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Key Takeaways

hello and welcome to another wednesday scrimba live stream with our special topic on wednesdays which is ask an expert yes super excited to welcome my special guest today who is tiffany jackson you may know tiffany from twitter and other areas of the tech sphere she's an engineering manager and a hiring manager and a career coach so definitely someone you want to speak to today tiffany is excited to share stories about how to navigate the tech industry and unlock your career and indeed your potential we're going to be talking about a number of topics which will make you a better programmer be that code navigating complex code dependencies anything else you want to ask or the more career side of things i'm talking cvs negotiating a salary perhaps and avoiding common pitfalls when you're entering the industry and as usual we do these streams live so if you're here and you have a question do drop it into the chat right there because that's why we do them live so we can answer the things you really want to know and you will see some people have already left some comments hello yes brilliant to see where you're all beaming in from as well thank you all for coming and a massive thank you to tiffany for coming thank you for joining i'm so us to be here thank you for welcoming me and inviting me and also hosting the space for everyone to ask questions i am here for it actually as am i very excited to hear your brilliant advice let's begin um with a bit about your background and the role or roles really you're currently doing tell us about that tiffany yeah um hi everyone my name is tiffany jagja i'm currently an engineering manager at vox media and i'm leading a data science team that's building data science solutions utilizing first party data in ethical ways i'm also a variety streamer i like to stream content all about leadership mental health and career development in tech so i like to do this outside of my free time i also coach folks and that's um how i like to spend my time i'm really passionate about leadership topics i'm really passionate about seeing other people make progress in areas that they really want to and so that's a little bit more about what i do now but in the past i've done a variety of roles i've been i've worked in devrel i've been a devops engineer prior to that i was a software engineer engineer i was even a consultant for a little while and i was helping enterprises build out software code so i've done a variety of things i also have a very formal or traditional background in computer science so i graduated with a computer engineering degree and then i recently finished my graduate degree from the institute of georgia georgia tech with a computer science degree and specialized in machine learning so i've done a variety of things and i've seen a lot of things in my career and now i help people and programmers break into tech but also have like a path moving forward once they do have that career in tech so i'm really focused on helping people feel like they're doing work that matters to them and it's aligned with their values and i always try to say like you're doing the right work with the right people for the right reasons and that's what i live by brilliant that is something i wanted to talk to you about actually exciting saw it i believe i saw on your blog doing the right work with the right people for the right reasons can you tell us a bit about what that means and how people can be sure they are doing the right things in that way yeah i think oftentimes we fall into this pitfall of making decisions because we feel like there is nothing better or we need to get away from a particular situation or if we just take this opportunity that it can lead to other opportunities and there's no real set path for someone's career as much as we come into these spaces and we're like yeah this is like the career ladder and this is what it's going to look like and if i want to grow my career i take this step in this step in this step and everyone's career is going to look different everyone's path is going to look different i never thought that i would be an engineering manager when i first started as an individual contributor i thought like i'd go and be an architect and follow the path that was laid out for me but what you do when you think about like becoming a better programmer becoming who you want to be you have to be willing to be courageous and ask the right questions and understand that the people around you and who you're working with matters um and oftentimes there's kind of like the reason why i like this saying is because it looks at various dimensions not only the work like is that alignment is that aligned with you you know is it the right reasons like does this make sense because you know you could be working in a team and you love the work but you hate the people or other vice versa you love the people but the work or the mission makes you feel miserable and when we look at career health or longevity or engagement in the workplace we have to consider these criteria so i just remind people like you know what's out there what's meant for you what's what's perfect for you is looking for you it's just waiting for you to take the actions to get there because you exist you exist so there is something out there for you and that's what i like to remind people perfect how can people know that they're doing something for the right reasons i think the right work and the right people i think you kind of intuitively know if they're right for you but the right reasons and how do you define the right or wrong reasons for doing something yeah i think it's super important to go back into what you want like you have to think about you have to let go of some of some of the outcomes sometimes right because sometimes we we go into these environments and then we're thinking okay i want to deliver this or i want to go to the biggest team or i want to build this cool new thing right and then we lose track of why that whole reason of why are you doing this beyond the outcome or beyond like 10 years down the road or 10 months down the road or 10 weeks down the road or 10 days