Software World with Candost

Different groups of people demand various details when listening to your solutions. The details you’ll show to a software engineer differs from the level of detail you will show to your product manager, and it will be completely different when you want to present to a C-level.

I've realized many engineers struggle to communicate their work at different levels. Even the most experienced en­gineers have difficulty presenting their ideas or their achievements. In this episode, I talk about how to present your solutions and create the most profound impact on your audience. I share what I've learned and honed with feedback over the years.

Links: 

In the first episode of the new season, I talk about Problem-Solving skills and strategies for developers. As we all have a common goal of solving problems with software, improving our skills and using various strategies are crucial.

I talk about a clear strategy to solve almost any problem we face. We can solve problems in five steps.

1. Find out the real problem
2. Clarify the problem and expectations
3. Simplify the problem
4. Create potential solutions
5. Merge and evaluate solutions

In five steps, you can solve many problems—big or small.

Software World opens its doors to season number three.

After a season break, we're back with new content coming to your ears.

As usual, the new episodes will arrive every second week on Tuesdays.

On the season finale of the Software World, I welcome Jesper Dramsch, Scientist for Machine Learning in the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMRWF) and Geophysicist. They have online courses, blog articles, a mini-book about Data Science and Machine Learning.

In our conversation, Jesper talks about the differences between Machine Learning and Data Science, how to enter the field, how life scientists shift their focus to Data Science.

We talk about how businesses should approach data as the processes and methodologies are completely different from software engineering.

On this episode of the Software World, I welcomed Roberto Vitillo, Principal Software Engineer at Microsoft. We talked about distributed systems, the CAP theorem, writing a book, and growing a career in software engineering. Listen to the episode to learn more.

To get a chance to win Understanding Distributed Systems, listen to the episode and learn how you can get a chance.

On this episode of the Software World, I welcomed Eric Bailey, an inclusive design and accessibility advocate. We talked about accessibility, the importance of inclusive design. In the episode, Eric gives suggestions to software engineers and software engineering leaders about approaching accessibility. Listen to the episode to learn more.

I talked about the importance of 1:1 meetings for software engineers and how they should change their perspectives. I mentioned a couple of strategies about having practical and high-quality 1:1 sessions with managers and how software engineers should approach these meetings.

In this episode of the Software World, I welcomed L. David Marquet retired nuclear submarine Captain in the USS Navy. We talked about his book Turn The Ship Around!, the power of intent-based leadership, the importance of language, and how leaders can build the organization with the bottom-up decision-making approach.

In this episode, I talked about how should an architect approach designing software architecture. 

The topics are architecture characteristics (system quality attributes), design thinking, and system design (modularity, conceptual integrity, etc.).

In this episode of the Software World, I tried something new and spoke without a guest.

On this episode of the Software World, I welcomed Jim Allen, Head of Engineering at Jimdo. We talked about managing changes in the organizations, the reasons for changes, and how to navigate difficult situations caused by the changes.

On this episode of the Software World, I welcomed Denise Jacobs, speaker, author, and creativity evangelist. We talked about the inner critic that we all have and how it impacts our creativity. Denise gave answers to my questions regarding how to understand our inner critic and approach it in a better way.

In this episode, my guest is Benedicte Raae, the software developer behind POW! App. On this episode of the Software World, we talked about her indie hacker journey and how she navigates the indie hacker life, overcomes challenges, and stays motivated.

Here are the links that are mentioned in the show:

On this episode of the Software World, Candost is talking with Dennis Benkert about how the job requirements change for senior and staff level software engineers, and how they can prioritize their work.

How do you prioritize your work when you grow into senior and staff roles?

Which tasks do you choose to have a better impact on the company?

What are your strategies to decide which task is better?

The popularity and growth of DevOps are very attractive to many people. Site Reliability Engineering shares the same foundational principles with DevOps. Since both topics are very popular since the beginning of the 2010s, engineers can create a good career in both.

This week, we focused on how people can grow in DevOps and SRE. My guest was Rene Hernandez. He is a Senior DevOps Engineer at Fullscript.

If you are looking for becoming a DevOps or Site Reliability Engineer or would like to grow your career in one of them, watch Rene and me.

