Developers Remote Work Report here:
🔗 https://bit.ly/3joTIaC
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Hiring developers remotely means that location is no longer a constraint for who talent recruiters can reach out to. However, ‘remote’ means different things for different people, and this makes a recruiter’s job really hard, and can negatively impact the success of a remote hire. Oliver Short, Founder and Tech Recruiter at SEEKR, has learned that by aligning a developer’s and a company’s motivators at the start of his process, and clearly defining what each person means by remote work, he’s better able to match a developer with the role in which they are most likely to not only succeed in, but also stay in

In this discussion, Oliver shares two ways in which he approaches sourcing and recruiting tech talent in a remote world.

Watch the video or read the blog post here! (https://bit.ly/3erj5Hk)

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🤔 Curious to know how developers feel about working from home and the 'remote revolution'? Download OfferZen's 2020 Developers Remote Work Report here:

🔗 https://bit.ly/3joTIaC

Although everyone has had a taste of remote work, we’re still learning about the challenges that come with it, and how to get it right. Codility and OfferZen collectively surveyed over 2300 engineers globally on how they feel about remote work and recently released reports on their findings.

In this discussion, Rachel Whitehead, VP of Marketing at Codility, and Stephen van der Heijden, VP of Growth at OfferZen, unpack some of the insights from the reports, and discuss what they’ve seen it takes for tech companies to win at remote work.

Watch the video and read the blog post here! (https://bit.ly/3mw7d9z)

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Chapter summary:[04:00] Intros to Rachel and Codility, and Stephen and OfferZen

[17:00] "Lay of the land": What's the current state of remote work as you experience it?

[23:00] Gen Z/Gen X/Millenial split on opinions around remote work

[27:00] Importance of personalising remote experience for teams

[30:00] What are the tech companies who are getting it right doing well?

[46:00] Ideas around how to build trust in a team, and why that matters

[50:00] Impact of remote work on remote hiring: Remote hiring policy is a 'must'

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🤔 Curious to know how developers feel about working from home and the 'remote revolution'? Download OfferZen's 2020 Developers Remote Work Report here...
🔗 https://bit.ly/3joTIaC
... And download Codility's 2020 Developers Remote Work Report here!
🔗 https://bit.ly/3kIL3jV
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We’re constantly working to bring you useful insights to help you thrive in the tech industry – and what better way to do that than hear it straight from the experts themselves! We started the OfferZen Podcast a year ago to get behind-the-scenes insights, advice, and tips from the best in tech hiring and tech leadership. Here are some of the highlights.

Read the highlights blog post here! (https://bit.ly/3kgwwvS)

Do you know a thought-leader in tech? Or do you yourself want to feature in a podcast episode? Please get in touch! I’d love to hear your recommendations.

And please send me any of your feedback and questions! Hearing about your experiences with the podcast helps us improve, and also gives us a cool excuse to get to know to some of the people we chat to through ‘the void!’ ;-)Do you know a thought-leader in tech? Or do you yourself want to feature in a podcast episode? Please get in touch! I’d love to hear your recommendations.

Many remote teams are likely familiar with the challenge of excessively long (or drawn out) remote meetings that feel disengaging. Jan Ambroziewicz, Senior Product Manager at Codility, realised that his team needed to be more deliberate about how they run remote meetings, and so decided to reevaluate their meeting structure. By splitting meetings into two parts — one asynchronous, and one synchronous — his team could come more prepared to meetings, and use that time for engaging, and productive conversations. In this article, he shares how he did that.

Watch the video, and read the blog post here! (https://bit.ly/2TfuS1D)

🤔 Curious to know how developers feel about working from home and the 'remote revolution'? Download our Developers Remote Work Report 2020 here! (https://bit.ly/3joTIaC)

Most software developers have to decide between managerial experience and tech seniority at some point in their careers. Hannes de Jager is a VP of Engineering turned senior software developer. At some point as a manager, he realised there was something missing - his heart was in actually building software. That’s why he made the decision to move back into coding and development, and now he's a senior software dev at bol.com.

In this episode, he shares how he used psychometric tests and 360 reviews with people in his network to get to know himself better, and make his career move with confidence.

Watch the video, and read the blog post here! (https://bit.ly/2Ix7OJD)

🤔 Curious to know how developers feel about working from home and the 'remote revolution'? Download our Developers Remote Work Report 2020 here! (https://bit.ly/3joTIaC)

The type of company culture you build during the start-up phase of a tech company is different from the culture needed to propel your business during the scale-up phase.

We spoke with Ferdinand Grapperhaus Jr., Co-Founder & CEO of PHYSEE, about how his FinTech scale-up is scaling their culture to power their growth. 🚀

PHYSEE, selected as the most innovative SME in the Netherlands by the Dutch Chamber of Commerce in 2019, currently employs over 50 people from 14 different countries.

What we covered:
👉 How to enable your tech teams to actively participate in culture creation
👉 The processes PHYSEE uses to ensure their company culture evolves as they scale

Watch the video of our conversation here! (https://bit.ly/30LMw11)

Being a team lead is not necessarily something that every developer wants to — or has the opportunity to — experience in their career. However, Yevhen Andreiev, an iOS software engineer at TomTom, who spent time as a project-based team lead for a distributed team says that while the experience was really challenging, it changed the way he communicates as a team lead, but also as a developer.

In this conversation, he shares three key lessons that he picked up during his time as team lead that have impacted his communication and empathetic skills as a team member.

Watch the video and read the blog post here! (https://bit.ly/30CPWDj)

🤔 Curious to know how developers feel about working from home and the 'remote revolution'? Download our Developers Remote Work Report 2020 here! (https://bit.ly/3joTIaC)

Donny Wals is an iOS Engineer at Disney Streaming Services, who is passionate about finding new ways to level up and stay relevant as a dev. Like any developer, however, he knows that this can be overwhelming because there is so much to learn out there. Having been faced with this his entire career, the most important lesson that Donny has learned is that almost all software applications are built upon foundational blocks – and, when overwhelmed with options, these are the most useful things to learn. By focusing on understanding these core, underlying principles, Donny has developed a much stronger knowledge base, which makes learning newer applications easier.

In this article, Donny shares how he learns these foundational principles by reading old software books, as well as how he applies what he learns practically by setting open goals and blogging about his lessons.