you know aside from actually reaching the outcome of achieving some task why are we doing this thing right is it to make more money is it to feel more successful is it to prove something to ourselves is it to gain confidence what does that confidence mean to me in relation to my life not just you know i'm i and a lot of times right we think about work and we're like oh we are our work but we're not we're more than that and so i always ask people to think deeper ask these questions don't lose sight of the why i think that's great i work quite closely with one of the developers at scrimba shout out to freda and he likes to ask the question does it make sense that we're doing this because quite often we've all been there you can fall down a rabbit hole and just find yourself doing this task and it might take 20 times longer than you anticipated and it's really complicated and then when you go back and think about it you might realize i didn't even need to do that or it certainly wasn't worth the amount of effort i did but stopping and asking yourself one of these two questions does it make sense that we're doing this or am i doing this for the right reasons i think can help prevent wasting time yeah really lots of nice fire emojis in the chat which i like to see welcoming tiffany thank you very much um martin says it's like that advice right now was just for me glad to hear that was it like what i needed to hear good um code thing is wondering if you could advise from the hiring manager's side what are some values you look for in someone who has a self-taught background well to ask more broadly how can someone with a self-taught background appeal to a hiring manager yeah i think one of the biggest things that i look for in a self-taught developer in a candidate that's applying for a role any candidate really is curiosity right because i want someone to come in and ask questions bring up new perspectives i'm not hiring someone for the sake of them just doing the work you know we're not this type of team i'm not building a team that's doing work for doing the sake of work we're not just releasing another product to never be understood or never be used no we're building solutions that matter there's a mission and a vision for our team and one of the best values that you can bring to any environment is that curiosity and also that passion right i want to hire people who feel like they can come into work excited because that's the type of leader that i am and that that's my values as a leader i want to be the type of person to inspire others and bring other people along and sometimes people will think like oh just because you're inspirational it means like oh you don't actually think about the work but in order to be inspirational you have to sit down and do the work you have to plan it out you have to think about what your engineers are gonna have as a career path if they were to join your team and i think the more that you can align with that where you can showcase like hey i would do well in this environment the more likely you are to get that job offer in those interviews so think as well about your own values because those could be traits that a higher manager doesn't have in their team currently but they've already acknowledged that they want to hire for that right they want you to become a cultural amplifier they want you to give back in these ways so um i think it's a it's a little mix of like what someone else is looking for but also what you're passionate about what who are you you know when i was getting hired i one of the things i said was one of my values was that inspiration that leadership that strong leadership that's a value for me you know and they may not already have that that's why they were looking for someone like that so um that's some advice there you know the more that you understand yourself the more able you are to articulate and showcase who you are in an interview so that a hiring manager can see like is this the right person is this person going to mesh well with other people on the team and make the decisions for themselves you know and not every and it can mean nothing if you get rejected and a value that you have or that you're passionate about something that another manager or our team just doesn't value that's all the better right it sucks to be on a team where people don't share the same values as you right and you don't want that so think about that as well absolutely you don't want to be sitting somewhere with your talents wasted basically so yeah perfect orange coating has a question saying they've worked alone in business but they're lacking experience on a development team by which they mean things like agile working code reviews ci cd that kind of thing so perhaps for example they were the only developer so they've not had the typical developer team experience how can they approach that when they're next on the job hunt yeah that can be something that you bring up as a reason why you want to look for a new role or you were interested in a particular job opportunity this is something where you can say hey for this amount of time in my career or right now where i am i'm working alone on a lot of these initiatives and i want the opportunity to take all of my experience who i am what i've done what i'm going towards and bring it here where there's going to be a collaborative team right a development team that's technically excellent has ci cd has processes works in agile works in these ways right you ask those questions to make sure that you're targeting that but then you also showcase how you're integrating this this is another tip right you can showcase how you're slowly uh moving towards this because you know maybe you you're not waiting for the perfect job opportunity to gain these experiences and i think that showcases leadership in a lot of ways so orange coding it's really great that you've identified that hey this team that i'm on right now or this work that i'm doing right now we're not there's no strong project management methodologies there's no code reviews there's no ci cd these are things that i want to see in my work environment well now you know while you're applying for roles or looking for