Rather than being passive about it.
Why do I take a proactive approach and try and find people
who are like-minded? Who share the same ideals and
goes and them come together and just share.
Hey, everyone. My name is Henry Surya, we
Rollin And you are listening to the tech lead journal the show
where I'll be bringing you the greatest technical leaders
practitioners and thought leaders in the industry to
discuss about their Journey ideas and practices that we all
can learn and apply to build a highly performing technical team
and to make an impact in your personal work.
So let's dive into our Journal. Hey everyone, welcome to another
episode of the tackling journal with Neo host Henry Surya Robin
following the first episode which was released last week.
I receive a lot of words of encouragement comments and
feedback from many of you my listeners, both personally and
also on social media, which I have to say.
I am extremely humbled by your kind words and support.
I will do my best to continuously bring high quality.
Contents and conversations with great thought leaders for this
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And I hope you enjoy the show, contents And subscribe to the
podcast to get updates when I release new episodes.
So in this episode, I have the pleasure to have a conversation
with a guess who I admire a lot for all his contributions to the
Singapore Tech and startup communities and also for
mentoring and coaching Junior developers his name.
Is Michael Chang in the past before covid when meetups used
to be happening a lot? I used to see Michael
frequently, sitting at the back of the Meetup doing recording
with all his awesome gears. And initially.
I thought he was just a guy hired by the Meetup organizers
to do the recording little that. I know that Michael is doing it
all for the community. And for free, he uploads all
those recordings to a YouTube channel and make them organized
on a portal called Engineers do. G which at this moment has more
than 3,700 videos uploaded, which is pretty awesome.
Michael also runs the Singapore, PHP, User Group co-founded, the
iOS deaf Scouts and is also the organizer of PHP, conf Asia, his
latest passion project, which is Junior death.
As G is another community group specifically, created for junior
developers in Singapore in which I personally have the
opportunity to participate by By joining the mentoring program,
as one of the selected mentors and I must say that it is a
personally, rewarding experience for me.
And I strongly believe that such initiative will be tremendously
beneficial in rapidly, building, Singapore, Tech communities.
And without further Ado, please enjoy this episode with Michael
Chang. Hello, Michael.
Are you hungry? First of all, I would like to
acknowledge your contributions, your hard work in the tech and
startup. The in Singapore.
And also I think it brings a lot of impact and benefits for a lot
of people. And I would like to appreciate
for that. Thanks.
We should appreciate you as
well. Because when I first started the
jeweled FSG mentoring program, I mean you were one of the first
to also come forward, which I think is in a blessing to us as
well. Yeah, no worries.
I'm also happy to do mentoring. So I hope it helps.
So, first of all, I would like to ask a question about your T
involvement. So, actually, what made you
start doing these kind of activities in the beginning?
Was it something that you found a challenge that you don't know
how to solve? And that's why you started.
So the First Community ever started was the Singapore.
PHP User Group. This was in 2008.
I think so, there was quite a while ago.
I kind of started it because I was feeling lonely in my journey
as a software engineer. The time I was running my own
startup. I was doing programming
building. What people I've just felt
lonely because I was out, doing doing all alone.
I don't really have many years in my company because I was a
gamer. I was running my own business,
right? So I was I'm the boss and
everywhere higher is like, you know, Junior people.
But yeah, I wanted a community where I can turn to for help and
for like support. I think also came out of my
previous experience as a Evangelical Christian.
So as I when Jericho Christian, I was in church where they
practice subgroups. So So cell group.
I found was quite informative for me as in help me to
strengthen my faith and also is good to have people who are
like-minded around. You two, can't give you support
and give you words of encouragement and even got you a
long, right? I kind of like, missed that in
the secular world, in the sense that I don't really have that
mentorship and I felt that since I have facing this problem.
I'm sure there'll be other people who are facing this
problem as well. So I thought rather than being
passive about it. What do I take a proactive
approach and try and find people who are like-minded?
Who share the same? Ideals and goes and them come
together and just share. So that's the sharing part of
it. The other part of it is the open
source movement, the idea that the more you share, the more you
give, the more you get back, right?