Watch the video and read the blog post here! (https://bit.ly/3joEm5Z)

🤔 Curious to know how developers feel about working from home and the 'remote revolution'? Download our Developers Remote Work Report 2020 here! (https://bit.ly/3joTIaC)

Books Donny mentioned in the episode:* The Mythical Man-Month (1975) by Fred Brooks * Design Patterns (1994) by Erich Gamma, John Vlissides, Richard Helm, and Ralph Johnson * The Pragmatic Programmer (1999) by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas * The Clean Coder (2011) by Robert Cecil Martin

The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master

Mythical Man-Month, The: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition

Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

We spoke to Maarten Mantel, MD of MOHARA Ventures (SA), on our first ever LIVE podcast event!

He joined us for a live podcast recording at one of our team's WTF Lunches, where we pick the brains of thought-leaders and learn about what they're doing in their industries. Maarten unpacked some of his lessons in scaling team culture, adapting one's ways of working in a remote setup, as well as some advice for companies with international offices and international teams.

Check it out on the blog here! (https://bit.ly/3krPFdR)

Amos Haviv joined 3D Hubs as Senior Engineering Manager after lockdown was implemented, when teams were already working fully-remotely. Although he’s had years of leadership experience, leading a brand new team, while being onboarded into a new role and being completely remote, came with a new set of challenges.

This meant that Amos had to reassess how he approached his new role as an engineering manager. Instead of trying to get involved and figure out everything about the company at once, he decided to focus on one core thing: Building up trust within his new team through solid communication. This meant he could get to know his new team really well and really quickly, and understand how he could best support them remotely. This article is a summary of our conversation on the podcast.

Watch the video and read the blog post here! (https://bit.ly/3mqfooZ)

COVID-19 has had a major impact on companies around the world, and as a result many of them have been forced into survival mode. This has inevitably impacted how they think about their product roadmaps, and the gut instinct for many has been to save money wherever possible. Dimitra Retsina, CPO (a.i.) at ReceiptBank, however, has found that relying on gut feeling alone — especially during such uncertainty – won’t benefit your company in the long run. Instead, she relies on data to inform her decisions.

Here’s how she approaches working with data to build out sustainable roadmaps during this transition into what she calls ‘phase two of COVID-19’.

Watch the video, and read the three-part blog series here! (https://bit.ly/3k3hUzf)

Marian Jarzak has been passionate about employee engagement and employer branding for a number of years, and spends his days helping teams communicate better. In his experience, companies often invest too much time in their public messaging, and not enough time in how they communicate internally.

In this article, Marian shares the very first step companies can take towards improving the way they communicate internally, why it matters so much — especially as workforces become remote-friendly — and some practical advice for getting it right.

Watch the video, and read the blog post here! (https://bit.ly/32bJiFd)

At our third Facts + Snacks lunchtime event with SA’s leading entrepreneurs, we chatted to Trevor Gosling, Co-Founder & CEO of Lulalend, about how his team goes about building strong tech partnerships with customers like Yoco, Takealot, Vodacom and Payfast.

Watch the video here! (https://bit.ly/3brw0Hz)

Agustin D. Bianchi is the Senior Director of HR Tech and Operations at Activision Blizzard King EMEA & APAC, and his mission is to transform the way his team does HR. In his experience, HR teams spend too much time doing the repetitive, ‘hand-hold’ admin tasks required in hiring and other employee’s life-cycle activities. By automating and streamlining their processes using technology and tooling.

In this article, Agustin shares how tools like CRM and ATS help automate and streamline his team’s hiring process, in order to speed up their time-to-hire, and enable HR and hiring teams to actively contribute their expertise to hiring the best talent out there.

Watch the video and read the blog post here! (https://bit.ly/3hVXTKe)

In the second edition of our Facts & Snacks lunchtime events, we chatted to Alexandria Procter, the Founder and CEO of DigsConnect about how this non-product tech CEO creates a helpful remote environment for her product team to thrive and perform.

Check out the video of our conversation here! (https://bit.ly/3hyUWiR)

Jason Grishkoff is the CEO and founder of the music community platform SubmitHub — and he’s also the entire development team. As a CEO-and-solo developer combo, Jason’s approach to developing features for his company is a little different to most.

In this article, Jason shares his strategies for developing and releasing new features as a solo developer who’s also the CEO. He discusses how not having a team of developers helping him decide which features to build means he relies a lot more on his relationship with his users, and how he has to timeblock his productivity in order to maximise the quality of time he spends coding when he’s not ‘CEO-ing’.

Check out the video and read the blog post here! (https://bit.ly/2YE32PQ)

At our first Facts & Snacks lunchtime event with SA’s leading entrepreneurs, we chatted to Sumarie Greybe, co-founder of Naked Insurance about how COVID-19 has impacted the local insurance space, her best advice for disrupting traditional industries, and what’s next in AI-powered InsurTech innovation.

Check out the video here! (https://bit.ly/3htCd80)

Christian Gill is a senior software engineer at Catawiki. He’s been a fan of using TypeScript, and even spearheaded its integration into his previous company’s tech stack. At Catawiki in particular, he enjoys TypeScript because of its ease-of-use across their vertical and horizontal team systems. Not only does it make it easy for his teams to work across codebases, but it also lets them easily scale their systems and free up a lot of their time as developers.

In this conversation, Christian shares why he likes using TypeScript, and highlights some of the benefits he enjoys. He also shares some advice on how to get started with it.

Watch the video, or check out the full transcription here! (https://bit.ly/3aBLdp2)

You can also reach out the Christian via his website!

Companies are increasingly hiring remotely, which can open the talent pool of developers from hyper-local to international. However, selling top candidates on your company's mission and team culture without meeting them in person can be really hard. When hiring remotely, it’s incredibly important to focus on how you tell your company’s story, and the way you position a role to a candidate.

We spoke to two top tech sourcers, Sjamilla van der Tooren and Vanessa Raath, to discuss the opportunities and challenges that come with sourcing and hiring tech talent remotely. Sjamilla has worked for companies like Zenly, and now sources tech talent at Dutch bike company VanMoof, and Vanessa freelances from South Africa and hosts recruitment workshops for hiring specialists around the world. Both have presented at conferences and meetups, and both are active members of the tech recruitment space.

Some of the questions we explored in our discussion include:

How do I know if someone can actually work effectively in a remote team?
If developers can work remotely for any company in the world, how do I compete with tech ‘giants’?
How do I present my company to a candidate when I can’t bring them into the office?

