Past Life Architect: Lydia Guarino at The Frontside

Real World Ember

We talk dev bootcamps, how architecture design school is like programming, how sales can help you be a better programmer, and the importance of mentorship.

• The Frontside
  • A consultancy specializing in Ember and Rails
  • Not just code! Helps larger companies figure out their development workflow
  • Runs Ember meetup in Austin
  • Created several open source projects like x-select and ember-impagination
• ember-impagination
  • Helps with infinite scroll
  • Frontside Podcast episode about the technical parts: https://frontsidethepodcast.simplecast.fm/33
• Past life #1: architect
  • been a developer for a couple years, a couple careers before that
  • architecture design degree from UT
  • but oops, no architect jobs in 2008
  • What you learn in design school: how to break nebulous problems down into smaller more actionable components
  • This is remarkably similar to software development process, minus the syntax
  • Phase called “programming"
  • A Pattern Language book
• Past life #2: Salesperson
  • Everyone should work in sales, for the communication skills
  • Your work will not speak for itself: you have to express them
  • She’s often asked (as a programmer) to be the communication layer between tech and business
• Talking to customers
  • Talk to customers before you build them a solution
  • Talk about their motivation and priorities before you talk about the technical details
  • Customers usually don’t know what they want! You must draw it out of them.
  • Get the first draft from them in writing
  • Dissect and categorize requirements, give them priority levels, send it back to them
• Workflow
  • Start out with the big picture, then work iteratively building out small pieces of it
  • Start with completing one small piece, taking it through the whole process (“tracer bullet”)
  • After each piece, re-evaluate big picture plan.
• Road to Dev Career
  • Rose to level of connection between devs and business
  • Really wanted to have the power to build stuff herself instead of waiting
  • Most of dev bootcamp cohort were either entrepreneurs or people in tech who wanted to specialize in programming
  • (Jeffrey started in order to program his science machine (and make a math game))
• Dev Bootcamp
  • Value is skills + network + stamp of approval
  • Community and accountability a big positive
  • In first cohort of Maker Square
  • Covered a LOT in 10 weeks- Ruby, Rails, Javascript, dev tools
  • Training in git and github valuable because you can start in on someone’s development cycle easily
  • They’re now doing just Javascript, and sharing curriculum with Hack Reactor
  • Turing School (a 9-month bootcamp) has done something similar and split up their Rails/Ember curriculum into two separate courses
  • After dev bootcamp you’re hirable, but there’s still a lot to learn.
• Jobs after bootcamp
  • Employee #3 at tiny startup
  • Was only person working in Ember, so not much mentorship- trial by fire
  • Second job at Communication Service for the Deaf
  • Good mentoring there, lots of growth
  • Now working at The Frontside
  • The Frontside (I can personally attest) has excellent mentoring
  • “Climbing the mentoring ladder”- need to work side by side with devs who are more senior than you (and willing to teach)
• The Frontside is hiring!!!
  • Pre-existing skills are a plus, but culture fit is a must
  • Culture: Community, open source, learning, sharing, proactive, fun-loving
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