So the hold open source, itõs, really car, drove me to that
understanding that sharing provides more benefit for the
whole. So these two come together, like
need for support group and all that, and the other need for
sharing knowledge. Because I know I also learned a
lot in my life. I also want to share back to the
community. So that's how I started.
The PHP is a group and I also much later on the Judah, death
and iOS, they have Scout. Right?
Right. So I guess, also, during that
time, there is probably no other similar Community groups or
initiatives in singers. I guess they were we will all
like student groups. There were also a few, like,
technical, technical user groups, but you're not really in
the text tag that I was in, but the time there was already a
ruby meet up. There was a Java User Group.
Yeah, that was about it. I see I think before I started
by own group. She did some research and I was
just trying to find whether they were similar groups already
formed out there. And so there were two, they were
registered but then they were like defunct, not active.
So because of that. Okay, since the last two group
has been redacted for a while. So why not?
I just start a new one when you started.
Did you already know what you wanted to do?
How do you structure this user group?
How do you make your contribution?
Well, one thing I knew I needed to have sharing people who got
Google share ideas. I just use meetup.com., This is
in 2008. I think it was still very new
turns out. They were not my people using
it. Organize a meet up first PHP is
a good Meetup was that blue works at key for five of us are
sitting there having drinks. And there wasn't much technology
sharing that it was more like networking kind of thing.
So there was a first video blog. I felt there was a problem will
reach how you reach people, right?
So if you things, I knew I wanted to have a need to have
speakers. I also need a value.
And also in my previous Life, as a grassroot leader.
I also know that successful Grassroots event must have two
tanks. They are food, Lucky Draw
prices. Wow.
Okay, if I have this too, I probably can get people.
So, like, food will get you at least to the Midway point, and
let me draw bars will keep you all the way to the end, right?
Because of that my past life and experience in doing that.
I thought, okay, maybe I could do something similar.
So I wanted my meetups to have good talks.
I wanted to have food and then I wanted to have a lucky draw
prizes. So I kind of like started
looking around for sponsors sponsors.
Not just for the Renewables. Are the lucky draw prizes.
Like so I got moved to do date books are and some of that, so
it was quite interesting. Right?
So what brought to you then to Engineers RSG, is it something
that again, like, you see a need from running this user group and
then you spot an idea or maybe people need to consume video.
Yeah. For and, you know, Is she was
more of a frustration? I attended a panel discussion
supposedly on the panelists. They were like industry leaders
in the tech industry. Right?
So one of the panelists was like be moaning and groaning about.
Oh, yeah. I can't find Engineers.
I can't hire Engineers. Where the engineers right?
So for me, I was a bit curious. I mean, I am surrounded by good
Engineers. People who I know from meetup
groups. My personal friends.
I know. I'm surrounded by good engineers
in Singapore. I mean, there's no shortage of
Engineers. So why is this person saying
that? There's not enough engineers in
Singapore? So I got me thinking about, what
is there a difference in perception, right.
My perception. Is that is abundance.
There are people around the person's perception was that
there were not enough. So I thought maybe the problem
is a marketing problem. So we don't tell people enough
about our meetups. You don't tell people enough
about what we do and the things that we're doing in the
community, right? So talking maybe one good way to
improve the marketing is to Try and find a way to record the
meetups, because the time in church, our surf sound tech, and
you how to operate a soundboard and do audio recording video
recording. I thought, maybe I should bring
all this interest together. I felt if I can record the
Meetup, I can put them online and people can find them.
Once we can find them. They can probably linked back to
the Meetup group. And then from there, they can
discover the different meetup groups and they can then, you
know, either attend the future meetups or even learn from the
videos that are being published. They will all good content being
shared in the Different Meetup Group sir.
Yeah, so that was the Genesis of the engineers OSG.
Yeah, just for our listeners here.
As of today. I can see there are, like, 3759
videos online. So, that's really a lot.
I think it started from, like, 2013 or something.
Yeah, around the, right. So, this is one question that I
always have in mind. When I see you like all over the
places and meet ups, you know, recording obviously.
