Josh Nichols

Recently a younger member of our team asked me: "What do you look for in a software engineer?". He told me my answers surprised him, and weren't like other answers he got, but I've ended up having this same conversation with many people at different levels the past few days...

Devs I really enjoy pairing with: - don't act like know-it-alls - openly admit if they don't know something - try to figure stuff out together - ask instead of making random assumptions about your knowledge - don't judge you for not knowing something

Following up on the care and feeding thread, here's an activity you can do this weekend   Brainstorm the following questions: - What makes you functional? - What gives you energy? - What takes your energy away?

In the spirit of spring cleaning, I hereby grant you permission to: -Get rid of things you never wear/use, even if it was a gift -Throw out old undies/socks with holes in them even if they “still have some life left” -Release yourself from the curse of sentimental hoarding

^ So if your take on “craftsman”, or “master/slave” or any other term that makes a colleague feel unwelcome isn’t “let’s find a better word!”, either you’re shit at software because you don’t get how important words are or you get it & you find the exclusiveness to be a feature.

If you are submitting to a conference and are unsure because someone told you the topic isn't unique, remember - your EXPERIENCES are. No one can duplicate your feelings, your work, your problem solving process... YOU are unique, and don't let someone negate your experiences.

So you don’t think you can write/speak on a topic because you’re not an expert? Listen to interviews of authors in other fields. They talk all the time about how much research and interviewing they did. You don’t have to be a subject matter expert. But you might become one.

Fellow dudes: get yourself a skincare regimen. Wash your face, moisturize, etc. Got a beard, even a little one? Get some shampoo for it and some beard oil. Guaranteed you’ll feel like a million bucks.

A fantastic suggestion from @techpickles after the talk: consider having the code review portion of the interview build off of the work done in the collaborative system design. This requires guiding the candidate a bit more into the design that matches the code review, though.

Loving this walkthrough of Rails internals and making huge steps forward for Rails 6 with @eileencodes. The fact that as a community we can continue to push the limit after 13 years is testament to the people behind this project