Check out the full conversation Q&A, or watch the video of our discussion here! (https://bit.ly/2XYkUEr)

Walmyr Lima e Silva Filho is an ex-GitLab software engineer in testing — and, in his experience, developers generally don’t enjoy writing tests: It takes time to write them, and they often fail unreliably, which means spending even more time figuring out why the test failed. However, since using a testing framework called Cypress.io, Walmyr’s tests are not only more reliable, but he spends far less time writing them.

In this conversation, Walmyr talks about why he likes using Cypress so much. He highlights his experiences with the benefits Cypress has as a testing framework, and some advice on how to get started with it.

Follow along the conversation with the chapter summary below, or watch the video here! (https://bit.ly/33yx22O)

If you have any questions on Cypress, get in touch with Walmyr via his website or his LinkedIn. You can also take one of his Udemy courses on Cypress.

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Podcast chapters[04:34] Skateboarding, and an introduction to Walmyr!
[15:12] What is Cypress.io?
[16:16] Who Cypress.io is built for, and why Walmyr calls it “developer-friendly”
[17:41] What problems it solves for Walmyr, and what it enables him to do
[19:03] “Quality is everyone’s responsibility”: Why devs/testers should try Cypress.io
[28:05] Challenges Walmyr has faced with Cypress.io
[31:11] Approaches to those challenges: “Different tools solve different problems”
[33:33] Using a proof-of-concept before using Cypress.io
[36:05] Walmyr’s advice for how to get started with Cypress.io

🔗 Walmyr on LinkedIn (https://bit.ly/2XA4h1J)
🔗 Walmyr's website (https://bit.ly/33y5Ukw)
🔗 Walmyr's Udemy courses (https://bit.ly/33yw5rg)
🔗 Walmyr's book, Protractor (https://bit.ly/33xBFtG)

At our final Future of Fintech fireside chat, we spoke to Razaq Ahmed, the Co-Founder and CEO of Cowrywise about how FinTech can empower everyone – including first time users of financial services – to save and invest. He shares more about how the YC company – that has over 100 000 downloads of its investment app – is working to grow opportunities for all generations in Nigeria, Africa and beyond.

Watch the video, or check out the blog post here! (https://bit.ly/2XuhdGy)

While establishing their product-market fit, Primephonic worked with a dev agency to spin up and trial different features of their product. Once it took off, however, they realised that they would need a dedicated in-house team to keep growing and improving their product — migrating code, as well as a lot of the contextual knowledge across the teams, turned out to be a major challenge. Here’s how Henrique Boregio, Primephonic’s CTO, navigated this.

Watch the video and read the blog post here! (https://bit.ly/3f49Yeg)

In our latest fireside chat, we spoke to Lyndon Subroyen, Global Head of Digital & Technology at Investec, about how FinTech partnerships help drive digital transformation and innovation at the global asset management company.

Find out more about how Lyndon is thinking about the future of FinTech in Africa and beyond in this episode!

You can also watch the video, or read the transcript, here! (https://bit.ly/32KoSUn)

Leonard Mahlangu, Tech Recruitment Consultant at Investec, believes that building a human connection with candidates is important for a ‘high-touch’ hiring approach. In light of COVID-19, the team had to move their recruitment process online, and this meant they had to figure out how to keep human connection a priority through a completely virtual interaction.

This is a summary of our conversation with Leonard about his team’s experience, and the three key lessons he’s learned about tech hiring in a remote-first world.

Watch the video interview, and read the blog post, here! (https://bit.ly/2CrmTK9)

Sanjukta Barooah, COO at Finturi, believes that having a product roadmap is essential for any tech team because without it, it’s hard for an organisation to align which, in turn, makes it hard to drive growth in a meaningful way. Over the years, she’s found that the best product roadmaps incorporate creative thinking into their process.

In this episode Sanjukta shares how she’s used creative thinking in building product roadmaps, and what she needs in order for that approach to be successful.

Read the blog post here! (https://bit.ly/3e9qCbS)

Glen Ansell, Intelligent Automation Lead, and his team at Tangent Solutions worked on a project whereby they used artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic process automation (RPA) to help speed up x-ray screening for potential COVID-19 cases. In order to build an effective solution, though, Glen’s team had to make sure their solution was non-invasive, rolled-out quickly, and built robustly without room for error.

In this conversation, Glen outlines the project’s problem statement, the technical requirements, the unique challenges and constraints his team faced, and how they approached their solution given their specific context.

Check out some of the key takeaway lessons, or read the full transcript, on the blog post here! ()

Chapters[04:50] Rapidfire ‘warm up’ questions
[08:04] Introduction to Tangent Solutions: What problems do they solve?
[13:15] Defining AI and RPA in the context of this project specifically
[16:21] Project outline: The problem statement, constraints, and challenges
[20:21] The project’s technical requirements and “main goal”
[22:16] Contextualising the project’s goal within the technical constraints and challenges
[25:42] High-level project approach: Critical considerations, and step-by-step process
[32:34] Guiding principles: What does “non-invasive” tech mean?
[37:06] How unique challenges and constraints affected workflow and development
[41:00] Closing thoughts: Potential of this tech going forward

We chatted to Shola Akinlade, CEO and Co-founder at Paystack, about what his team is currently focusing on to ensure that they are equipped to successfully enable their customers to ambitiously grow their businesses. They do this by making it quick and easy for users to get started on Paystack and accept payments across Africa.

Find out more about how Paystack uses tech tooling, community support networks, and data-driven industry insights to grow their business and help their customers.

Read the transcript, or watch the video here! (https://bit.ly/2AcFpVk)

Levelling up as a developer can be overwhelming: The tech industry moves fast, and with so many podcasts, videos, forums, blog posts and online courses out there, it can be hard to know what content to prioritise, and how to make time for it in an already busy schedule. Malini Chetty, Development Team Lead at Investec, divides her learning into three ‘circles of influence': growing her own skills, understanding what's relevant for her business context, and understanding the world around her. This lets her be selective about what she learns, and helps her make dedicated time for it too. Here’s how she makes levelling up a daily practice.

Read the blog post here! (https://bit.ly/3eE10Fk)

Resources:Here are some of the resources Malini mentioned in the interview, that she uses for her own learning:

TEDXTalks
“The DevOps Handbook” by Gene Kim (Amazon | Audible)
“A Seat at the Table” by Mark Schwartz (Amazon | Audible)
“Software Craftsmanship” by Pete McBreen (Amazon)
"Clean Code" by Robert C. Martin (Amazon)

The DevOps Handbook: How to Create World-Class Agility, Reliability, and Security in Technology Organizations

Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship

Software Craftsmanship: The New Imperative

A Seat at the Table: IT Leadership in the Age of Agility

Christian Vogel, Software and Product Engineer at DAN.com, says that creating their own React pattern at DAN has helped them streamline their software development. In short, it removes the need to make state management a priority, which not only makes Christian’s coding faster, but also — he says — more fun. In this podcast conversation, he shares what the DAN React pattern looks like on a component level, how it’s set up, the practical impacts it’s had on his team’s workflow, and some things to consider when setting up your own React pattern.