Have you ever asked yourself about you should learn something different than your expertise? In every engineer's career, there comes the point which they have to decide if they want to learn something new. Sometimes it means changing the career goals, but sometimes it's expanding the horizon.

Changing the career might look like a step back. If an engineer is on the senior level, they might go back to mid-level. This week we talked about the life of a generalist (or all-rounder) software engineer.

Learning frontend development is exciting as discovering something new. And getting better at it has different challenges. Although the frontend ecosystem changes all the time, it doesn't have to be hard. We can apply specific strategies to our learning path to make learning easier and improve our knowledge quickly.

This week, we talked about learning and getting better at frontend development. My guest was Ali Spittel. She is a Senior Developer Advocate at AWS Amplify, co-host at Ladybug Podcast, and Blogger at welearncode.com.

Whether you're learning or want to learn frontend development or improve your skills, join Ali and me for this live stream.

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Being in the on-call rotation requires a different set of skills. Some people think that they build resilient systems so that they don't need on-call. The purpose of on-call is not to blame someone but to find the root cause.

This week, we talked about building healthy on-call culture and how engineers should approach on-call. 

My guest was Serhat Can. Serhat is a Tech Evangelist at Atlassian, AWS Community Hero, and Global Core Organizer of devopsdays.  

We talked about 

• Which engineers should be on-call?
• What are the must-have things in on-call?
• How DevOps changed on-call?
• How does the healthy on-call culture look like?
• What is a post-mortem, and how to write it? 

and many more!  

Hi, welcome to another show!

Have you ever thought of being a manager or team lead after spending some time in engineering? Most of the time, people believe that it's a one-way road. 

This week, we talked about career changes in software engineering. My guest was Tobias Bales. He is a Software Engineer at Jimdo. He worked as an Engineering Manager for two years and decided to go back to engineering.

We talked about

🔶 How should the career of an engineer look like?

🔶 Does the road always go to management? What are the other options?

🔶 What is the real difference between an engineer and an engineering manager?

🔶 How to convince the company to go back to engineering?

🔶 How different engineering and management are?

and many more!

Hi friend! 

Have you ever thought a person doesn't understand what you say? Did you ever get feedback that you disagreed with what they are talking about? Working with a team is a big challenge. Cultural differences affect relationships and team performance. Even people coming from similar cultures struggle a lot. This week, we talked about how we can approach people coming from different cultures and have a healthy relationship.  

We answered questions such as: 

◦ How do miscommunications happen? 

◦ How to give negative feedback? 

◦ Why are some people always late for the meeting? 

◦ How can we disagree with someone without breaking their heart? 

and many more!  

My guest was Felipe Furlan da Silva. He is an Engineering Manager at Jimdo. He has been working in IT since 2004 and is involved in almost every part of the software development lifecycle, from operational to tactical and strategical.  

Hi, welcome to another show!

My guest was Fırat Karataş. Fırat works as an iOS Engineer at SoundCloud. We talked about mobile apps at scale and the challenges they face.

We talked about

🔶 How is mobile software development different at scale?

🔶 How are the processes?

🔶 How can you grow in your career as a mobile engineer?

🔶 What kind of challenges do big mobile apps have?

and many more!

In this episode, we talked about 

What kind of engineering problems often occur in startups? How to choose the right tool and tech stack? How are the software development processes in startups? 

and many more!  

This time my guest was Göksel Köksal. He works as a Principal iOS Engineer at Drop Kitchen. 

We talked about how we approach designing the technical side of the projects. We started with how to apply requests from product owners to code. Later on, we dived into how to maintain and evolve a good technical design.  

We answered questions such as 

🔸 How do we work together with a product owner? 

🔸 What are the phases in development and delivery? 

🔸 What are the essential topics to consider in the technical design phase? 

🔸 How do we explain technical challenges to product teams? 

🔸 How do we maintain a good technical design? 

and many more!  

My guest is Sabrican Ozan. Sabrican works as a Lead Software Developer at takeaway.com. We talked about how takeaway.com holds technical interviews. We started with the evaluation of the applications and went through the whole interview process.   

We answered many questions such as 

🔶 What are the key points that they take a look at Takeaway?  

🔶 How much time does it take from start to finish?  

🔶 How do software developers feel about their interviews? 

🔶 What kind of questions do they ask in the interviews? 

and many more.