your next opportunity you can also say in your in your situation right now i want to have small versions of this small instances of this so that when you are in these interviews and you're talking you're talking about these things that you're passionate about you can say i've been slowly integrating these but i want to do it in a collaborative team so you showcase who you are where you are right now work where you are right now and then showcase like what you're going to work towards so that's really nice i really like that question yes so do i thank you for the wonderful question orange coating i'm sure that advice will be very helpful to you tim de hoff is asking when you're starting out how do you find out what you want to do yeah that's a good question because is it just a case of kind of trial and error like you have to go into a job hate it for six months try another one hate that for six months and then hopefully strike gold or is there a better way yeah sometimes um it does take a little bit of experimentation right i call this the difference between having breadth versus depth and knowledge like computer science the field of computing in general is very wide like some people will spend careers in just one area and that's all their whole career they spent it there right so there's a lot to know right and i think when you're first starting out you and you're you're thinking about what you want to do ask yourself questions about um the things that come up in your mind like the ideas that you have take a take a basically take a survey or an audit of the ideas that pop up into your mind um and i did this with my own engineer who you know is very passionate about data engineering has a lot of experience has a lot of skills but didn't know what they wanted to do with their career and that's the thing is a lot of times people will say i don't know what to do when they actually do and my engineer said was saying it was talking about how they wanted to help other people they wanted to mentor they they had been doing it they want to get back into it they want to blog their ideas you do know what you want to do you just have to be courageous enough to admit that you know what you want to do and sometimes and i know that can be hard advice to hear um and that's why i say like do the audit write down like when you think about your life your career your social interactions with people what comes up for you what are those dreams you know you have to be able to write them all down so that you can begin to connect the pieces of it and you find out like oh maybe the thing that i've always been thinking about is building like building cool software solutions maybe i want to do smaller projects maybe i want to make an impact in this way okay that can be a piece of it right and what's tied to that what's tied to that outcome or that goal that you envision right well it's technical excellence because you need some technical skills to be able to do that right if it's something that you're imagining that require that's going to be visible or used by users there's a user experience or front-end component to it right and you need front-end skills so you kind of reverse engineer it based off of what you want to accomplish but i always tell people like you you know you know what it is you have it in your mind it takes a little bit of work to you know map it out um and it's great if you have coaches or mentors or people to help make you realize help you realize that but begin to bring awareness to your conversations begin to awareness bring awareness to what comes out of your mouth naturally when you're talking about what you want to do or how do you want to spend your time right because most likely you do know i wholeheartedly agree with that yes your intuition is probably speaking to you right now who knows that's what someone told me and i was like wow you know maybe i don't know how to word this but when i'm doing the work i'm like wow this is what i needed this is what i wanted to do maybe i didn't know but i took the cr i had the courage to step forward and take some action around this and now you know this is where i am and that's happened to me so many times i was like i didn't know i wanted to do that i didn't know i wanted to i didn't know i would enjoy public speaking i didn't know that doing streams like this holding spaces like this was something i wanted to do you know i but i kept saying it i was like i want to teach other people i want to share what i know and then before you knew it i kept doing it and i was like wow i'm a speaker i'm a streamer i'm someone who shows up i'm a leader right and you can be a leader in anything you can be a leader in the systems that you build you can be a tech lead there's so many options absolutely i hope that helped you out a little bit tim to off i like the next question from kaiden because it's a situation i think we've all been in at some point and that is what would you suggest to not fall into office politics yes and is there a way to avoid it and if you're already in an office politics type of situation what can you do about it yeah i love this question it comes up for everybody right it doesn't matter if you're a leader it doesn't matter if you're i see you'll still run into office politics people want something out of their careers they want to change their day-to-day whatever it is you're gonna you're gonna have a difference in opinion you're gonna have a difference in perspective you're gonna have a difference in goals right the important thing is to note like what you want out of this right and then you make decisions based off of that like you know what what conversations do you want to table for later what conversations you want to involve yourself in and i think one thing that has come up for me recently is just this idea of weak versus strong leadership in terms of off in the workplace and in the office right a weak leaders will will seek agreeability agreeing just harmony right strong leaders will think about what they want and have the conversations when it's necessary okay you're doing the right thing for the right reasons right with the right people for the right people right bring that back in