Recently there’s been a lot of discussion on the role of women in tech. There’s a rising concern about the stereotypical views towards women in the nearshore services market, as the recent article by our partner Belatrix also shows.
Category: Interviews
Who? Developer hero Amanda Folsom, Developer relations manager
Cross-team communication is incredibly difficult…
[Developer Economics] Hello! Tell us about your role and what you do:
[Amanda Folsom]
I’m a Developer Relations (DevRel) Manager at Nexmo, which is a fancy way of saying I work on an awesome team who helps developers succeed.
What kind of languages do you work with?
DevRel is sort of interesting because I have to know a little bit about a lot of languages and frameworks, but most of my own projects are written in PHP using the Laravel framework. Day to day, I may touch some JavaScript and some Ruby with a little C# sprinkled in.
Developers all over the world are currently taking the SlashData survey. Will you be left out?
How did you get started?
My dad was a developer in the 90s so I grew up around computers. We built my first computer together in grade school and I discovered HTML and JavaScript (the early edition). I eventually moved on to PHP and, at the risk of dating myself here, made a Neopets clone. I still have the original codebase — it was written for PHP4.
How much do you think developers need to focus on specific frameworks or languages these days?
Over the last few years there’s been a heavy shift to framework-driven development. It’s common to see a specific framework or series of tools listed in job posts now. I think it’s important that developers focus on a specific set of tooling as that domain expertise is important, but it’s also important to keep tabs on what’s happening outside of their chosen framework or tool chain.
How much are you involved in buying decisions (in terms of technology platforms etc.) at you company?
As involved as I want to be. I have the freedom to pick and choose tools we use but I’m happy to let other people pick tools that work for them.
Do you think that there is a still a separation between developers and other business departments (e.g. marketing etc.)
Definitely. Cross-team communication is incredibly difficult and historically engineering teams and marketing/sales teams have different goals. Marketing and sales want to sell something (sometimes things that don’t exist yet) and I think it’s hard for them to understand why that makes developers uncomfortable. On the flip side, I think it’s hard for developers to understand how sales cycles work. Sometimes it takes months to close a deal, and the features that were promised may very well be available by the time the customer is ready to sign up.
Have you worked both Agency and Client-side?
Yep! Before working for companies I ran my own consultancy.
What are clients asking for right now in the world of cloud communications?
A lot of folks are just using SMS for 2FA, status updates, etc., but I’m starting to see people use IVR for more contextual phone menus. For example, if a customer calls in from a known phone number, you can look up their record and see if there are any outstanding issues related to their account. People are also looking for other ways to interact with their customers via mobile applications beyond sending and receiving texts and calls. In-app messaging is growing fast.
What projects are you working on right now?
For work? Mostly client libraries for our APIs and some data dashboards. In my spare time I manage a DNSBL and make various dinky web apps.
How helpful do you find developer surveys? [e..g. SlashData report – which seeks to help developers to make better business decisions, with salary benchmarks, trends, programming languages, framework choice etc etc]
They’re hit or miss. Some surveys are very well done while others have an obvious lean in favor of a specific tool or language. Salary benchmarks are also hit or miss because there’s a disparity between large company salaries and startup salaries. There are people who expect $200k+ at a bootstrapped startup simply because one of the large players would give them that much. At the same time, many of these salary surveys don’t factor in other benefits some of the startup folks get like equity, catered lunches, off-sites, and so on.
Do you think developers sometimes undersell themselves?
Absolutely. Imposter syndrome is alive and well in this industry, and people are overworking themselves to stay competitive and keep their skills sharp while actively stating that it’s not enough. The reality is that if you’re scheduled to work 40 hours and find yourself needing to work 80 there’s a time management problem somewhere. Either at the individual level or the management level.
So where do you go to get tech-related news?
A combination of Twitter, Hacker News, various Slack groups, some email newsletters, and mailing lists.
What’s going up and what’s going down in your industry?
Oddly enough, voice comms are trending upward. We’re seeing a lot of SMS activity still, but more people are starting to include voice services in their applications too.
What do you think the future looks like in terms of IaaS vs PaaS vs Containers vs Serverless?
This tweet about sums it up for me:
https://twitter.com/kelseyhightower/status/940259898331238402.