Follow our conversation by using the chapter breakdown below, or check out the full transcript of the episode on the blog here! (https://bit.ly/2BHhRIo)

Also, we encourage you to reach out to Christian after listening! Make notes during the episode of any questions or comments you think of, and message him via LinkedIn or Twitter — he’ll gladly answer any questions you have!

Podcast chapters:[03:42] Intro to Christian’s role at DAN.com, and what they do as a company
[06:32] What is the DAN React pattern?
[09:07] Benefits of the DAN React pattern for DAN.com’s software development
[12:56] How the DAN React pattern works: Components and setup
[16:57] Use cases for when (and when not) Redux might be the better pattern
[18:36] Why the simplicity of the DAN React pattern is so useful
[20:21] How this pattern helped build a live, internal ‘alert system’ within two weeks
[23:19] The potential for this kind of React pattern
[24:22] Christian’s advice for anyone wanting to build their own React pattern
[27:12] Final summary, takeaway points, and closing thoughts

Boxfusion’s development team was tasked with helping the Gauteng Health Department manage mass-screenings of South Africa’s COVID-19 cases. Despite extreme time pressure and uncertainty, their team managed to ship the first version of a working solution over a weekend. Managing Director, Ian Houvet, shares how his team used one-to-one customer research, quick feedback loops, and complexity minimisation in order to follow an MVP approach and work effectively during extraordinary conditions.

Read blog post here! (https://bit.ly/2BX5cS3)

As a developer, you need to be able to communicate effectively in many different contexts and with many different people. Parham Doustdar, Team Lead at Booking.com, has learned that having a clear strategy on how to communicate is helpful for dealing with diverse stakeholders and avoiding conflict. In this article, he shares a 3-step process that he uses with his team to improve communication between developers, team leads and product managers.

Read the blog post here! (https://bit.ly/2BtK05L)

We are chatting to leaders in the FinTech space about what their teams are doing to adjust to the "new normal" and how they’re making the most of the opportunities that are currently available to them. In this fireside chat, we spoke to Malan Joubert, Co-founder of OfferZen, who was involved in the founding of SnapScan, Luno and Root.

Check out the transcription and video of the interview here: https://bit.ly/3dmznjb

Responding to a crisis is much easier to do when you’ve already planned for it, and know exactly who is involved and what steps to take. This is why Amber Freeman, Legal Manager at Aerobotics, uses risk and scenario analyses to build crisis management plans, like the one they used in response to COVID-19. It not only helps her team find the weaker points of their systems, tech processes, and workflows, but helps them respond faster and more effectively if and when a crisis hits.

Here is Amber’s advice on how to set up your own crisis management plan using a scenario analysis, and what impacts it had for her team in responding to COVID-19.

Do your own risk and crisis management plan - for yourself, or for your team - by downloading Amber’s template here!

And check out the blog post here! (https://bit.ly/2BaMhTp)

Even with sufficient notice, pivoting a real-life tech conference to an online forum comes with a lot of challenges: Organisers need to ensure that their digital events are accessible for different audiences as well as start thinking differently about how to enable attendees to engage with speakers and each other in authentic ways. Our events team spoke to Jos Gerards, Head of Events at Frontend Love in Amsterdam, and Robert MacLean, Director of DevConf in South Africa, about how they tackled these challenges in moving their conferences online.

Check out the transcription and video of the discussion here: https://bit.ly/2WF6Pvy

Working full-time, and being a full-time parent while working from home, can make it really hard to manage all your responsibilities and still find productivity and focus. Everyone’s personal situations are different, which means there’s no ‘silver bullet guide’ on how to do it.

That’s why we brought together three ‘developer parents’ from Prodigy Finance to find out how they’ve approached integrating their parental responsibilities with their day-to-day work at Prodigy. In our conversation, Sarah Brittan (Team Lead), Ruberto Paulo (Development Manager) and Richard Archer (Senior Development Manager) share some of their own experiences, and shed light on the strategies that have helped them so far.

Read the blog post here! (https://bit.ly/3dXGlv4)

When the COVID-19 pandemic put a stop to all in-person events and social gatherings, Toasty had to adapt, or die. Kevon Cheung, Toasty’s CEO and Co-founder, decided to move the entire platform online and within four weeks, his team launched their new remote team engagement platform. He shares how they maximised prioritisation as a strategy in order to pull this project off in the time they did.

Read the blog post here! (https://bit.ly/3bv97l5)

Some technical problems can’t be solved by software or code alone; they are systemic, and require a solution that takes into account the impact that other moving parts have on it as a whole. Lochner Eksteen, Managing Director at EXAH, uses Systems Theory to ensure developers integrate solutions into the entire system for which they’re building. This approach enables them to hone their problem–solving skills, and to build more robust, more integrated, and therefore more impactful solutions.

Read the blog post here! (https://bit.ly/2L4xaN1)

Neil Kelly, Director of Engineering at Luno, has seen that if there's one thing that can hurt your hiring, it's rushing through the process. Taking shortcuts to land candidates quickly can lead to making promises that you can't keep, or compromising on things you haven't checked against your team. This article unpacks some strategies Luno uses to be upfront and honest during their hiring process, and why that serves them better in the long run.

Read the blog post here: https://bit.ly/3eVaZGC

With the lockdown and COVID-19 prohibition on gatherings, SA tech meetup organisers have had to start thinking out-of-the-box about how they’re going to bring their communities together. Since these events occur more frequently than bigger conferences, the community relies on them to keep connected and informed. This means that organisers have to spend time thinking about the best solutions for bringing their communities together online in a way that actually helps them learn and connect.

Our events team spoke to local meetup organisers to find out about the challenges they’re encountering trying to keep their communities engaging, and how they’re planning on adjusting their meetups to add value remotely.