and think about you know how how do i manage this and i think another thing to note about office politics and just shifting priorities and chaos in general is it heats up and cools down like any other storm right and so the more that you can kind of keep level-headed and calm through this situation the better off you're gonna be yes absolutely as much as it may be tempting to have a little complain next to the water cooler in the end it'll just cause more problems yes i had a flatmate who um he used to come home and complain to her cat just because i mean i was there as well but i didn't know anyone involved so yes try to release your anger if there is any anger in uh ways outside of the office i love that yeah find find people that you can that you trust that you can talk to about anything that's happening it can be really frustrating a lot of office politics tends to be out of your control as well so you really have to begin to let go of being able to control every situation one thing that i've noted as well is just you know you can look at the glass half empty or you can cry over spilled milk or something that happened right or you can just say there's water in the glass i can fill it whenever i need to and i'm going to move on from this right i think it's very different from looking at like every scenario as like i'm winning i'm losing versus just saying like yeah this is what it is this is how we're gonna adjust and let's go from there you know so have a plan moving forward about how you generally want to do things and if you don't if you can't follow the plan just stick to what you know and be brave and courageous enough to have the conversations that you need to have when you need to have them brilliant i hope that helps your office politics situation kind of jen is a student and is wondering what to do throughout the summer worried that not going to lectures will cause them to forget what they've learned so you're from a computer science background do you have any tips for not falling into that trap oh my gosh yes um find people who inspire you and be in those areas be in those spaces because that will help keep you momentum what you're talking about is momentum here right like oh it's so easy i didn't i didn't my my my neural pathways weren't being stimulated i forgot about all the stuff that i learned during the semester i worked so hard and then boom i forgot at all and i'm coming back all right give yourself grace in the spaces where you don't actually in the times when this is the season right in the times when you don't have to push yourself or you know submit assignments and give yourself like another creative way to express or learn while you're off for the summer you know learning can look a lot like a lot of different things it may not be lectures that you're attending but you could be you could have a mentor you know you could get involved you could get you could volunteer you could speak to people like me in spaces who have who are who are sharing like their experiences this counts as well it's going to help you like being in these spaces that are inspiring to you are going to help make you think of past memories that you had in in your prior semesters you know maybe if i start when i start talking about code or programming you know you're going to be thinking about oh yeah i learned this thing and this is what i want i want to look up some more things right like play to your strengths and what your and and this the spaces where you're just naturally drawn to and that will help you also if you want to tinker if that if you know that like one of your strengths is tinkering you know maybe you build a small project or something you know whatever it is it that's a good way to spend your summer for me i remember that i wanted to i just wanted to work i wanted to be in a workplace setting so i would volunteer i would even even if it wasn't a programming a programming role i'd still work because i just wanted to be in the workplace environment that's something that i've just always really wanted to do i started working when i was really young and i always wanted to work that was something that i was passionate about so i knew that that was one of the natural desires that i had couldn't do anything to manage it i just wanted what i wanted and i leaned into it so you may want something else and maybe you just want relaxation and that's fine too you know what you find in relaxing may be very different from what other people find relaxing as well but like i said just lean into it and you'll find ways to slowly integrate it brilliant i hope that helps you to fill your summer in a way which serves you jen yeah um debjit has a question how to determine a task's time estimate um and if there's an error how to communicate it now i'm not sure if debjit means an error in the time estimate or an error some other kind of error but either way what's the way to handle situations like these yeah uh just know that you're almost always going to be wrong there's probably like a 99 chance that you're gonna be wrong there's a freakonomics podcast episode that talks about this why are we so terribly bad at estimating how long it's going to take for us to do something yeah you're almost always going to be wrong and that's totally fine you know oftentimes i tell people like take the amount of time that you think you're gonna need and then double it and yeah just double it maybe triple it um because it's always better for you to over like under commit and over deliver than it is for you to over commit and then under deliver so a lot of times you can um send an estimate and then if you finish things earlier that's a good way to manage that if there's an unexpected change or unexpected error or something that goes terribly wrong and you need to communicate that make sure you are having like regular check-ins or you have like a working relationship with whoever's managing that product or project because or that task because then you can articulate hey this stuff came up and then um there's going to be these changes this is how it's going to impact the work at hand and then this is the time frame for that impact so a lot of times when we experience change