Now you got some help from few. Volunteers as well, but how do
you prioritize your time? Well, first of all, I do have
any job. Yeah, I'm people see me in
community. Meetups and I like the, you ask
me? So what do you do?
I'm like, yeah, I don't we tell you, I do but I do have a day
job. So my day job, testicle all my
time because I have to be at work by nine ish.
And and that wrong 6:00. I think I'm very thankful in my
last few jobs. It's still quite strict about
not doing overtime. So in a way that get their Frees
up my time in the evenings to actually organize, meetups go
for meetups and to attend meetups.
So I'm fortunate to have Employers in the past at least
Employers in my last at least three jobs who give me the
freedom to continue doing things for the community.
So in terms of prioritizing my time, I guess, my can schedule
my time around the Meetup events.
So in a way, kind of like, my evenings are kind of book that
bio this video or that meet up in the past.
I think, before covid-19 we have like About two to three meetups
of a week. And as you notice, I'm fortunate
enough to have volunteers to help me but in the past, I would
like at 6:00 sharp. I'll just leave work with my
recording gear, Rush down to the Meetup Group, me that value and
sell my gear, you know, and kind of Stew recording.
So yeah, so they can be tiring. Also, especially after you
record, you still have to do the editing uploading and putting it
on the website. I think that's a lot of work as
well. Right?
Yeah. Used to be, I think.
Used to be that it, at least the early days.
I will actually stay up till like, 1:00 2:00 in the morning.
Just editing the videos about. Of course, we have technology.
We have actually improve our workflow.
So I brought up my, a simple like, upload site for my
volunteers and for myself. So, as long as the video is
ready, and it's uploaded, this upload site and it will be
published on to the engine especially website.
I think we're in an hour. Wow, that's that's pretty cool.
Yeah. I mean, there's a reason why we
love around so much gear because we want to Capture are eating
properly because of his laptop and we use the software for OBS,
which that's the recording and any records, everything from
screen to video the audio into one file.
So it makes it a lot easier for my volunteers that we only do so
much post-production. Yeah.
I've seen once a volunteer having to set up all the gears.
It looks pretty complicated for me.
There are a lot of moving Parts, but it's pretty nice setup, you
know, like the quality. I think it's also one thing that
you want to ensure. For the people so that they can
listen to the speakers and be able to see the screen at the
same time, which is pretty nice. Yeah, either way you can
consider as a occupational hazard because it is, as I said,
in the past, I was like a sound engineer.
So, I know, the importance are already calling good audio.
How important good audio is for your attention span.
When you're watching a video, if you hear Bad audio, you just
switch off quite easily. So you have good audio capture
and good quality screen recording.
It makes a more compelling. And I think it shows in the
video that we recorded. Yeah, I guess this is also a
lesson for all the listeners here.
Is that sometimes we have these skills that we don't realize,
it's actually pretty useful. Like for example, in your case.
You're pretty good in doing somebody editing and how to
record a good quality sound and then after that, you mix that
with engineers at SG, actually it benefits a lot of people.
So I think this is also a good example of how ideas can be born
out of the scale that you normally don't.
Lies, yeah, precisely. So very curious about these
engineer SG, right? So what kind of impact maybe you
can throw some highlights that you realized?
You have made out of this Engineers, SG.
Maybe there are people telling you or maybe you just see
something that you think Engineers is to contribute a
lot. There was once when I was still
working in a Consulting agency was caught in your Innovation.
And so in the consultancy, we built apps and build stuff for
clients and there was one time I was In office during lunch time.
And I heard behind me. There was a video playing.
It was a familiar voice on the video.
But since I was one of our colleagues who presented
something at pycon already, 2013 2014, so you keep presented at
pycon about the topic of high test, which is a testing
framework for Python. And my colleague was actually
watching the video and I look at it.
Wow, that's pretty cool. The fact that the video was only
like maybe a few days old, it was done over the weekend.