The peeps who joined us for this chat were:

JoziJS organisers: Gergana Young, Mike Geyser and Sheena O’Connell
She Can Do organiser: Inez Patel
Cape Town Front-End Developers organisers: Justin Slack and Schalk Venter
PHP meetup and WordPress CPT organiser: Jonathan Bossenger

Read the blog post here! (https://bit.ly/2yGoHwg)

Keeping your company’s systems up-to-date is important, but can be especially hard when there’s inherited “Frankenstein” and legacy code. Brandon Pearman, Principal Software Engineer at Wonga, and his team had to overhaul their system to new tech, which had built up a lot of this “Frankenstein” code. It’s been a long process, and a huge undertaking, but they’ve learned some valuable lessons about moving a system over to entirely new tech. In this article, Brandon shares those lessons, and some considerations that might help anyone going through, or thinking about going through, something similar.

Read the blog post here! (https://bit.ly/2Krde6t)https://www.offerzen.com/blog/4-lessons-wonga-learned-through-rewriting-system-new-tech?&utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=backtracks&utm_campaign=interview

In Agile, executing is often prioritised over planning. However, not planning enough can be as costly as planning too much. Herman Swart, Custom Project Development Manager at Tangent Solutions, thinks that rigorous planning is critical, even in Agile. The skill, he says, comes in knowing when you’ve planned enough, and he’s set up a process that helps his team reach the optimal amount of planning for every project.

Herman says that the misconception in Agile he sometimes encounters is that teams should jump into execution as soon as they can. Although he doesn’t think the entire project should be spent planning, executing shouldn’t come at the cost of sufficient and structured planning stages.

Herman’s team has a six step planning process, divided into two phases, for scoping a project before execution. He talks through each step in our conversation, which can be found at the time stamps alongside:

1. THE PROPOSAL PHASE
[00:22:22] 1.1 The project proposal: Understanding the client’s wants and needs
[00:28:33] 1.2 Scope of work: Laying out the delivery

2. THE DEVELOPMENT PHASE
[00:41:00] 2.1 Resource allocation: Finding the right people to do the right things
[00:45:12] 2.2 Client briefing session: Setting roles and responsibilities
[00:50:21] 2.3 Product backlog and feature list: Planning sprints and deliverables
[00:57:51] 2.4 Project setup: Setting up environments and addressing dependencies

Check out the transcript on the blog here! (https://bit.ly/2VwtXdU)

When you need to respond suddenly to a new environment, it's difficult to avoid derailing your roadmap and veering off course. Kurt Kruger, CTO at SnapScan, said that having a careful process in place helped his team stay on track, and not lose focus or motivation. In this episode, we discuss some of the ways in which his team thinks about remote work in order to stay productive, and some advice he has for how to keep a roadmap during uncertain times.

FUN FACT: We did this interview asynchronously and remotely. That's a first for the OfferZen Podcast! :D

Check it out on the blog here! (https://bit.ly/2Roe73V)

For a tech startup, ‘common practice’ is useful as a guideline, but understanding how that maps onto your specific context is crucial for sustainable growth. CTO Mike Jones and his team at Picsa found they had to ensure their operations served their context – not the other way around – in order to save money and reduce risk. They did this by being critical and deliberate about the metrics they tracked, the customers they sold their product to, the tools they used, and the tech they worked with. Here's how they did this.

Read the blog post here! (https://bit.ly/2UTQyAS)

Being remote-friendly and being remote-first are two very different ways of working. The latter requires a lot more intentional effort to be successful, and some teams are more experienced at working remotely than others.

We got a (virtual) room of representatives from Jumo, Allan Gray, Equal Experts, Matchbox Solutions, Luno and Nomanini together to discuss how each was dealing with going fully remote in response to COVID-19. We spoke about our pains, solutions, and successes with remote work, and shared how teams around the country - and around the world - were making remote work work.

Check out the episode on our blog here! (https://bit.ly/3aIdfyo)

Links shared in the discussion:

These are the ice breaker cards Rob mentioned: https://www.equalexperts.com/blog/ee-life/icebreaker-cards/
This is GeoGuessr, which Carmia mentioned: https://www.geoguessr.com/
Here's the game Rachel was talking about: https://skribbl.io/
To randomise who runs meetings, this is the tool Rob uses: https://wheelofnames.com/

This was Malan Joubert's DevConf2020 presentation, which he gave remotely.

Watch his presentation here! (https://bit.ly/2X28uMn)

COVID-19 will have many effects on our health, on our society and our economy. We believe that the tech community has the potential and obligation to play a key role in fighting COVID-19 and so does our government: The Presidency has asked OfferZen and the tech community to help reduce its impact in SA. We've set up a dedicated team that both identifies community and government projects that can make a difference, and helps drive them to make an impact. Lets talk about what is already being done, and how you can help!

Keen to get involved? Volunteer for COVID-19 projects here! (https://bit.ly/2wTsV3a)

Working remotely can feel really lonely because you don’t have as many in-person interactions. For this reason, Neil Kelly, Director of Engineering at Luno, and his team have been deliberate about fostering human connection since going fully remote in response to COVID-19. By implementing a few simple, daily strategies, Neil and his team create more surface area for checking-in, and feeling less alone. Here’s how they do this.

Read the blog post here! (https://bit.ly/33OSiPF)

Antoine van der Lee is a mobile (iOS) developer and team lead at WeTransfer, and believes that it’s impossible for someone to know everything there is to know about a particular topic. In Antoine's case, this is mobile software development. It’s hard to find the time to level up or to improve at a thing, but Antoine says that building deliberate time for learning into his schedule has helped him make leveling up part of his daily routine. That way, he doesn’t have to find the time, because it’s already in his diary.

In this article, Antoine shares some of the strategies he uses to help him level up as a mobile developer every day, and what he’s learned about making them as effective as he can.

Read the blog post here! (http://bit.ly/39JUyKt)

John Mac Pherson, Managing Director and SQL DBA at Shifttech, says that many people he meets see the online gambling industry as unregulated. However, he says many companies are actually really heavily regulated. This means his team has to think cleverly and proactively about the solutions they build, and that social responsibility is in fact a top priority.

In this episode, John clarifies the misconception about the online gambling industry, and discusses three examples of uniquely interesting considerations his tech team has to make while operating in the online gambling industry.

📖 Read the blog post and 🎥 watch our studio interview here! (http://bit.ly/3ctzauu)

For anyone who works with serverless computing or cloud-based application development, Jacques Chester says Knative frees up a lot of a developer’s time and mindshare. Developers already have to think about many different moving parts when building out a cloud system or application. However, as a Senior Software Engineer at VMware, Jacques believes that there are some decisions that developers shouldn’t have to worry about making.