we want to understand why is this happening and how long or what is like the scope of that change okay we're not changing things for the sake of changing things this is the impact this is the scope time bound okay keep it time-bound as much as you can and then like i said give yourself buffer okay so those are my tips around um determining time estimates estimating time for work and then also any changes or unexpected errors yeah so especially like the point about communication there i've been dealing with some professionals lately in my private life and sometimes they would just not reply for days and nothing was happening and i'm like have they disappeared off the face of the planet are they even working on it like what do i do do i go and find an alternative but if they would just tell me like such and such a problem has happened it's gonna take this much longer at least then at least you know the wheels are turning in some way and you don't feel quite so hopeless and frustrated so i hope that helps you out don't you best of luck with your time estimates in the future but don't worry if they are wrong because they usually are yes binary gear 0101 wants to know how much weight do certificates bear in an interview yeah that's a really good question i think it comes up often especially for people who may have different sections in their resume right maybe you have one that's centered around education certifications qualifications right you want to be able to showcase all of the work that you've been doing and the best not all of the work the best of your work in a interview or in a resume right and so it really depends on the role and the cert cert that you're getting in an interview but if it comes up in an interview and i'm asking hey what kind of qualifications do you have in this particular technology or this particular role and you have a certification in that on top of work experience on top of education maybe you have like maybe it's not exactly related to that engineering like these other sections right but you have like instances or or concepts that are skills that are tangential to it this is like holy grail like i'm like crap you know you have everything you're good you're set so it does matter but again if it doesn't come up or i'm not asking about that certificate's skills or that certificate that the certificate doesn't apply to what i'm asking you about it doesn't mean anything so just be a little careful about how you're spending your time if you are searching for certs but like in the cloud space an aws certification a pro certification that's amazing right uh kubernetes c cka that's amazing or ckd that's amazing right or whatever it is in your industry so do a little bit of market research to make sure that when you're spending your time or getting certified gaining certifications that they're going to come up in the roles that you're applying for and that they're going to be relevant good advice i hope that helps you out binary gear and nicholas is wondering when you're hiring a junior dev is it really about projects and coding knowledge such skill or are the intangibles and some people call them the soft skills more important what's your take as a hiring manager on that one yeah i think it's uh it's mostly the intangibles like i said the passion the curiosity it's also when i'm hiring a junior dev i'm thinking about how they fit in with the team dynamic because really when we're hiring a junior dev it's not because we need them to ship or own a particular project right it's often not we'll give you tasks that are broken down because really the experience of hiring a junior dev is for other engineers to be able to teach and mentor so think about that as well is how teachable are you right how open are you and often times those are those are qualities that we interview for versus the projects and the coding skills but it does help for people to have experience in certain projects or coding skills right because then you have the ability to ask good questions the ability to understand how to pair program you know all these things and you're getting a head start so it really depends on the team and what they're looking for but that's some of the things that i look for um i also know that when it comes to being a junior dev a lot of you all put a lot of pressure on yourselves to be able to showcase everything that you need to know uh own some part of the system own whatever it is that you're doing you'll have you'll you'll be able to do those things you'll be able to work on your tasks deliver them to the best of your ability but honestly you're there for yourself you're there to learn as a junior dev if you're an entry-level role if you're an intern be there for yourself okay make sure you prioritize the skills that you want to build what you're going to learn and your how you're spending your time i think sometimes there's this pitfall where people want to make it about everybody else but them they want to they want to say oh well i want to do the project management i want to make sure that this is good and all the stuff or i want to make sure i'm a really good teammate so i'm going to do all this stuff no you're going to have so much of your career to make it about everybody else like take it from my perspective i'm a manager my role is to ensure that others others are doing well right like that's about everybody else if you're a tech lead you want to make sure that all the milestones are broken down it's like everybody but you right and so i always tell people like when you're starting out make it about you pick the work that you're interested in ask people questions spend time like outside of coding to gain other people's perspectives right because this is how you're gonna really be grow into the developer that you want to be not just always stay in this junior developer role because eventually like two three years and you can't call yourself a junior developer anymore if you're working in these spaces and you're doing work it just doesn't make sense right so you're gonna grow in your career but like the way that you do it is by prioritizing what it is that you actually want to accomplish yes as they say in aeroplanes put