And it was recorded. The converse is over the
weekend. We recorded it and on Monday or
Tuesday. He was like watching the video
during lunch time. It's like, wow, I mean for me, I
felt like they had served a purpose that originally created
this movement Fallout, which was to provide a resource for people
around me. The other impact, we have will
be local conference seen in the past.
A lot of the singapore-based conferences.
When you needed to record video for their conference, usually
takes about half a year. For the video will be published
like this. Get big boys like on freaks.
They're basically fly people in the Singapore equipment and then
in another case of another provider you have to actually
record into VHS and then send the VHS data tapes and then
suddenly the whole tape do us for them to do the
post-production and everything. So I feel that there's a lot of
cost involved in sort of time, lag between your content, bring
recording singapore-based conference and then we publish.
So I decided we should just make make this our recording
capabilities available to conference organizers as well.
So here total like things like go for con will become friends
PHP conference, which I personally run and so many other
conferences that we cover, right?
So it's like for us to say is a community service because as
engineer says she is a not-for-profit, our initiative
as we don't make money out of it.
We own a little bit just to cover our Hardware costs and
repair costs and hosting fee for our website.
We come conferences. It really helps us in expanding
our capability. So we can now record more tracks
a day or so, last count. We will got about six or seven
sets of recording gear, which you can deploy any moment.
I think our impact is really, really about helping the local
Tech scene and the local conference organizers make their
videos, a lot more accessible and make it more affordable for
them. Because I know a lot of the
local conference organizers are also not making money out.
There are conferences right for I guess it was a way to
contribute back to the community and to help this organizers who
are a lot of are my personal friends, right?
Yeah. So what reason, why we're
helping them and for them to make their content accessible to
everyone around us. Yeah, call.
So what is your next plan for engineers T.
I know that it's non profit Community initiative, right?
But is there any like roadmap? How do you want to bring
Engineers as G going forward? I'm not too sure because I right
now because of covid-19 is The recording is a bit of a good
thing. Here's a lot more people know
how to actually do video recording and recording of like
talks and all that stuff, which is great.
That means it has almost made Angeles as she a bit redundant
publish videos and without videos and all that is is now
everyone's hands. You use zoom you use a stream
yard, you use somewhere. There's so many tools available
out there. It makes it it so easy to do
that. So you don't really heavy and
expensive equipment that we do, we carry around with us
everywhere. So he already is your laptop.
Good speaker or good microphone. And then that's it.
That's all you need. Right?
So, I think it's a good thing. Even right now during this
covid-19 period and Genesis 3, we have also decided to just
help the community as well as providing like, free hosting.
So we're hosting the zoom calls for a lot of the community
organizers because I think there's a cost involved in
getting a zoom account and Don't think everyone wants to pay for
that monthly costs. Yep, to way.
I'm kind of like helping them by, you know, hosting the
alcohols and then helping to upload the videos that from
their me table. Maybe also like will be also a
nice place to aggregate all these speedups happening, right?
Because I think one challenge just like previously we have all
these meetups. But again, if it's not
Consolidated, we can probably also make sense.
What is happening around the community?
Who are the speakers there? And how do we engage with the?
Yeah attack scene, right? But it's true.
So I guess in a way I want to try and make the content to be
more discoverable. I think was what we did last
year. The every year before that
engine is, as she kind of much or acquired, we built that SG.
They also aggregator of sorts of local Tech events.
So we basically got their content for the events calendar.
And we are very much tied into our engineer says she events
calendar. So, in a way, I want to try and
find a way to make the content be more discoverable events more
discoverable and also make it easier for People to link up
with the speaker, find out more about the speaker and the
community that the speaker is speaking in.
So my time is also quite proud quite limited, but some of our
generation website, I chair like V2 version, too kind of thing
going on there. Some community volunteers wanted
to push for a view JS of thing. And then the same time, I was
like building some micro Services as a way of learning
how to use. Microservices now we're using
engine especially as a platform for me, learn these things.
So it's like, yeah, figuring out how to improve the service.
I mean, I think the goal every day is to make engineer says,
she'll be like more of a self-help, kind of a portal
where volunteers and Community organizers, and speakers can
just go into the portal and car like self-help.