Right now we have a ton of tools designed to help people scale and distribute their applications, but everyone is still running into scaling issues. With serverless/IaaS/PaaS architecture, you run the risk of vendor lock-in with an inability to port your code outside of a specific platform. Containers solve some of the portability problems while introducing other problems with storage and performance. There’s no doubt that many people still find utility in these technologies, but many organizations seem to be transitioning back to bare metal servers or hybrid clouds.
Are you working on the projects you would like to work on?
Always.
Do you have a favourite superhero?
Iron Man. I have a collection of 1st edition Iron Man comics :).
Who? Developer hero Marcus Noble, Senior software engineer
[Developer Economics] Hello! Tell us about your role and what you do:
[Marcus Noble] Hello! My name is Marcus Noble and I’m a senior software engineer at Elsevier working on their ecommerce platform.
What kind of languages do you work with?
Generally we work with web technologies: HTML, JavaScript and CSS. For a backend we primarily use TypeScript with NodeJS.
How did you get started?
My first experience of programming came when I was roughly 10 years old, using view-source to look at how websites were made and changing them in Notepad to see what happens. I think the first thing I completed was a DragonBall Z fan site.
Developers all over the world are currently taking the SlashData survey. Will you be left out?
How much do you think developers need to focus on specific frameworks or languages these days?
Very little. A solid understanding of programming principles and design patterns are far more valuable and transferable than knowing how to use the latest and greatest framework. I much prefer opting to use small libraries focusing on one feature over a full-blown framework to make it easier in the future to swap out bits of my application.
“Things get dull when you know exactly how to do everything.”
How much are you involved in buying decisions (in terms of technology platforms etc.) at you company?
A little. I can give input and my opinions on services but that decision is ultimately made by those above me.
Do you think that there is a still a separation between developers and other business departments (e.g. marketing etc.)
I think things are getting better but there is still a visible separation with the areas of the business that developers only have a small amount of interaction with. I’ve noticed that areas that have a vested interested in what the developers build seem to be increasingly more engaging with the development teams.
What projects are you working on right now?
I’m currently working on a new project to expand our current e-commerce platform to support business-to-business sales. The majority of the project will be greenfield applications so we’re able to experiment with some of the latest tools and practices to see what works best.
How helpful do you find developer surveys? [e..g. SlashData report – which seeks to help developers to make better business decisions, with salary benchmarks, trends, programming languages, framework choice etc etc]
I think they’re a great way of getting a sense of the wider community outside our immediate echo chamber. I predominately communicate with other JavaScript developers so that’s usually all I hear about. It’s always interesting to be able to be able to hear about the changes happening with Go or Rust or C++.
Do you think developers sometimes undersell themselves?
I’m pretty sure that isn’t limited to just developers. I’m sure we’ve all had moments where we’ve felt completely unable to do a task and thus try and downplay our abilities only to discover later that we could. Technology is such a broad subject area with many deep-reaching topics it’s very easy for us to become overwhelmed by it all and undersell the skills that we do have because of the skills we don’t have.
So where do you go to get tech-related news?
Mostly Twitter. I mainly use it to follow various technologists from around the world to keep up to date. I also receive a few weekly newsletters with the latest JavaScript and DevOps news.
What’s going up and what’s going down in your industry?
I think the web browser is what’s going up. There’s been so many huge advancements in the past few years. So many incredible applications that once needed huge C/C++ codebases are being ported to run in the browser making them available to many more people on many more devices. With that in mind I think (hoping) unnecessary native mobile applications are going down. Many applications now have web apps with comparable features without the large storage requirements.
What do you think the future looks like in terms of IaaS vs PaaS vs Containers vs Serverless?
Hard to say. We’re currently looking at a mixture between containers and IaaS. Up to now we haven’t had much success with serverless infrastructure as I think the technology is still too young, comfortable monitoring and logging has been a struggle. Once the tooling has caught up I definitely think it has great potential to move a lot of applications away from an IaaS setup.
Are you working on the projects you would like to work on?
For the most part, yes. As long as I’m still learning new things I’m working on the right projects. Things get dull when you know exactly how to do everything.
Do you have a favourite superhero?
Yes, Legion. Why settle for just one super power?
Who? Developer hero: Rachel Bilski
Where? Brighton, UK.
What? Web developer, agency-side
Hello! Tell us about your role and what you do:
I mainly work as a web developer, both front- and back-end. I do a lot of CMS work, with existing CMS platforms, and I also build content management systems from scratch, mainly working with PHP.
What kind of languages do you work with?
