0:00

you have to be self aware , and that requires

0:02

work . You have to do some analysis about yourself

0:05

and figure out what it is

0:07

that will work for you . As I mentioned , I

0:09

later on was diagnosed with ADHD , so

0:11

I realizing , oh , that juice

0:13

that I need is what helps to motivate me . I

0:15

tend to work well in things that are deadline driven

0:17

, like journalism or like writing a talk for

0:20

a conference , and I like to learn new

0:22

things , and so I need new developer tools

0:24

and integrations and things to work on . So

0:26

I've been able to identify the things that work well

0:28

for me . But I would say

0:31

, do the work and kind of being

0:33

reflective on yourself and finding what

0:35

are your priorities , what is not

0:37

just a role , not just a title

0:39

, not just a stack , but

0:41

at the base , a more base level , what

0:44

is it that you get joy out

0:46

of ? What is it that you feel

0:48

that you could do for the next 20 , 30 , 40 , 50

0:51

years ? And go from there and figure out a

0:53

plan to make that happen , because I

0:55

guess that every person is going to be different . But you

0:57

need to look in , look inward first .

0:59

Hello and welcome to Devopers

1:02

Journey , the podcast bringing you the making

1:04

of stories of successful software

1:06

developers to help you on your

1:08

upcoming journey . I'm a host , tim

1:10

Borghigno . On this episode , I receive

1:13

Cecilia Martinez . Cecilia

1:15

is dedicated to creating better , more

1:18

inclusive developer experiences for everyone

1:20

. As such , she is the developer

1:22

advocate for AppFlow at Ionic . Her

1:25

previous companies include Cypress and Replay , with

1:28

areas of expertise including

1:30

web development , testing , developer tools

1:32

and open source software . She

1:35

is a lead volunteer for Women who Code

1:37

Frontend , a chapter lead for Out

1:39

in Tech Atlanta and a GitHub

1:41

star . So yeah , welcome

1:44

DevTrain .

1:45

Thank you , hello , hello .

1:47

But before we come to your story , I

1:49

want to thank the terrific listeners who

1:51

support the show . Every month you

1:53

are keeping the DevTrain lights

1:55

up . If you would like to join

1:58

this fine crew and help me spend

2:00

more time on finding phenomenal

2:02

guests than editing audio tracks

2:04

, please go to our website

2:07

, devjourneyinfo , and

2:09

click on the support me on Patreon

2:11

button . Even the smallest contributions

2:14

are giant steps toward

2:16

a sustainable Dev journey Journey

2:18

. Thank you , and now

2:20

back to today's guest . So

2:24

, cecilia , as you know , the show exists

2:26

to help the listeners understand what your

2:28

story looked like and imagine how to

2:31

shape their own future . So , as

2:33

is usual on the show , let's go back to your beginnings

2:35

. Where would you place the start of your Dev

2:37

journey ?