In this episode, Jacques explains why Knative could be the answer to your stressors. He outlines how Knative removes some of the complexities in serverless computing, how that enables developers to work faster, and offers some best use cases for Knative.

Read the blog post here! (http://bit.ly/399No1F)

As they scale heavily, the Luno team increasingly relies on data to inform and validate their decision-making. Every team member needs to be equipped to autonomously evaluate the impact of their choices.

In this talk, Brittany Wagenaar and Robyn Steenekamp share what they’ve learned about making data accessible, understandable and easy to use for everyone in the company.

Watch the video, and read the transcript here! (http://bit.ly/30YRx5n)

Software has become the multiplier for business growth: When tech teams are working on what matters, companies thrive. When they aren't, it can cost millions. In places like Silicon Valley, developers are highly respected, because they're the people building things and shaping our future. This mindset is what lets Silicon Valley create the biggest tech companies year after year – but what is it like to be a developer in South Africa?

In this talk, Philip Joubert takes a look behind the numbers of our latest State of South Africa's Software Developer Nation report.

Read the report here! (http://bit.ly/3107GY3)

Watch the video, and read the transcript here! (http://bit.ly/3aMcapO)

Historically, it’s been hard to innovate in the financial sector because banks and financial service companies accumulated decades' worth of data and functionality that FinTech companies had no access to. This is now changing: The market is opening up to companies and technologists who can use this data to build new tools and drive new business ventures which could translate into economic growth.

In his talk, Wayne Summers explains how Investec hopes to unlock more opportunities within the SA tech ecosystem through opening up APIs and investing in programmable banking.

Watch the video, and read the transcript here! (http://bit.ly/2vlAIpk)

Over time every tech team develops playbooks which help them build processes, teams and tech that succeeds. At MERGE Johannesburg, Phillip Barrett from OfferZen got to chat to Ashi Krishnan, Warren Foxley, Ridhwana Khan, and Dean Broadley about the teams they’ve been on. They discussed what didn’t work for their teams as well as how they overcame these challenges to build playbooks that help their teams win.

Watch the video, and read the transcript here! (http://bit.ly/2TSy3O5)

We tend to assume that the way we do things now will continue to work in the future - even as contexts and environments change. But, by holding this assumption, we could end up stifling innovation geared at changing the status quo.

In his talk, Roland Naidoo unpacks the mental models that commonly hold us back, dive into why it's important to constantly evaluate them, and then share some of the tactics that MultiChoice uses to counter them.

Watch the video, and read the transcript here! (http://bit.ly/2tKww1W)

If you aren’t able to be pragmatic and honest, you quickly fall behind competitors who are constantly working to improve themselves and their product - especially in the world of cryptocurrency. Luno uses their pragmatic culture to empower their team to constantly re-evaluate their systems and processes.

In this talk, Warren Foxley discusses the tools and heuristics that Luno uses to enable a culture that drives company, team and individual success.

Watch the video, and read the transcript here! (http://bit.ly/2tJ6BYB)

RLabs is a community-orientated initiative that aims to reconstruct communities and change society through technology, innovation and entrepreneurship. Since everybody operates within some type of community, we have to make sure that existing inequalities do not expand as tech evolves. RLabs’ main focus is to ensure that all people – even in the most marginalised communities – have the opportunity to engage in these technological advances.

In his talk, Marlon Parker talks about their goals, how they work towards them, and the wider impact that this focus has had on expanding the SA tech ecosystem.

Watch the video, and read the transcript here! (http://bit.ly/36gi5jn)

Over time, every tech team develops playbooks which help them build processes, teams and software that succeeds. At MERGE Cape Town, Tumi Sineke from OfferZen Foundation got to chat to Ashi Krishnan, Jeremy Edberg, Ridhwana Khan, and Dean Broadley about the teams they’ve been on. They discussed what their teams did that worked - and didn’t - as well as how workplace culture has contributed.

Watch the video, and read the transcript here! (http://bit.ly/36mRBg8)

Oftentimes, we invest a lot of time and resources into what we build. The tech, the product, the process…

We tend to forget that those things are a symptom of the people in our teams and the reason we’re all there in the first place.

Equally, we spend little time acknowledging the 'human-ness' of who we are building for and then miss our opportunity to differentiate our products and services in a sustainable way. It therefore makes the most business sense to spend a large portion of your time, effort and awareness on the mindsets, relationships and purpose of the people involved in building our products and services in our businesses.

In this talk, Dean Broadley focuses on how individuals and teams can adapt their mindsets and environments so that they are enabled to build high-quality and accountable products.

Watch the video, and read the transcript here! (http://bit.ly/2tM9vM5)

Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.

– Malcolm X.

Digital skills aren’t widely taught in South African schools and, while the government knows this is a problem, they are still working on a solution. We as individuals, organisations and communities in the tech space have the abilities to get involved, and gradually and sustainably improve the lives of students in our country.

In this talk, Ridhwana Khan shares her experiences running a non-profit organisation in the education sector, and how she’s built a curriculum for teaching digital skills.

Watch the video, and read the transcript here! (http://bit.ly/2RDl1S0)

Turning a great idea into a successful tech business often relies on speaking to the right people, about the right things, in the right way. Social entrepreneur Nwabisa Mayema shares two key concepts that anyone who wants to start their own tech business should know about.

Read the blog post here! (http://bit.ly/37X4yPy)

It's clear by now that the robots are coming for us.

Breakthroughs in AI fill our streams and news feeds, themselves the products of machine learning, the echoing algorithmic screams of a new kind of mind being born.

Using TensorFlow.js, we'll find out how deep learning systems learn and examine how they think. The fundamental building blocks of AI have never been more accessible. Ashi Krishnan explores the architecture, potential, and implications of these protominds, which are growing to mediate our every interaction.

Watch the video, and read the transcript here! (http://bit.ly/38yIef6)

The local and global tech industry moves at a fast pace - one which can sometimes be hard to keep track of. At MERGE, Stephen van der Heijden from OfferZen caught up with Meredith Karazin, Devina Maharaj, and Marlon Parker to chat about the current state of the SA tech ecosystem. Amongst other topics, they deep-dived into the opportunities Africa has to contribute to the global tech scene, and the practical ways in which individuals and companies can get involved.

Watch the video, and read the transcript here! (http://bit.ly/2GhDiiw)

If your product gains popularity and you’re caught off-guard without a scalable system, then you won’t be able to deal with the demand as your company grows. Building a distributed system - that allows you to scale, deploy and respond to customers fast - is hard and there are a lot of unique challenges that I learned about at Netflix and Reddit.