your own oxygen mask on before helping anyone else yes i hope that helps you nicholas code then is asking as a new an introvert developer what are some ways to get more confident with leadership skills yeah um it really depends on how i i love this question i'm the kind of person who's really shy in new work environments and i noticed that when i first started i was i would shake i would be like i don't know anyone i'm introverted i'm a developer i don't have any confidence because i don't have any i've never really done too much right you don't know who you are you don't get the chance to build confidence unless you gain experience right so one of the things that i did early on was i set a goal to say hi to at least three people a week or if i ever saw anyone in an office or i ever saw someone send a message i would i would follow up with them and say like hi i'm i'm tiffany i'm new here i'm a developer on this team nice to meet you that's it like something as simple as that gives you confidence in saying like hey i i'm in this meeting or i'm gonna show up here i work here i'm here it's a reality check for yourself and for others so that in the future you know as your developer you're gonna be doing demos you're gonna be peer programming with other people they're going to know who you are they're like oh that's the person who said hi to me earlier yeah i know that person they're new like even if in the in their heads someone like classifies you as new developer whatever it is you're at least in their minds already and so when you're in these spaces and you you you're you're not in this room full of strangers you're in a room full of people that you may not know very well but they know you they at least have some semblance of an identity for you and that's going to be helpful for you to be able to gain more confidence in whatever it is that you're going to be doing yes hope that helps you out okay then i think it's one of those things that the more you do it the easier it gets i remember when i started live streaming well i guess a year and a half ago now it wasn't my idea i didn't particularly want to do it but i got roped into it and i was like oh this is going to be an absolute nightmare but yeah now it's just run-of-the-mill things say yes best of luck to you okay yeah i i'll add one more thing it's like lean into other people like let other people help you gain confidence you know sometimes it can be really difficult because you know you're internalizing a lot of events you're processing a lot of things you're new you know you're going to be learning a lot of things and it's going to be a lot for you just work alone right so like lean into people lean into the environment lean into the places lean into your co-workers right like lean into people that you're excited to work with because they'll be able to help support you and make it feel like it's more of a complete journey absolutely liverpool fc you'll never walk alone says how do you manage your work-life balance as a software developer and how often do you make time for keeping up with the latest technologies and upskilling in your free time great question yeah i think it's i think there's seasons like i manage it in seasons there are some times when i just know that there's a lot going on and there is not going to be that much balance for me to be able to upskill or do much in my free time and i acknowledge that and i'm like okay let me make sure that during this time that i know that things are going to be really hectic at work that i do not say yes or take on more than i can hold right and i don't even come near it there are some months where i'm like i will always say no during this month to any opportunities that come up for me and that's just so that i can protect myself and avoid burnout right and there are other situations where like oh it's really quiet everyone's out for the summer like this is a great time for me to learn new technologies or new skills um you know keeping up for the sake of keeping up is not very helpful either because you know if you're trying to keep up with everything that's going on in the tech space you're gonna fall behind you're always you're never gonna get there you're never there's just too many new technologies there's too many new you know new things coming out that you're not gonna be able to keep up but what you can do is build fundamentals right like if i know the fundamentals or i know one particular technology that may help me in understanding another right and upskilling in there when it comes time to use that technology right i know what questions to ask i know how to learn certain concepts learn certain new concepts right based off of older concepts that i've already learned those fundamentals will keep you up when you need to keep up and in other times when you aren't able to keep up then you know that you know enough to be able to ask the right questions whenever it is that you're brought into situations where you are expected to keep up right and that's the reality of it is like there's often times when i have to come into a room and i'm being asked to talk about technology that i'm not familiar with i say oh um you know this is what i've seen how i've seen it in other situations similar to this i'm not sure the from the exact details let's like have another sync call and i'll look into it right like it's okay to defer it's okay not to have the answers you're not a walking encyclopedia right so that's some tips there for anyone who's uh who feels like they're struggling to keep up right it's like almost this race and that can be really difficult and i i fell into that uh i fell into that really hard when i first started i remember just i remember crying and i was telling my senior engineer like i'm not i'm i'm not keeping up i'm not the best pro i'm not i'm not becoming a better programmer i'm not i don't know all the technologies that everybody else knows he looked at me and he was like what are you talking about you're doing so well you're you're learning the fundamentals you know how to get into situations and ask the right questions that's all you need you don't need to be someone who knows everything right so that's a little