In the front-end, I use the standards – HTML, CSS, JavaScript. I also dabble with things like Python, Ruby on Rails. And of course PHP.
How did you get started?
Well the real story is that, when I was 13, I liked going to fan sites for Buffy the Vampire Slayer – so I learned how to build my own fan site through Lissa Explains it All. Which some developers may remember from back in the olden days!
Can we see that site on the Wayback Machine?
Can you see it? No, you cannot! But, the legit explanation of how I became a web developer is that I originally worked games development, then in QA which I didn’t really enjoy, so I moved to web development.
You’re agency-side. How do you think that compares with in-house development?
I like to say in-house is a little more straightforward, only because you get to work on a project for a long time, for years potentially. But in agencies, there’s usually a wider variety of work, and you have to be pretty flexible.
What are clients asking for right now?
We get a lot of requests for emerging technologies now, but clients are not necessarily sure what to do with them. They’ll say: “we want to do something with VR or AR” or “we want to do 3D, 360 video or 3D worlds” or whatever. We have to guide them through the options.
How helpful do you find developer surveys?
If you’re a developer who works in an agency or a freelance developer, it’s easy to forget about the business side of things. And maybe you’re not a natural sales person. I mean it’s taken me a number of years to become more commercially minded, which helps me get involved in more business-related decisions about the tech we use and why.
Do you think developers sometimes undersell themselves?
Yeah, I would say so.
Have you found any challenges working in a male-dominated industry?
I’ve had both good and bad experiences. I work in a predominantly female developer team, which has been nothing but positive.
I also go to events for women in technology, because I like to talk to other women who are in my field. But, I’ve also experienced some negative things. Not always outright, but you do pick up on – to use a buzzword – microaggressions.
People can be dismissive. You know, sometimes if I go to a meeting with a male colleague, people will talk to him and ignore me even though on a technical front we’re at the same level. Which is another reason why I like to go to women’s groups because they don’t automatically assume you don’t know what you’re talking about.
You think things are changing?
I think some things are changing. There’s a lot more diversity programmes, not just for women but for LGBT groups and other minority groups.
But, I think that until there’s a bigger culture change… it’s not that women don’t want to go into tech, it’s just they don’t want to go into this tech environment. They don’t want to go somewhere where they’re not wanted.
So where do you go to get tech-related news?
Well, Twitter. But there are also loads of developers on Reddit, though I rarely comment. But I do have a male-sounding handle on Reddit for when I do comment.
Has that actually helped?
Yeah, people take you far more seriously. In fact, a lot of women do the same thing. That’s sadly the way it has to be sometimes!
What’s going up and what’s going down in the software industry?
There’s been a lot of focus on how people are using messaging applications more at the moment and generalised open social media is a bit more in the decline, which is leading to a lot more of things such as chatbots which are really interesting, and artificial intelligence (or ‘fake’ artificial intelligence) which I personally find really interesting. From finance, to health, to learning, I think it’s a great way to make these products and campaigns more helpful and user-friendly, keeping up with how our use of technology is changing.
And there’s VR of course, that’s had a real surge over the last year or so as the kits become more affordable and more widespread, especially as use in business seems to be increasing.
Personally I think the use of (and requests for) mobile apps has really declined, as people have realised how much can be done with just the web alone, and more things are done using messaging platforms, people are realising you don’t need an app for every little thing – which is great, because it makes the web a little more open, you aren’t locked away in an app for each activity or company. Similarly, a couple of years ago, everyone wanted a Facebook application – you don’t see those anymore at all!
Are you working on the projects you would like to work on?
I am, I get to work on a real variety of projects which is great. I love the power of the web and what we can do with it now, so I love working on the more cutting edge projects we get to do sometimes, but even something as simple as building a website up from scratch – from just an idea and a goal to a fully formed website that helps people find what they need or helps get a message out there is wonderful. I love seeing our projects go from a quickly sketched wireframe to a real website.
I would definitely like to work with more artificial intelligence type stuff though – so I’m hoping we get some projects like that in soon!
Join the new Developer Economics survey – featuring thousands of developers worldwide.
What super power would you like to have and what’s your favourite super hero ?
I don’t know!! I guess if I was a superhero I would like to have the ability to consume and understand huge amounts of information at a time…like a computer.
But it’s not a very good superpower.
My favourite superhero is Wonder Woman of course!
If you would like to feature in our Meet the Devs series, let us know.