In this talk, Jeremy Edberg helps audience members avoid the mistakes he made, with actionable ideas on how to implement a well-architected distributed system with the right monitoring.

Watch the video, and read the transcript here! (http://bit.ly/37jZF2P)

An event is an opportunity for individuals to be given a platform for delivering and sharing a message that other people can benefit from. They also help people come together into the same space to do business, share ideas and build networks with others doing similar things, but to do this we need a mutual understanding of how events can help the community.

In this talk, Adrian Moisey focuses on delivering some practical steps that sponsors and attendees can use to maximise value at an event.

Watch the video, and read the transcript here! (http://bit.ly/37kRHWX)

In South Africa, fire safety and protection proves to be a problem for many people in underserved communities because of lack of infrastructure and support. To start solving this problem, Lumkani has developed a strong focus on human-centred product design, mass manufacture and scaling a dev team that is able to constantly listen to their clients.

Paul Mesarcik discusses some of the challenges and design considerations involved in growing a hardware focused startup that is determined to create a huge positive social impact in South Africa.

Watch the video, and read the transcript here! (http://bit.ly/36lVTEw)

Ridhwana Khan, Senior Software Engineer at Smile Identity, co-founded Kasi Maths in response to something she noticed: South Africa’s education system doesn’t set learners up well to access and thrive in tech and STEM-related careers. This is especially true for learners from underserved communities who don’t have much exposure to tech and experience language barriers in learning. This is why Ridhwana believes skilled professionals/developers have the ability and responsibility to help where they can.

We spoke to Ridhwana about how her non profit, Kasi Maths, works to address these issues by solidifying basic digital skills and knowledge, using a holistic learning environment that exposes students to STEM in the real world, and visual teaching that bridges language barriers.

Read the blog post here! (http://bit.ly/2TMucSE)

As a young continent, Africa has an abundance of passionate and knowledgeable youth interested in tech. However, Meredith Karazin, COO of Moringa School, and her team see a widespread lack of efficient training that enables youth to align to market standards. The result is that many businesses outsource tech skills, rather than hire local graduates.

Meredith works with her team to solve this by using a holistic and practical approach to tech education that prepares students for a real working environment. Moringa School trains developers to work anywhere in the world by using real-world problem statements, in a classroom setting that mimics a typical working environment, and using a project-based and qualitative grading system.

Read the blog post here! (http://bit.ly/2uiVK7B)

Domina McQuade is Lead Technical Recruiter for Microsoft’s tech and data teams, and has learned that hiring the best developers requires a world-class interviewing process. To do this well, her recruitment team focuses on sourcing and screening the best developers, a well-designed interview loop process, an internal debrief session, and building your hiring reputation.

She talks us through what Microsoft’s interviewing process looks like, why it’s set up the way it is, and how she thinks about each stage.

Read the blog post here! (http://bit.ly/34RGI5k)

Robots, machines, artificial intelligence... These are becoming more and more prevalent in our world today, and their "future" feels closer than ever. Ashi Krishnan is a senior software engineer at Apollo, but has given numerous talks around the world on robots, neural-mapping, and how they learn to learn like we do.

Ashi sat down with us and chatted around some of things that make machines really scary, and really exciting. Here's what she thinks about the world with robots, and what she means when she says "technology is a mirror."

Read the blog post, and watch the full-length studio interview here! (http://bit.ly/2McM3h5)

What does it take to get a job at Microsoft?

Domina McQuade is Lead Technical Recruiter for Microsoft Data centers and has been recruiting for Microsoft’s tech and data teams for the past three years. She says that doubling down on networking and levelling up your LinkedIn profile can help developers and engineers land an interview with her.

In this episode, she discusses how her hiring teams test for six core competencies with everyone they interview, and shares some tips on how job-seekers can smash an interview at Microsoft.

Read the blog post here! (http://bit.ly/358ql5u)

Developers are in high demand across the world, and as software becomes more powerful, tech talent is only going to become scarcer. Katrina Kibben is the founder of Three Ears Media in the USA, and has worked with software engineers and technical recruiters from all over the world to help recruiters break traditional recruiting rules.

Doing this, she says, makes their hiring more personal and enables them to communicate better with the talent they’re trying to reach. She discusses how to break the rules in tech recruiting by mastering a few of her tech recruiting ‘Power Moves’.

Read the blog post here! (http://bit.ly/33goRo4)

Before Jeremy Edberg founded his own company, MinOps, an SQL interface for the Cloud, he worked at Netflix as its founding reliability engineer. At that time, there was no alerting system to let his team know when things broke, which meant that humans had to monitor the system 24/7.

In order to focus more energy on building new features, and spend less time sitting and watching screens, Jeremy and his team set up an automated alerting system. Here, he talks through the features they built into the alerts, and the impact this had on his team.

Read the blog post and watch our recorded studio interview here! (http://bit.ly/2XCnEWC)

Best practices are useful ways to get to a solution faster, but when it comes to HR and tech, some wisdoms don’t always apply so neatly. Themba Chakela, Human Resources Executive for Dimension Data Systems Integration, has been in the HR and tech industries long enough to know where they don’t stack together well.

In order to work around the pitfalls of conventional HR wisdom in the tech space, he uses a questioning mindset, which aligns HR models to the organisation and, thus, puts people before ‘standard procedures.’

Read the blog post here!

Many social issues within South African underserved and marginalised communities are complex and nuanced. This makes it hard for external forces to provide tech solutions with real social impact.

Marlon Parker, founder of Reconstructed Living Lab (RLabs), sees tech as an enabler and an equaliser: By providing tech skills training to young people in these communities, RLabs works to generate value from within the community, and empower those who ‘live’ the problems every day to build tech solutions that drive sustainable impact for their community.

Read the blog post here!

South African tech companies invest a lot of money into their products, but Designing Humans Founder, Dean Broadley, thinks they don’t invest enough time or money into the people who build them.

With a focus on building environments and mindsets that encourage ‘humanness’ in tech, Dean shares why he thinks self-awareness is more important than coding ability, how he teaches people to be ‘full-time humans’, and what impact that’s had on his tech teams.

Read the blog post here!