2:37

So the start of my Dev

2:39

journey starts where not

2:41

a lot of good stories start

2:44

, but in this case it is a good beginning with

2:46

live journal . I'm not sure how many people

2:48

remember live journal , but for me

2:50

, in high school I spent a lot of time

2:52

on live journal and that's where I

2:54

learned HTML and CSS for the first

2:56

time . I created custom live

2:59

journal layouts and graphics

3:01

and got involved with some band

3:04

street teams and was kind of helping them make

3:06

websites and things like that

3:08

Very simple , like custom my space pages

3:10

and custom live journal layouts , and that's

3:13

where I first started the

3:15

experience first felt the experience of

3:17

being up all night working on something

3:19

and then looking up and realizing that it was

3:22

3 am and I was supposed to be up for school

3:24

the next day and that

3:26

really that sensation

3:28

of just getting sucked into something always

3:31

pulled me back throughout the years , even though

3:34

I didn't do development professionally

3:36

for a very long time . So

3:38

it started with live journal started

3:40

with some drama . You know , live journal

3:42

there's always a little bit of drama and

3:44

I , yeah , kind of went from

3:47

there . The next time that I touched

3:49

development in

3:51

a more formal sense was in college

3:53

. So I actually studied

3:55

journalism or public communications

3:57

in my undergraduate degree and

4:00

at that time making websites

4:03

was considered part of marketing , was

4:05

considered part of public relations , and

4:07

so I learned Dreamweaver

4:10

. I learned again like HTML CSS

4:12

. They told us we could use whatever technology

4:14

we wanted to make a website , and I chose

4:16

Flash , which

4:19

took a lot of time and

4:21

now is the dead technology . But

4:23

and I

4:25

ended up using those skills on our

4:27

college newspaper website . So

4:30

we I was the editor of our college newspaper

4:32

and we had a hosted

4:34

platform where we just kind of pushed

4:36

everything to a remote site and everything was

4:38

managed for us . And I

4:40

moved us to a self-hosted

4:42

WordPress instance while I

4:45

was there at college so that we could have more control

4:47

over the layout . There wasn't any ads on

4:49

it . We could control our own ads . And that was

4:51

my first experience with dealing with things

4:53

like setting up a database and

4:55

digging into the PHP

4:58

files and trying to change just one little thing and

5:00

hoping that nothing broke and dragging

5:04

you know FTP files over for

5:07

the new release coming out on Sunday nights . And

5:09

so again it was . It was

5:12

that same feeling of staying

5:14

up and not realizing how much time had passed

5:16

and wanting to

5:18

get everything perfect and make it

5:20

look great because I knew that it would eventually

5:23

be seen by a lot of people and used by a lot of people

5:25

and found that very motivating

5:27

. But , as you can probably guess

5:29

, with a degree in journalism and being an editor of

5:31

my college newspaper , my first career was actually

5:33

in journalism . So I was

5:35

a newspaper reporter right out of college . I

5:39

worked at a small I wouldn't say

5:41

small , it was a local newspaper , an upstate

5:43

New York , in Troy , new York , and I

5:45

covered local news , local politics

5:47

, and I covered some state politics as well

5:49

. So I went to city council meetings

5:52

, zoning board meetings , you know

5:54

, interviewed city council people

5:56

and small town politics is the funniest

5:58

thing because there's rivalries , there's

6:00

history , there's , you know , this neighborhood

6:03

versus that neighborhood , and

6:05

I really fell in love with talking to

6:07

people and learning their stories and , you

6:10

know , didn't do tech for a while . You

6:12

know I was . I was what we would they

6:15

called the digital journalists back then

6:17

because I also knew how to update our website

6:19

and so

6:21

I would write for print . I would also do pagination

6:23

for print as well , you know , and would watch

6:25

it run on the printing press . But we'd

6:28

also update our website and I recorded

6:30

videos . I was the first person

6:32

to live tweet city council meetings . This

6:34

is , you know , back in 2008

6:36

, 2009 time period

6:38

and so . But so

6:41

tech has always kind of touched my

6:43

career , but it never was something that I did

6:45

directly . And along the way

6:47

, I would make websites for friends

6:49

, for musicians that I knew , for , like you

6:51

know , nonprofits or different kind of groups , but always

6:53

that you know HTML , css , wordpress

6:56

, kind of static sites . After

6:59

journalism , I actually transitioned to

7:01

financial services and got

7:04

I'm a licensed broker , I

7:06

have my insurance license , I'm a licensed

7:08

financial planner . I did that for

7:10

for for some you know , almost

7:13

five years working at banks and large

7:15

brokerage firms and had

7:17

left kind of tech behind me at that point

7:19

and was really focused in on financial

7:22

services and felt that this was going to be

7:24

the career for me . Yeah

7:27

, and so I got to . I always felt that

7:30

I didn't have that sensation of staying up till

7:32

3am looking at

7:34

, you know , spreadsheets or you

7:36

know Roth , ira , you know distributions

7:38

. I didn't get that

7:42

same jolt that you get of solving a problem or

7:44

having that aha or like , oh , it's finally perfect . And I got to the point

7:46

where I was in my career where

7:48

I was ready to prepare to start getting

7:50

my CFP . I had gotten my MBA

7:52

, I had gotten a couple of like all my licenses

7:55

, and CFP is kind of a multi-year commitment

7:57

. After that you're pretty much a financial certified

8:00

financial planner . Is what

8:04

CFP means , sorry .

8:05

Yeah , so certified financial planner , and once you do that

8:07

that's pretty much your

8:10

career .

