He imagined he could make the web shinier, so now he does. Join us as we talk with Kristian Hamilton about his passion for helping adults and children learn to code. We explore his hypothesis, "There's no better escape from poverty than education," and how that inspired him to become a volunteer coach and organizer at CodeBar. Kristian Hamilton (LinkedIn) is a Senior Front End developer keeping Signavio running at SAP, a global software company. Listen as we talk about mentoring as motivation, being black in very white spaces, intersecting art and code, and eating delicious British food. This ..read more

He taught himself to build websites for fun and function. Now they fuel his businesses, while he surfs all year and codes at night. What's crazy is that he writes code almost every week, but has never worked as a professional software developer. Today, Lennart Quecke (LinkedIn) owns and operates two businesses: Secret Wave - an upscale surf bed and breakfast for adults in southwest France SportyJob - a European job board for the sports industry He is German and grew up in France. He always did a lot of sports, and in university, it was natural to get his degree in sports management. His care ..read more

The first rule of Feminist Fight Club is to talk about Feminist Fight Club. A radical slacker finds a future building software. Today, Kaja Santro (LinkedIn, Portfolio) connects art lovers with lovable artists, as a platform engineer at Artsy, a Series-D based out of NYC. In university, she loved learning about historical linguistics, but her inquisitive mind rejected the toxic gender dynamics and left her uninspired about a job in academia. Kaja was unemployed when she met WordPress while helping her boyfriend. He ran out of money before the freelancer could finish the website for his hostel ..read more

They hired her as a PowerPoint designer. But soon she found out coding requirements was much better than transcribing them. Refactoring is the name of the game for Julia Swidron (LinkedIn, Portfolio). She rewrites legacy frontend experiences at Deloitte, one of the biggest consultancies in the world. She didn't have a linear path. She started in graphic design but soon realized that she would burn out as a profession. She was exploring her options in different cities when she got an internship at Maersk, which was a perfect launchpad. In our chat, we talk about moving around, making engineerin ..read more

She claimed to have terrible luck. But in InfoSec, a healthy dose of paranoia became her advantage on the path to Staff Engineer. Laurel impressed me with her patience and dedication to building trust. After her start in the IT department, Laurel became a developer through an internal upskilling program for women. Her stunning nature photography reveals her eye for life's fragility. It's also a surprising advantage in her approach to building a career.  Today, Laurel Rivers (Photography) stays intentionally private while she secures the critical assets of a major US media company. In our ..read more

She thought Rails Girls would be a cool hobby. Seven years later she is a non-profit trustee at Codebar.io, helping newbies break into tech. During the day, Priya Patil (LinkedIn, ) helps companies of all sizes solve their problems as a polyglot engineer for 8th Light, a consultancy based out of London and Chicago. At night, people like Priya are building a more diverse future for the tech industry. She was one of the first students of Codebar.io, a non-profit inspired by taking Rails Girls workshops. She continued by becoming a coach, and now is one of 6 trustees that steer the vision and exe ..read more

Her drive to grow made her jump career paths twice in the same company, and that became a pilot program for discovering new female engineeers. Today, Julia Miller (LinkedIn, Blog) is a Software Engineer builidng the orchestration platform for Machine Learning workflows at Zalando, a public online fashion retailer based in Berlin. She joined Zalando first as a working student, while studying business mathematics. It was such a good fit that they were her first choice after graduation. Julia started as an analyst, shifted to product manager, and finally decided to go full developer by attending ..read more

Mira Vogt (LinkedIn) did the work to get into business law, only to feel the squeeze of gatekeepers. Following the siren call of SQL led her to a new garden of exciting opportunities. Mira has been keeping it real with corporate life, while she puts her creative juices into learning how to build systems at GetYourGuide and beyond.  Check blog.introspectivedeveloper.com for transcript and show notes. Zeke Arany-Lucas is a developer, leader, and consultant from Seattle, living and working in Berlin since 2014. He has been in tech industry for more than 25 years, starting with web browser d ..read more

Mais Aroq (LinkedIn) was trying on all the hats in accounting and none of them fit. But code was love at first click. Mais left a secure accounting career in Tel Aviv then moved to Berlin to join a bootcamp and become a developer. But success needed more than a bootcamp and she has a great approach for anyone approaching interviews. Check blog.introspectivedeveloper.com for transcript and show notes. Zeke Arany-Lucas is a developer, leader, and consultant from Seattle, living and working in Berlin since 2014. He has been in tech industry for more than 25 years, starting with web browser devel ..read more

Sprouting in the Dominican Republic, Jennifer Cruz (LinkedIn) started out working in marketing, but always knew it wasn't a good fit.  So she signed up for all the classes on Udemy and eventually became a self-taught software engineer at Amazon in Berlin. I am inspired by her equal use of  breadth-first and depth-first as an approach to living and learning. It takes time to get it right. Listen to how she finds her own rhythm, motivation, and even a little satisfaction. Check blog.introspectivedeveloper.com for transcript and show notes. Zeke Arany-Lucas is a developer, leader, and c ..read more