bit of grace for you all who are feeling like yeah i'm behind on everything or i don't know enough you're always not you're always gonna be in this situation where you feel like that it's it's true for everyone it totally yes yes thank you for the lovely question liverpool fc a couple of people are asking about the topic of age um is age a crucial factor for getting hired is 36 too old and what is your take on that because we often um welcome people into the scrimba community who are career changers they're not fresh out of college how is it from a hiring manager's perspective and is there anything people can say or do or present to um showcase their age in the best way i suppose yeah lean into the skills um i i tell people like when you're when you're in these interviews right you want to showcase career trajectory so you want to showcase like the bits and paths that take you to where you are and how you're going to perform into the role that's the story that you're telling you know and and age has nothing to do with that if you accomplish something in three months versus three years or 30 years that's great that's your experience that's your lived you know that's your contribution and write that down in a resume don't undercut it don't undersell it just because you did you did something while you were still new or you did something while you're in your later years i say this all the time um and sometimes people will also like leave out a lot of things that they've done core continencies that they've built in their careers or in their lives because they think oh well that was older so it's not as applicable when in reality that's what hiring managers are looking for i also host these um resume reviews every wednesday night and now i've moved them to every we'll have one next week actually on my twitch but i host these and i i actually um i actually help a lot of folks who have like non-traditional backgrounds or who are older or even younger break into tech because i see these patterns or these thoughts often but from a hiring manager standpoint you want to work like you there are a lot of pisces and some people don't know those biases and you want to and as like an interviewer or interviewee as a candidate you want to be able to work in the environments where you feel welcomed and appreciated okay so if someone's telling you oh you're has the mindset of oh this person's too young or oh this person's too old to be on my team why would you want to be on their team anyway that's something that i i tell you all because oftentimes we get really desperate about like the jobs that we're interviewing for and we just take anything that comes up but again are you doing the right work for the right reasons with the right people because the right people may not be the peop the people who are thinking things about your age or classifying or making decisions based off of your age and unfortunately that happens often i run into this as well as someone who looks fairly young in in my industry right like it just happens and we can't change how we look we can't change num numbers right we can't we can't as much as we want to change our age it's not something that we get to define so just uh continue to acknowledge like the contributions that you've made and then lean into those and again like there's some strategies around showcasing your career trajectory that might be able to help you but no 36 is not too late great advice that thank you and nicholas is wondering when are hundreds of applicants is there a move or a trait that can consistently separates or makes a memorable impression well um nicholas you read my mind because one question i had prepared was tiffany's most memorable candidate now i did mean this um memorable in a positive way um sometimes people can be memorable for the wrong reasons um but yeah is there anything that really stands out to a hiring manager yeah it's always that resume i tend to know when an interview is going to go well based off of resume because it indicates how well you're able to understand like the life cycles of software or that particular role you understand what the duties are you tend to showcase like that you can accomplish them through past experiences or whatever skills that you have so the best uh interviews or most memorable ones have always been from resumes that i've screened out during the process you know that question was like what happens when there's hundreds of candidate applicants or candidates in a job opportunity i actually had this happen last world that i was interviewing for we had 140 applicants right and i can't possibly interview 140 applicants in my x amount of time in 40 hours a week right work week um and what i have to do is i have to look at the resume right so that resume gets you in the door and then when it comes to having a memorable experience or standing out in a interview um i actually remembered um i i actually want to tell the story because it's um it's something that stuck with me it was early on um i was at grace hopper which is a women's tech conference it's the largest women in tech conference in the world um there's usually about 40 000 women that go really great candidates and there's always recruiting events and so i was inter i was on an interview panel and i was interviewing for an entry-level role at the time and there was this woman who had a really great inter great resume her background is was in electrical engineering so it wasn't directly computer science but she had a really great resume of like the different things that she's built how she had programmed i liked that resume and i remember her answering a bunch of questions that the panel had asked and i looked down and i saw that her hands were she had her hands tightly like this and she was shaking but she was still answering the question and she had so much passion about it that she was she was fiddling she was nervous but she still spoke through it and she gave real answers she didn't say that she was in this she was she'd apply for this raw or was interested in this for the sake of having a programmer name a title right or being a programmer she wanted to accomplish things she wanted to build really great things