8:11

Like you know , you have clients and you want to be with them for a long time

8:13

. You want to

8:15

have a relationship with them that lasts

8:17

for a very long time . And I started to get cold feet . I

8:21

was . I was like I don't know if I can

8:23

do this for the next 20 , 30 , 40 years , because

8:25

I just didn't feel

8:28

that jolt of excitement . I also didn't feel the same sense of you

8:30

know , kind of altruism that I felt with journalism . You know , I it's nice to be able to

8:32

help people and I definitely do feel like

8:37

I tried to help people as much as possible , but at the end of the

8:39

day , it is a money driven industry

8:43

when you're in financial services . And so

8:45

that's when I started to think about okay , you know , if you are

8:47

going to have a career for 20 , 30 , 40

8:49

, 50 years , like , what do you want to spend your time doing

8:51

? And my mind kept going back

8:53

to those nights . You know staying

8:56

up till 3am figuring

8:58

something out , getting stuck on something

9:00

. You know wanting to throw my computer against the wall , and at that

9:02

time it was a heavy , big computer like these weren't

9:04

laptops , right , they were the big

9:08

PC towers . And so until

9:11

you finally got it , and then it all seems worth it , and so I , yeah

9:13

, so I decided to kind of look back into

9:15

web development or , you know , being

9:18

a webmaster or websites or

9:20

whatever

9:22

it was called at that time , but at this

9:24

point we had fast forwarded to 2018 . So 10 years later

9:29

from when I first , when I made that WordPress

9:31

site in college , right , and so web apps had come a

9:35

long way . They , I mean

9:37

, they could do a lot . It was much more complex than it was . It's

9:39

not just HTML

9:42

, css , maybe WordPress like a

9:44

little bit of JavaScript , it's . They do very , very complex , full stack things

9:46

. And so I did some . I started doing

9:48

some research , started teaching myself JavaScript

9:50

. This

9:53

is all . I was still kind of working in financial services

9:55

, but I realized that I was going to need more

9:58

of a formal kind of education a little

10:01

bit , and so I looked into options for that and I found

10:03

a

10:05

boot camp .

10:06

So I yeah before we get there

10:08

. Had you made up your mind already ? Yeah , Now I'm going

10:12

to switch , or was it still ? Let's , let's put back

10:14

a feet and a foot in there and see what happens . Yeah , so I , I

10:16

had I had made up my mind , because I just again , I kept

10:19

coming back to like the cold feet and I don't

10:21

want to do this .

10:21

And so when I decided

10:25

to do my boot camp , I actually went all

10:27

in . I quit my job , I quit my job , I quit my job

10:29

, I quit my job , I quit my job , I quit my job , I

10:32

quit my job . It was a three month

10:35

full time boot camp and I had basically

10:37

enough , you know , savings to get me through that

10:39

, and at the end of it I needed a job , and

10:41

whether that job was development , whether

10:44

it was working at a bank or whether it was waitressy

10:46

like I needed to have something so I could pay

10:48

my rent and so but

10:50

I felt like I needed that too . It's

10:52

so , I think it's so easy for

10:55

people to keep doing something that they

10:57

are , they do well , they're successful at

10:59

it , and everyone says , oh , this

11:01

is a great job , this is a great career , you

11:03

do well at it . And it's really

11:06

hard , I think , to shake yourself out of

11:08

that flow , of that kind

11:10

of momentum

11:13

, if , if something doesn't force

11:15

you to do that . And so I could definitely see

11:17

myself getting caught up in that and being like well , you

11:19

know , everyone says this is the right thing , you know it's a

11:21

good career for me , like , why not

11:25

? But I just couldn't get rid of that nagging

11:27

feeling , and I think , in order to

11:29

let that nagging feeling win

11:31

and not just bother me for the next several decades , I needed

11:34

to do something drastic , and so that

11:37

was what made the best sense for me . I don't

11:39

think I don't necessarily know if I would

11:41

recommend it . Honestly

11:44

, it was probably some of the most stressful

11:46

time of my life . There was a lot of time where I

11:48

was like I can't do this , I've made a huge

11:50

mistake . This is way too much . But

11:54

it was really the communities that I

11:56

had surrounded myself with that

11:58

helped me get through that time and ended up making it

12:00

worthwhile .

12:02

And I'm nodding heavily while you say all this . Yeah

12:06

, so how did ? You find this bootcamp .