Think up. There are talks to their own
profile. Even for Community organizers,
to even organize and publish their events on the easily.
So that's something to go. So I'm aiming for that and also
do host viewership of the videos on engineer.
So let's G. Right.
So again out of curiosity, after you are doing this community
contributions over a number of years.
Now how has that helped you professionally or maybe in terms
of career or maybe new job opportunity or maybe you just
become more popular? That people know you when they
see you, I guess being out there doing all these things.
It just creates a profile that you're a bit more recognizable,
which to me. Honestly, I'm not very
comfortable with that celebrity status.
I mean, I'm also fairly private person in a way, but then again
I post something on my Facebook so I can.
So I guess in you can say because of my community
involvement. I was able to land a job with SP
digital which is a digital transformation division of SV
group. He was I always bring together
all the people that he knows and turns out, I'm of those guys
that he wanted on his team line and it was pretty nice there for
me to kind of work in the company where I find a lot.
My community friends, who will run meet ups people who run the
conference's. We know each other like as
friends ask organizers as whatever but first time working
with them, professionally is quite interesting experience.
So for me was I opened and also no way because of my community
profile. They wanted me to help them as
well with like helping with their Community things that they
have that. So for example, they wanted a
space where they could also hold meetups at they are off.
Office. So I help with setting up like
the engineer says she gear there so that we can make that the de
facto place. Even though I know place in go
in, go to, you can use our burn USB digital equipment is already
there. You can record as long as you
want to be there. We record the event for Eula.
Also in our Junior Davis G. When we did our mentoring
program. We also used a speech to office
a capital H, the time. So, in a way, we wouldn't have
access all these things. If, in a way I will take the
plunge into the come to commute. Contribute so much to the
community and to get that assurance and recognition to let
us and the trust to the, as do this, things at such a scale.
So I'm very grateful for the trust that people have in me and
also, in the movements that I've started.
Yeah, that's pretty cool. I think it because like,
obviously, when you do a community contribution, right
more people will be aware of you.
And I think it also builds some kind of, like personal brand.
And from there. I think like opportunities will
be in abundant, right? So you'll probably Real and a
cool job meet new people do networking and things like that,
right? You mentioned about jr.
Deaf as G, right? Let's switch to that topic for
now. What makes you interested in
bringing up this new community. So I noticed there were a lot of
young and new developers entering the market, maybe like
three, four years ago. I think it was because of there
was a proliferation of boot camps in Singapore.
I think, first first in our mind will be jealous.
Lewis, I'm be Jerusalem, Jerusalem bleah.
They were such as Alpha cam who is from Taiwan and so many
others, they are now in Singapore right now.
And each of this good camps are churning out a lot of Young
Junior developers and drink Market either fresh graduates or
people who are mid-career switches.
So when I interact with some of these people, they were like do
they're really hungry for knowledge and in a way also if
you get intimidated coming in to meet up groups mainly because
they feel that the content being shared and the level of skill
that is required to basically understand what's happening in
the Meetup. Tend to be a little bit above
their Hitler. I mean, it's very hard to in
three months, pick up all the jargons and understand
everything about technology. And to come to this meetup
groups, tends to be a bit intimidating for some of these
people. So for me, it was that desire to
help them write. As in, I think it's with every
single Community initiative. I started in the past.
It's always about the core team is to fill a Mmm, fewer got me
in the community to fill a gap. There is Ben.
There's a few and underserved group in the community.
Right? And then, this genotype is
basically one of those groups that are growing in numbers.
And you also want them to succeed in what they do.
You also want them to progress beyond that point where they are
starting. So yeah, so I felt that there
should be also a support group for this group of people and it
just so happened. I stumble on what my friends
Twitter feed and he was like tending a junior death beat up
in know. Oh Bud, right?
So I was like, wow, this is a pretty interesting thing was
this course is going on though. So I checked out Judo depth,
Ohio sounds pretty cool thing. And then they were doing quite a
lot of things original. They're friendly or so.