she was a tinkerer she was someone who was interested in programming like this was someone who wanted to gain mastery in this area and you could tell and i always tell people like you know it doesn't matter if you're nervous it's okay talk through it you know have the courage have passion and people are gonna notice that and i remember um advocating for her in in the during the process when we were um we were meeting up and deliberating on on the candidate feedback right i remember saying like yeah she was nervous i think a lot of people were like oh yeah she was so confident i don't think she really meant everything that she said i was like no if you saw her she was shaking but she had the courage to be able to talk about what she wanted and i think that speaks uh volumes about like having technical leadership having personal leadership things that you can't teach right having the the courage to communicate and collaborate with other people those are three things that i look for collaboration communication and leadership those things you can't quite you can you can coach around them you can help around them but it's up to that person to own or take leadership or take responsibility or accountability for perfect and on the topic of cbs laut costa has been sending out cvs for the first job for two months now but not had any luck which i take to mean not had any callbacks rather than been to interviews and not got the job any advice on what to do perhaps there are some common cv mistakes which you see which might be leading to lao costa's problem or is there another approach maybe to try here yeah i love that um you're following the path that you should be doing right because i think everyone no matter how long you've been working on your resume should be applying for roles if you're looking for that first job okay because really you just want feedback like is this resume good or is it not okay and that's the thing is you send out a resume you're either gonna get moved on to the next part of the process like a phone screening or you're gonna get rejected and that's feedback okay so if you're applying for jobs and you're not getting any luck or you're not getting any callbacks right that is an indication to you that you need to change something about your resume all right so now hold off on applying right and fix up this resume and let's talk about so now let's talk about the resume itself right think about how what sections you have in that resume do you have prior experience slash rev relevant or professional experience if you don't then okay what projects have you built right because i i often tell people like you should have a skill you should have your name your summary your skills and then how you use those skills like what did you do with those skills you can't say you just have skills right because you don't no one's born with skills you have innate skills yeah sure but you have to apply them right and that's what your resume is telling you so make sure your resume is accurately saying how you've utilized certain skills and i tell people pick a strong verb make sure it's all past tense with your bullet points right all your bullet points pick a verb of just prick a strong verve like implemented develop lead whatever it is right tie it to what happened why did you do this thing and then what technologies did you use what techn what technologies or skills did you use okay so that's kind of a framework for building out bullet points make sure that there's consistency make sure that you're reading it make sure it says it's a page right if you have any projects and they're public make sure you link to them right and then make sure when you're building out those bullet points that you're accurately describing what you did uh while and who you were in that situation so if you're working on a project and you were working with other people what did you do what did you contribute what did you build okay for the project specifically have a little description of the project right and then get into how you contributed or what skills did you use okay i want to know about the technologies and then same thing about um professional experience i want to know your role what company and maybe location but time right dates and then get into those bullet points what did you do and make sure that when you order the bullet points right that you put the strongest one at the top and then your next two should tell a story and continue to do that okay so that's some advice there i also have like a resume checklist on my medium that explains this stuff and then i also have replays and videos about resume tips and building resume reviews there so oh perfect i was just about well actually i already have shared it in the chat yes there is tiffany's tech resume uh checklist for you to check out so i'm sure that will be very helpful to you thank you for the question that um loud coda we had a question about um have i missed the boat slash am i too old i'm now getting um the opposite question a couple of people in the chat are 14 and wondering uh is it too early to start their coding job well when i think about what i was doing at 14 i definitely wasn't considering a software engineering career i don't know what i was doing but it wasn't anything as good as that so you're already one step ahead of me i can tell you that and tiffany what do you think is there a time that's too young and if not how can they get involved yeah there definitely isn't i think when i was 14 i was i didn't even know what html and css meant and what a programmer was but i was building sites i was having fun with it and it's okay to have fun with it like build a project build experience like i said build those skills you know you have certain skills that you're picking up continue to build them build technical depth in them right like build something cool let's build something that you can show someone you know if you're playing the long game of like four to five i see myself four to five years from now i'm gonna have a role right like have have something cool to show like build out a website build out uh something that you can open source you know that you can share with other people like make