12:09

Yeah , so I had moved to Atlanta . I

12:11

moved to Atlanta in late 2017 . I

12:13

was working at an insurance company and

12:15

I just started . I started teaching myself JavaScript

12:18

, decided I needed to kind of something more formal and

12:20

I actually saw an ad for the

12:22

Georgia Tech bootcamp and this

12:24

was kind of still in the earlier days

12:26

. Of bootcamps , there was a few that were out there

12:29

. I saw that it

12:31

was a full stack engineering program and

12:34

that they had it was in person , which I liked as

12:36

well , and it was on campus

12:38

and you could do it full time . But I

12:40

wanted to do my vetting because it was going

12:43

to be an investment , it was going to be

12:45

drastic . So I had started going

12:47

to women who code Atlanta meetups . So

12:49

women who code as a global

12:51

organization , they have chapters all over and

12:54

the Atlanta chapter is very robust and they had

12:56

in person meetups and so I

12:58

started going to those as I was teaching myself JavaScript

13:01

, going to some code jams , you know doing things

13:03

like that and I reached out to

13:05

some of the women in the chapter and say , hey

13:07

, do one of you know about this bootcamp , Like , what's

13:09

been your experience ? And they

13:13

were so helpful . So Valerie Ragus , who I know

13:15

really well now , at this point she actually hopped

13:17

on a call with me and was like , hey , yeah , stranger , I'll

13:19

, I'll , I'll set some time aside from

13:21

my family and talk to you about this and gave

13:24

me her experience , told me , hey

13:26

, learn , get before you get started , because they're not going to teach

13:29

you that . You know , make sure that you learn this

13:31

, start your job search early . And

13:33

every like I

13:35

said that community really helped me the entire

13:37

time because I would not have been able to get through

13:39

it without that support and people telling

13:41

and them telling me yes , you can do this

13:43

. It's going to be very hard , you're going to need to commit to

13:45

it , but if you make

13:47

it through the other end and it will be worth it . And there

13:50

was one saying that I kind of latched

13:52

on too early , and I still say all the time

13:54

, but it's the only way to truly

13:56

fail is to give up . So

13:58

as long as you don't give up , you haven't

14:01

failed yet . You can keep moving forward

14:03

, and that's

14:06

how I was . My first interaction with , with , with

14:08

a local kind of tech community

14:10

, was with women who code , and that

14:13

is where I started to really see the impact

14:15

of what it could , what it could make for individuals

14:17

, but also for the community at large .

14:19

Hmm , how did you discover

14:21

that this tech

14:24

industry has such a concept

14:26

of communities and

14:28

that you can find local groups everywhere that

14:31

talk about all this ? I mean , if you're a lawyer

14:33

, I doubt there are communities

14:35

of lawyers meeting sometime in a bar

14:37

discussing something . How did you find

14:39

this out ?

14:41

Yeah , so I I'm an extroverted person

14:43

, I love making new friends and when I moved to

14:45

Atlanta I needed to do that . Here

14:47

I didn't know anybody . I moved here for my

14:50

parents lived here at the time , but I didn't know anybody

14:52

else and I actually just went on meetupcom

14:55

and was looking for anything

14:57

related to anything Like I

14:59

went to some like women's groups who

15:01

just like got together to do crafting . I

15:03

found a like a woman , like a lady

15:06

geeks meetup group who would do like D&D

15:08

meetups and go to

15:10

comfort , like go to barcades

15:12

and things like that , and I noticed that there

15:14

was also tech meetups and I was like huh

15:16

, okay , cool , like that's been something I'm interested

15:18

in , and so really it was

15:21

just my desire for any any

15:23

kind of , so even the social community that

15:25

led me to realize that there was tech communities

15:27

out there that did exist , and so thankfully

15:30

, I think it was just me being lonely

15:32

and being bored and wanting to kind of find people

15:35

in a new city and fortunately they

15:37

were out there and and we're very welcoming

15:39

, and from there I've gotten involved with

15:41

so many other communities because of that first

15:44

experience and seeing how impactful

15:46

it can be .

15:47

I'm so jealous . It took me , I think , seven

15:50

years into my career to realize

15:52

this . I was working for a giant company

15:54

back then and we had our

15:56

communities inside the company . I mean finding

16:00

, finding people like my new people

16:02

and talk together , but I didn't realize there was

16:04

a community out there . And and then came

16:06

meetupcom , and then I realized

16:08

as well that there were a lot more . But

16:10

it took a while . It really took

16:12

a while , and I can't imagine what

16:14

it would bring to a person just starting

16:17

to really be be engulfed

16:20

in this community and really support it

16:22

from right and left , and having people

16:24

of the same level and a bit a

16:27

bit higher , a bit a bit farther

16:29

, farther down the line and not say higher , and

16:31

having people to look at or to look to , and

16:34

so that must be fantastic .