And as I got in touch with the founders of the gendered fio in
Melbourne, I got a little more about there are objectives.
So what you do trying to do like they really wanted to have equal
diversity representation in session.
All the talks have audio events should have good diversity
ratio. There is kept at 50% So I see as
in they'll be People say women a person men and I felt it was a
very good thing. That is that you're making it
you're helping create a conscious effort when that I
feel is a very good thing. Yeah.
So I really agree with what they're trying to do and we want
to help them and to ask her whether I could start a chapter
in Singapore because I heard they were already starting one
in Sydney and New Zealand, so I thought I should also stop by
and say hi, Paula. And I asked about it.
They give me some materials and some of the conditions for
running events under their brand name.
And I thought, okay, I am agree with this.
As do this. And yeah, basically, I use all
my networking capabilities and this W fact, in the things I do,
like as I share this on my Facebook, shares on my social
medias. There are people who agree with
this or find it quite interesting.
They were just come for a lot and I'm always have a less wrong
my sleep. I just do it.
Yes, you know, do things that don't scale until you really
need to scale. Yeah.
I like Angela says she do everything.
Myself myself first and you are going to How do you scale and
get volunteers and all that cynical generative?
It was I just do it myself first and see what happens.
I'm thankful that I do have a core team, helping me right now.
So there's a team of about seven people on the team.
So they're really helping to organize the monthly meetups
developers gym as well as mentoring program.
So the emphasis of Julian FSG is not just a safe environment for
June adapt to come and learn things.
This is our opportunity. Well, have been that work and
meet people in the community, which the otherwise we won't be
able to see. I think the problem I had in my
early days as a software engineer was isolation.
I'm doing everything on my own and I need to have, I didn't
know there were there was a wider Community out there.
I think back in the day there wasn't things that stack
Overflow and Google really wasn't that you can find out
something there the other blog posts, but that's about it.
Right. So I really wanted to help them
have the sense of community meet people, people that could become
potentially a colleagues people that could potentially become
their bosses. The could potentially become
even people that can work with that.
So unlike my other previous events, they're running the past
which was more tech-driven. This is more people driven.
So I wanted more time to be set aside for networking people to
create connections with each other.
For those Junior, developer listeners here.
How can they participate in some of your activities, like your
monthly, meetups your developers Gene and your mentoring program.
So you can go to our meetup group.
We post all our weight. Events, there are not calm, just
super agility of Singapore. You'll find it all here.
Just go to Junior death OS G. If you go to do the depth of SG,
you can find the links to our social medias.
So what is actually developers GM for those people who don't
know about it. So our monthly, meetups usually
have split of networking and Tech talks.
So as I as we go through this, as we were organizing, the
meetups, we felt that there still wasn't enough impact as
in. Yeah, the generative.
So they really were We hungry for knowledge and we want to
really get better at their craft at the time.
We were running the meetups for works of who started their
Jumpstart program and instructor that started.
The Jumpstart program is name is Gordon.
So Gordon will say he approached me and said, hey, you know,
yeah, the meetups are great if you have like content is being
shared. But if you also realize that
there needs to be more opportunities for coding and
practice, because after the boot camps, they still need to
continue their Cadence of learning, and Hands-On and
writing code and practicing. A good code, right?
So you felt that we should probably try and organize some
things on weekends. And so, if you can come and kind
of like work together and learn how to code, so Gordon was
behaving that. So help us who spearheaded the
developer's dream is essentially a coding Dojo like a coding dojo
and Hands-On workshop for like 23 hours, you come together, you
do like Hands-On coding practice.
You also learn about new technologies, like we did a bit
sometime last year was the kubernetes workshop.
We walk people through how to use, how to start up.
We discussed the news media Cube and all that stuff to serve
their own communities thing. Right?
And it was really well attended. Every about 9000 people in the
class. Wow, pretty big and only basic
operators was Google developer space.
So it was quite cooler. But because of covid-19 required
put a stop to this for now. And until such time where we get
back to the point where you can gather, we can probably start
this whole thing. Although ya know people are
working from home. So I guess, in a way, it's also
a skill that we have to practice, right to be able to
do. Either like pair programming
communicate with colleagues over the Internet or through chats.
