Episode Description:
As a developer have you ever worked on an API endpoint but you can’t easily find the documentation for the API to see how pieces work, or can’t find the specific sequence diagram on how your domains interact, or how about using some clunky outdated internal tool that you have to use to compile your code, well your user experience is suffering, more specifically your developer experience is poor. The term “developer experience” or DX is becoming more and more pervasive in the tech industry as companies realize how important it is for the success of their businesses. But what is DX you ask? Well, in today’s episode I am joined by a very special guest to answer that question and explore the realm of DX engineering and how you can help yourself and your team become more productive and build the experience you deserve.
Our guest today, Cassidy Williams, spreads the joy of tech through her contagious positivity and accessible content. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Iowa State University and is a startup advisor and investor and developer experience expert. Currently, she is the CTO at Contenda, an AI content generation platform. Previously, she was the Director of Developer Experience at Netlify and has also worked at a variety of large and small companies like Remote, React Training, CodePen, Amazon and Venmo. She’s active in the developer community, has given hundreds of talks around the world, and also co-hosts the Stack overflow podcast and The Dev Morning Show (at night) podcast. She is one of Glamour Magazine’s 35 Women Under 35 Changing the Tech Industry and LinkedIn’s Top Professionals 35 & Under. She wants to inspire generations of STEM students to be the best they can be.
When Cassidy is not inspiring the next generation of coders she is playing music, singing karaoke, creating memes, building mechanical keyboards, and hanging out with her sister.
Connect with Cassidy
Show Notes and useful resources:
- CTO at Contenda
- Glamour Magazine’s 35 Women Under 35 Changing the Tech Industry
- Subscribe to Cassidy’s newsletter it won’t disappoint
- Cassidy’s fav joke at the time of recording “I adopted my dog from a blacksmith. As soon as we got home, she made a bolt for the door!”
- Obsidian note taking software for productivity
- As a developer experience engineer you are making developers live’s easier through content generation, demos, tutorials and anything that can get them from zero to 1, the “Time to Hello World”
- Tips on how to become a Developer Experience Engineer?
- Work and learn in public as much as you can by blogging and contributing to open source
- Make lives easier for others by solving their problems
- Show that you care about users and that you are capable of making something useful for them
- Tips on how to stay focused?
- Use a task list of some kind and calendars
- Centered App - a flow state application
- Todo Meter - a checklist app built by Cassisdy
- Use a plain old field notebook to take notes
- Cassidy’s book recommendations:
- Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky
- Engineering Management for the Rest of Us by Sarah Drasner
- Think Again by Adam Grant
- Prompt engineering and ChatGPT
- Cosynd App - The fastest and most affordable way for content creators to register their works
Building something cool or solving interesting problems? Want to be on this show? Send me an email at jointhepodcast@unfilteredbuild.com
Podcast produced by Unfiltered Build - dream.design.develop.