Today’s episode is sponsored by Mergify, the faster and safer way to merge your code.

[00:01 - 06:24 ] Opening Segment 

• Start saving time by automatizing your pull requests and securing the code merge using Mergify!
  • Sign up for a demo at https://mergify.com/
• Get to know Jess Rose
• her reasons for her helping strangers on the Internet

[06:25 - 11:59 ] Bottom-Up Communication Vs. Top-Down Management

• The challenges of upward communication
• How to balance personal values at work
  • It’s unique for individual circumstance
• Managing the conflict of interest as a manager to upper management

[21:00 - 33:33 ] Level Up Your Learning

Why Jess’ started an online learning program

In search of the best tool for virtual and distance learning

• The impact of tools on the quality of learning

Mentorship and organizational rank

Establishing healthy boundaries

Resilience in an educational setting

[33:34 - 44:46 ] Let’s Start Speaking The Same Language

Acing the basics: Why learning the fundamentals is everything

Let’s talk about programming language

How to improve team communication and having a shared language

[44:46 - 49:55 ] Closing Segment

Dr. McKayla talks about her book in progress and her advice to those who would like to write a book

Final words

Tweetable Quotes

“Sometimes changing jobs is easier than making peace with uneasy ethical decisions.” - Jess Rose

“Nobody tells you, but you're not going to start managing people and get it right right away.” - Jess Rose

“We learn better when we're chill.” - Jess Rose

“I think it's really valuable to talk about the culture of the language we use around programming and really the culture of the structures we build because it's not transparent to people.” - Jess Rose

Connect with Jess Rose on LinkedIn, Twitter, and her website. Go to Github.com/JessicaRose to check out her 1-1s.

Resources Mentioned

• Mergify - Sign up for a demo now!
• freeCodeCamp
• Class Central
• Weaving the Web by Tim Berners-Lee
• The Intuitive Programmer: Learning How to Learn for Programmers (Barbara Oakley & Zach Caceres)
• Software Engineering Unlocked Episode with Dr. Cat Hicks
• Felienne Hermans
• Dan Abramov

Let’s Connect! You can connect with me, Dr.  McKayla on Instagram, Twitter and Youtube to look into engineering software, and learn from experienced developers and thought leaders from around the world about how they develop software!

LEAVE A REVIEW + help someone who wants to know more about the engineering software world. Your ratings and reviews help get the podcast in front of new listeners. 

_______

Transcription

[00:00:00 ] Dr. McKayla Hello, and welcome to the Software Engineering Unlocked podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Mckayla and today I have the pleasure to talk to Jess Rose. Jess is a technology professional and keynote speaker specializing in community building outreach and developing better processes for talented technology. She is passionate about fostering more equal access to technical education, and digital spaces.  But before I start, let me tell you about an amazing startup that is sponsoring today's episode Mergify. You know, I'm all about code reviews and pull requests. Having your teammates review your code can be super beneficial, but it also can create a bottleneck and slow down your software development. With Mergify, your team can be way more productive with GitHub. Mergify automates all about merging pull requests, you can specify the merge conditions, and Mergify will take care of the rest. Do you want a specific order for merging the pull requests? Should one PR be prioritized? Or do you need a copy of the PR and another branch for bug fixing? No problem. Mergify can take care of all those situations. By saving time, you and your team can focus on projects that matter. Mergify integrates completely with GitHub and your CI pipeline. They have a startup program that could give your company a 12-month credit up to $21,000 of value. Start saving time, visit Mergify.com to sign up for a demo and get started or just click the link in the show notes.  I'm super, super thrilled to have Jess here with me. Jess, welcome to the show.

[00:01:38 ]  Jess Rose Oh, gosh. And I'm absolutely delighted to be here when you said hey, do you want to come and talk about teaching and learning? Oh, I'm just going to be insufferable. Thank you so much. 

[00:01:48 ]  Dr. McKayla I'm really excited because I'm following you on Twitter. And I see that you're creating spaces for people to learn to get better to grow. Right. So there are a couple of things that I want to touch base on today with you. One is the 1-1s that you're offering. So maybe, maybe let's get started with that. Because I see you from time to time you say, you know, I have some time available, why not hop over on a call, and I can help you with some career advice? How's it going? What do you do with people? What kind of people are picking up on that?

[00:02:27 ]  Jess Rose So I've been doing this for about, I looked the other day because I do, I do keep records and privacy-preserving records just like,  oh, what kinds of things am I talking to people about? And I've been doing this for about eight years now. So just broke 1700 folks I've talked to over the years.

[00:02:40 ] Dr. McKayla Wow. 

[00:02:40 ]  Jess Rose And you would think oh, it's going to be mostly juniors or mostly people trying to break into tech. But just the absolute vastness of experience is so dazzling and exciting and strange to me. I don't see myself as especially well suited to give great advice. But on these calls, people are almost never asking for actual advice. So a lot, most of it's just, I'd like to be heard and I'd like someone to confirm that my experience is unusual or isn't unusual. Or getting sort of a level check for a different area saying, Hey, I'm based in this region, and I'm looking for work in your region. What's that like? What's the experience like? What's the process like? I actually documented the whole process out because I want, I definitely want other people to be doing this if you feel like it. No pressure. And it's on my GitHub. So GitHub.com/JessicaRose. And it should be right on there as  1-1s.

[00:03:37 ] Dr. McKayla  Yeah, I saw that. I saw that on your Twitter feed. So it tells us how to do those 1-1s and how to, what questions to ask, and so on?

[00:03:46 ] Jess Rose  Yeah. And mostly just about the tooling. So how to get it scheduled,  how to get that sorted? And then because I'm a weirdo, how to get the records of who chatted to you deleted if you want to, like, yeah, I wouldn't keep notes on somebody who doesn't want me to keep notes.  

[00:04:00 ] Dr. McKayla  Yeah. And I think it's good for privacy as well, right?. If people I don't know which topics, they are coming to you, but I mean, some of them might be private, and you know, especially if you're having maybe, like, I think if you need advice, you're very often not such a good place, right? Probably more than being in a great place where you think, well, everything figured out, you know, things are going smooth than you're seldomly reaching out to other people. It would be like I'm bragging now to you. You're more probably reaching out if you have some problems with your team maybe or getting a job or something like this. Is that what people talk to you about in the sessions?

[00:04:41 ] Jess Rose  So anything from, Hey, am I getting paid right? To, Oh, I'm getting screamed at a lot at work. Is this normal? So a lot of them are sort of, oh, gosh, but a lot of times folks just want to explore what's going on next. I've managed people a lot in my career. And one of the things that I always, I always have a difficult time with, and I hope other managers do, too, is how do you deal with the conflict? And there's always going to be conflict between what's best to the individual person you're managing, and what's best for the company because those are those, And one of the big things I push when I do manage people is, hey, do you have someone external to the company to give you good advice when I can't? Or I shouldn't give you the advice that's best for you?

[00:05:31 ] Dr. McKayla  Yeah, yeah, it's a conflict, right? Because obviously, you don't want to lose that person. But you see that they're outgrowing, you know, maybe the position?

[00:05:42 ] Jess Rose  Oh, I really just want to