Probably it's something that you can explore.
How about the mentoring program itself.
So probably you can mention a little bit what it is all about
so that maybe people who are interested to become a mentor or
a mentee can also participate. Yeah, so we have meetups that
would cater to some networking needs of community, Hands-On
coding workshops developers. Jim catered For The are much
more Hands-On and improving their But there's also one that
aspect opportunity developers, which is the sense of things
that are not, just technical. There are things that are not
just about technical. Capability is also about the
ability to work with their colleagues and the people and
the profile of Junior developers.
I saw in the time where I was running, this it will be career
switches fresh graduates. Generally people who have never
worked in the tech company before their prior experience.
Maybe you have could be career search earlier.
Some working experience and Coming to the tech company.
There's some Dynamics. It just don't work the same way.
There are some things that are very specific to the tech
industry. Like, how you need more bit more
guidance to get started, more empathy and understanding from
your colleagues so that you can get up to speed in your coding
capabilities. And there's also that other part
of it, which is for very long time.
I think in our industry, we value CS degree more than
anything else. So as a microstructure, there's
always this nagging feeling that I'm not good enough.
I find that a lot of the tech leaders.
Stow met with the first stretch. They have no time to really
meant all people. You take the ball a start-up,
see their president, stand out. Usually, he's the only senior
guy taking care of like, 561, Junior developers in the
keyboard. So that capacity and ability to
Mentor. People is very limited.
And the other thing about our industry is that you don't
become a mentor just like that, right?
Yeah. You can't just flip a switch and
just because you are technically good, you know your craft very
well. There's automatically make you a
good teacher and mentor. And guide for other people.
In fact, you if you're very good and strong and kind of
technically, you may feel very annoyed with somebody, just
keeps bugging. You about questions.
So, either way, I went to help Junior, developers learn how to
work with the cedar, developers, how to work with the people in
your company and learn how to adapt.
For example, one or advice. They gave a junior developer
wants or was he said, yeah, way to talk to a senior but it does
know how to go about engaging them.
So, I gave him some tips. Someone will be to help manage
senior developer. Time in says, help manage the
apis distraction because as a senior developer the company,
you probably have a lot easy to work on.
So, having empathy for you to ask an eye hook, half an hour of
your time, so that you can help them manage your distraction and
disruption, so that they would bump them onto that a lot of
time. He told me much later on that he
really helped him a lot. That's just a simple advice.
He was able to get a more productive time with his
Sicilian developer. Once you locate the time, you
have 100% focus of that person and of course, all on the part
of the The developer user has to do is own due diligence.
Learn about how to try and solve the problem on its own and
figure out different ways of doing it.
Only when he we have no way of solving it then approached a
senior or get a senior allocate, some time to help them.
Right? So this simple advice, things
like this, that doesn't come naturally to people and see the
developer. Sometimes.
We don't know how to tell you developers that.
So skills are this I felt that having a mentoring program will
be helpful as in. You get together the senior
developers. We have experienced mentoring
and to help him parts of this knowledge.
Love the journey. Problems that come to our
program. If you don't have enough
mentoring in their own company because of the problem I told
you about is only one senior developer and you have so many
Junior developers around you. And I hope the mentoring program
will help create that mentoring and nurturing environment.
To learn can help these Junior developers in their own Journey.
Le I think they are actually a lot of so-called mentors out
there who wants to contribute and nurture Junior developers as
well. Probably not in their companies,
but it could be other companies or maybe students, who are still
studying, right? And This platform I find is very
unique in a sense that you mix and match people, the mentors
and the mentees to come together so that they have a blend a mix
of a knowledge trunk and also you can ask questions and
discuss about certain topics. So just to share the listeners,
here are the topics that obviously, as a junior, right,
which I also had a during my early career as things like
impostor syndrome. How do you know that you are
good enough? How do you make contribution to
the work? Managing your bosses, managing
your work and projects dealing with?