If you’d like to practise self-awareness in greater depth, Dean recommends the following books:

“Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind”, by Yuval Noah Harari
“On Bullshit”, by Harry G. Frankfurt
“The Hard Things About Hard Things”, by Ben Horowitz

On Bullshit

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

Adrian Moisey, former VP of Engineering at SweepSouth, and now Salesloft engineer, is a huge advocate for attending tech meetups. As one of the organisers of Cape Town’s DevOpsDays, he’s learned that the way a conference is set up affects the value people get out of it. Using his experience organising DevOpsDays conferences, he shares how he thinks about creating 10x value.

He talks about speaker-sponsor-attendee value through mingling, putting together a curated line-up of speakers, and leveraging the ‘open spaces’ model to create engaged conversation amongst attendees.

Read the blog post here!

If you are keen to learn more about DevOps, two books that Adrian recommends are:

“The DevOps Handbook: The DevOps Handbook: How to Create World-Class Agility, Reliability, and Security in Technology Organizations”, by Gene Kim. A book about DevOps (as the title suggests!), but with examples of specific, technical DevOps practices and stories in action.
“The Phoenix Project: The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win 5th Anniversary Edition”, by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford. This is great for people who are in upper management, and who might see what's happening on the ground but aren’t necessarily that involved with the technical side of DevOps.

The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win

The DevOps Handbook: How to Create World-Class Agility, Reliability, and Security in Technology Organizations

The agriculture sector is hard to break into as a tech startup, especially when you’re working with data that’s incredibly hard to access. Aerobotics CTO & Co-Founder, Benji Meltzer, shares his lessons on creating a ‘new market’. He talks us through the importance of maintaining a ‘niche’ focus early on, solving one person’s problem first, and how this feeds into building credibility and trust with early adopters.

Read the blog post here!

There is a clear disconnect between companies struggling to fill their ever-growing demand for tech talent, and how difficult it is for people from non-traditional backgrounds to enter and thrive in the industry. But, as a community, how do we solve this problem? Our latest panel discussion revealed that we need to start by changing the way we think about our team’s diversity.

That said, we discussed many other interesting topics on the evening. If you’d like to hear more, you can check out the video of the event, read the blog post - or even some photographs.

At OfferZen, we believe that talent is universally distributed but opportunity isn’t. Underserved South Africans often struggle to thrive in the tech workplace, even if they have the correct technical skills, because they are not ready for the challenges that the workplace presents. We asked Baratang Miya, CEO of GirlHype, and Alwyn van Wyk, Chairperson of Younglings Africa, about what it means to be work-ready and how we can collaborate to improve inclusion in the tech space.

If you missed our event ‘A Discussion on Tech Inclusion in SA’, you can check out the pictures, video or blog post. Otherwise let’s check out the top insights from the evening.

Stepping into the tech freelancing space can be a daunting experience because there are many tradeoffs to be made and complexities to be considered. It helps to first get some advice from those who’ve done it before, so in our latest Future of Work panel discussion, we posed the question: ‘How can you launch your tech freelancing career?’. Here are the top insights that our panelists, Dries Cronje and Inez Patel, had to say about how they got their foot in the door, what it takes to win as a tech freelancer, and how they adapted to make it work for them.

You can watch the full video of the event here, or read the blog post!

South Africa’s tech industry is currently not equipped to handle all the complexities of remote work. This makes it very difficult to get freelance jobs, communicate with teams remotely and mature as a software maker. That’s why we decided to run an event on ‘How to Win at Freelancing in SA’. Our speakers were Florah Chuene, Jahil Khalife and Maia Grotepass, who all have first-hand experience working as freelancers in South Africa.

These are the top insights from the night, but you can also check out the full video of the event, or read the blog post!

Company culture is an important topic and driver for success in any business. This is particularly true in the tech space, where developers can easily find other opportunities if their environment doesn’t allow them to fully explore their potential. But whose responsibility is it to create a healthy work culture?

At our event, ‘The Future of Work: Sparking an Innovative Culture’, we spoke to Quraish Behari, the CEO of Derivco, and Alexandria Procter, CEO and Co-founder of DigsConnect.com about how they nurture the culture at their companies. You can also watch the video or read the blog post!

For many South African developers, the global tech marketplace is really attractive: Filled with big opportunities, career growth and stronger currencies. Luno’s Director of Engineering, Neil Kelly, however, hasn’t had this experience. He suggests four important things to consider before making the move abroad, and actually sees a lot of potential to hack career growth locally.

Read the blog post here!

Amy Miller, Senior Tech Recruiter at Google, says that recruiting for big tech companies like Google isn’t as easy as everyone thinks it is. This is why hiring is still a core competency at Google, and _not_ just admin work. Amy has decades of experience in tech recruitment and says that even the biggest tech companies have to bring their military-grade hiring approaches to the war for tech talent. In her experience, a successful hire comes down to being hyper-intentional about your hiring process, not hiring by yourself, and pushing back against conventional hiring wisdom.

Read the blog post here!

When trying to achieve product-market fit, two things that normally help are knowledge of the specific industry, and some kind of background in business. However, Founder of WumDrop, Simon Hartley, had neither, but still managed to succeed. What helped him win were end user research, speaking to people who have done it before, and a laser focus from start to finish.

Read the blog post here!

Exploring the South African Tech Ecosystem
Compared to the international stages of tech innovation, South Africa’s tech ecosystem is still in its infancy. This makes breaking into traditional industries and collaborating across sectors incredibly hard. But to grow the local innovation space, players need a proper grip on how it all works. 🚀

At our last Future of Work event, our speakers spoke about the challenges and opportunities around growing our tech community. To hear the full conversation, have a listen to the discussion from the evening.

Read the blog post here!

Meeting the deadlines and expectations of software projects depend on properly scoping features, algorithms and dependencies before touching any code. This is the step-by-step process Sizwe Ndlovu, Head of DevOps at Pineapple, and his team follow - with a project planner template you can download too!

Follow along with the full transcript in the show notes, or read the blog post.

Most hiring decisions are typically based off of a ‘gut feeling’. This makes it hard to attribute what ‘worked’ and what ‘didn’t work’ in the hiring process, which in turn affects how confidently you hire someone. Travelstart, however, makes a predominantly data-based decision in their interviews, without removing the ‘human’ touch.
Lee Watts, Human Resource Business Partner at Travelstart, says that their quantitative approach, in fact, not only makes interviews much shorter, but also gives them a far more qualitative idea of whether someone is a right fit or not.

We talked to Lee about how Travelstart gets it right, what they’ve learned about the short-falls around traditional interviews, and what impacts it has on the hires they make.

Listen to our conversation here, and find the resources he mentions as well as the full transcript to our chat in the show notes, and on our blog.