16:35

So yeah , and as I've

16:37

gotten more involved in communities on

16:40

the other side , as an organizer and

16:42

, as you know , like leading chapters

16:44

. It's that stuck with me

16:46

and your story I think sex with

16:48

me as well and the importance of getting the word out

16:50

, because a lot of times people come

16:52

to an event and they're like , oh , is this your first event ? And

16:54

they're like , yeah , I had no idea this existed . You

16:57

know , I would have loved to have been coming to these

16:59

the entire time , and that just motivates

17:01

me more to say , okay , we need to get the word

17:03

out , we need to tell people know that

17:05

the support is there , these events are here

17:08

and you can find it because

17:10

, especially with remote work now , a lot

17:12

of people are really hungry for a community

17:14

and for that sense of camaraderie

17:17

and collaboration that they're not getting from their

17:20

day to day work , and so that's

17:22

a . It just kind of reminds

17:24

me , like you can never push , put the word

17:27

out too much . There's always going to , you're always going to find somebody

17:29

new .

17:30

Yeah , you need to find the right words . I

17:32

was co-organizing a conference a few

17:34

years back and we gave

17:36

out tickets to students to the local

17:38

university and say , hey , whoever wants to come , we

17:41

get something . Our five students coming and

17:43

I was . I was appalled by that and say why

17:45

? And I think it's just well

17:47

putting out a flyer , it

17:49

doesn't ring a bell , doesn't connect . You have to get there

17:52

, you have to start talking to people . And as soon

17:54

as I started talking to students , they opened

17:56

their eyes wide and say , of

17:58

course I'm coming , but we had to

18:00

bridge that gap first and we

18:03

never managed to do this with just information

18:06

blasting . It didn't work .

18:08

Yeah , you have to find developers where they

18:10

are right , and that's something

18:12

where and you have to understand too is like

18:14

, not every developer or every student or every

18:16

person is going to consume information in the same

18:18

way . And by identifying

18:21

all the different potential paths where

18:23

people could find out about things and discover things

18:25

, and catering to all

18:28

of those different potentials , like that's really as

18:30

I , for me , I find things

18:32

a certain way . I will go out and I will search for that

18:34

information . Not everybody will . Even

18:37

even when you think about things like teaching concepts

18:39

, right , like I , I like to read documentation

18:42

. I like to do things hands on . I

18:44

have a harder time watching videos , but a

18:46

lot of people do love watching videos . So

18:48

if I only ever did what works for

18:50

me , I'm missing out on

18:52

connecting with all of the people who do things a different

18:55

way . So it requires a

18:57

lot of putting yourself in other people's shoes

18:59

and thinking and asking them like

19:01

, how do you find things ? Like you did to me

19:03

like , how did you find out about this ? Like , how did you learn

19:05

about it ? And identifying

19:08

all those paths and those threads that you can pull

19:10

at .

19:11

I'm dropping a few years ahead

19:13

now , but that must be exactly challenging

19:17

for your job right now being a developer

19:19

advocate and having to really construct

19:21

multi-channel outreach

19:23

to really try to gather a representative

19:25

community .

19:27

Yeah , absolutely it's . And it's interesting

19:30

when you're working with

19:32

an existing community and looking to grow

19:34

that community and then when you're starting a community

19:36

from scratch and

19:38

there's two very , very different motions

19:40

. And it's , I feel , like

19:43

throughout my career , because I've been

19:45

very fortunate to be at three open source

19:47

developer tools with

19:50

Cyprus , replay and now Ionic , the

19:53

but they're very different types of

19:55

communities . They have some commonalities with

19:57

open source and with being developers

19:59

, but they are at very different stages

20:01

at the at the times that I was at those companies

20:04

, and so I've been able to see how it's

20:06

not always a copy paste , it's not always

20:08

a take this you know playbook

20:11

and apply it here . Community

20:14

is its own entity , it has its own personality

20:16

, it has its own way of doing things . Just

20:19

like how , whenever you're talking to an individual

20:21

developer , you can't just hit

20:24

them with the same talking points , that you

20:26

have to ask questions . And

20:28

I always approach every conversation

20:30

with an individual developer and

20:32

sometimes I'll talk to people and they say , oh , like , tell me , like

20:34

, sell me on Ionic , and I'll be like well , what are you

20:36

working on ? Like , what do you do ? I

20:39

can't . I need to know you first , and

20:42

you have to do the same thing with communities . You have

20:44

to say okay , why are you here ? What

20:46

type of support are you looking for ? Are

20:48

you looking to connect ? Are you looking to learn

20:50

? Do you need help ? Because you

20:52

know you don't have the support that you need . And

20:55

so I think you have to kind

20:58

of treat a community like it's its

21:00

own person , with its own personality , and

21:02

approach it that way , and so it's

21:04

been really fun to see the different iterations

21:06

of that .