The people to work with. So all these obviously are good
topics for the mende student from the mentors from the
industry. So is there any Vision on what
are you would bring this junior death as Gene X I guess as long
as we can touch the lives of do the developers.
I think one of the goals that I have set for us, is for our
Junior developers to drop their junior title.
That's nice. I have a sort of explicit goals
of the gender diversity, right? Is to provide a safe environment
for junior developers to learn from each other and to share
about their learning Journeys, mentoring opportunities for
developers who might not have such resources available to them
at their workplace and help each other level up into senior
positions, and eventually take up leadership positions.
So, these are three explicit goals.
Nice. I think it's pretty high and for
you to start up this initiatives and I'm sure more and more
Junior developers can benefit from this initiative.
The only thing is like how to scale this to reach out more and
more people, right? Yeah.
As I said, sometimes I tend to do the Uber way, which is do
things that can scale. See how it goes.
Yeah, maybe some of you the listeners who find this
opportunity, interesting. You can also contact Michael to
be involved in the initiative, trying to help in whatever way
that we can. So before we wrap up.
Normally, I would ask all my guests to answer.
One question that I have which is what are the three tekhelet
wisdoms that you have for the listeners to know.
Right, so I'm actually a pretty new technology in myself because
I only took up the role of a tech lead last year when I
joined of tech. So for me, it has also been a
learning experience to figure out how to actually lead a team
and how to manage a team and even first time in my life,
having direct reports people report to me.
So suddenly you have another life you need to take care of
and it's not just somebody that you care for like the mentoring
program that once a week kind of thing, right?
This is somebody that you need to help in their personal
growth, like five days a week. So, yeah, I would say the true
reasons. I wish I had known when I first
started. This is number one.
Don't panic. What do you mean by Don't Panic?
Like, sometimes I was like, oh, wow, this is too much for me.
How the hell am I gonna do this? And first thing I would think is
Don't Panic, you've got this. So don't panic.
You've gotten you to where you are because of your years of
experience because your years of learning everything, you've
learned in the past is prepare you for this time and this
moment in your life so you can do this, don't panic.
It right the second time. This time.
I will share it to anyone who's take care of that level.
First time is silence, can be a good thing, right?
Be afraid of Silence because it's in silence.
You can actually think the refrain for this is don't rush
into things. Right?
And everything is like pushing for you to get things done and
everything is like, yeah, let's take a moment here.
That's going on. Yeah, it's fine, figure this
out. Take your time.
Even silence is good because then you can we think about the
next steps and don't be afraid of it.
You Violence as a way of thinking, Abreva, taking a pause
before you take the next steps, and the taupe take resume.
I will give to anyone who is going to take up the technique
growing for the first time is, it's okay to say, I don't know.
It's okay to say, you don't know, because you really don't
know. Yeah.
I find like, especially these days acknowledge, e landscape
keeps changing in a rapid fast manner, right?
Obviously, there's no one person who is able to grasp everything,
right precisely. And I think that is Is a very
important point for those techniques out there.
It's okay to do know about something, right?
Yeah, but it's not okay to stay ignorant.
So do find out. If you can take your time and
find out and learn in my one-year Journey being a tech
lead is like, I'm also learning a lot about myself and learning
about developing that awareness for what my strengths are and
what my weaknesses are, recognizing them and then trying
to find ways to compensate for my weaknesses.
So, If you that not the best encourager, I think I can be the
guy who would be giving you warm encouragement every moment of
the day, but I try my best to make sure that the spirits are
high in the team that I'm working with.
Try to inject some humor smile, a bit more and help the team get
through this difficult times, which is, yeah, something you
have to do. Yeah, exactly.
All right, so how can people find and connect with you
online? On Twitter coder, Kung Fu c. 0d
h KU + GF you cause a kung-fu on Twitter as well as on Instagram.
Thanks Michael again for your time.
Hope to see you again, right? See ya.
Thank you for listening to this episode.
And I hope that you'll find today's conversation.
Useful to get to know on how to build a Tech Community,
especially to learn from one of the most prominent Community,
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