21:06

For sure , Probably

21:09

we should , we should get there , but let's , let's

21:11

start right . You were in the , in the bootcamp

21:13

, having on one side the time

21:15

of your life , on the other side the biggest

21:18

regrets , and wondering

21:20

if you took the right decision . What

21:23

ensued in this was three months that led

21:25

to probably a job .

21:27

Yeah , so I mean I , it

21:29

really was high stress . Like I said , I don't

21:31

know if I'd recommend it for everybody . I think it's what worked

21:34

for me . Later on

21:36

in my life I was diagnosed with ADHD

21:38

and a lot of things that I look back makes sense . That

21:42

sense of having a deadline , having

21:44

that intensity , that that

21:47

really kind of motivated me to get through

21:49

it . But I was very fortunate , like

21:51

I said , this was , you know

21:53

, 2019 , it was still in person

21:55

. I started my

21:57

job search a little early and I did have some

21:59

things going for me that not every bootcamp student does , in that I

22:01

did have an undergraduate degree , I

22:04

did have an MBA and I

22:06

had previous experience kind of working

22:08

with websites , at least to some extent

22:10

. So I understood those concepts of deployment

22:12

and getting things out to users and

22:14

thinking about kind of a user experience

22:16

and so . But I did have

22:19

two offers when I graduated my bootcamp

22:21

after three months and

22:23

a lot of that , honestly , both

22:25

of them were from referrals and

22:27

from people that I knew ended up finding through my network

22:30

, and so , again

22:32

, the community kind of saved the day , I

22:34

think , in a way , because I definitely did

22:36

the apply , apply , apply to all the junior dev positions

22:38

that you can find , but

22:40

, ultimately , the first developer

22:43

position that I ended up taking was

22:45

a with somebody who had

22:47

seen my job search tweet on LinkedIn

22:50

I mean on Twitter and then

22:52

reached out on LinkedIn , sent me a message hey

22:54

, we're looking for somebody , and it

22:56

was a junior software developer position

22:59

at a really unique opportunity

23:01

, and that is where I started my development career working

23:03

. The

23:05

best part was , though , as I had just learned react

23:07

in my bootcamp and this was a

23:09

dotnet angular shop . I

23:14

was like , okay , I just learned JavaScript , got to learn C

23:16

sharp now , just learn react , got to learn angular

23:19

now , and then they're also

23:21

working with react native , so there was like a little bit of

23:23

overlap there , but react is not react native , so

23:27

so , yeah . So I was like

23:29

, okay , let's , let's keep the challenges rolling

23:32

, let's do this , and that

23:34

was . That was a great . I was a great experience

23:36

. It definitely , though , helped me get

23:39

a better sense of what type of work I

23:41

wanted to do long term . Again , I was still

23:43

tech is a very broad space

23:45

. I think a lot of people come in thinking

23:47

, okay , I have to be an engineer , or

23:50

this is like I'm going to learn , I'm going to do

23:52

front end . This is what I'm and they have a very kind

23:54

of narrow view of what it means to be in a

23:56

technical role and

23:58

that I had . I had the same conception to

24:00

. I was like I did a full stack engineering bootcamp

24:03

. By God , I'm going to be a full stack engineer

24:05

and , you

24:08

know , I think going through that initial

24:10

role helped me

24:12

to kind of formulate and see , oh wow

24:14

, like what's that team doing , what's this team doing ? Well

24:17

, what are the like ? Why did we do it this way , why did we

24:19

do it that way ? And being able to ask

24:21

a lot of questions and learn a lot about what real

24:23

world software development looks like

24:25

helped me

24:28

to kind of start to see the early shape

24:30

of what might what my career would eventually

24:32

be . Because

24:35

I was , you know , at the point where I was . I

24:37

got up to speed , probably about , you know , within the first

24:39

like two to three months , where I was actually at

24:41

that point just like doing tickets , doing tickets

24:43

, like doing doing some node scripts

24:45

to help automate some of our API interactions

24:48

. I had gotten comfortable

24:50

with the database , was kind of allowed to do

24:52

more things , push some stuff and so . But

24:54

I about like eight months

24:56

and I'm realizing , oh , I'm just kind of like

24:59

doing tickets and doing tickets , and doing tickets

25:01

and you know , I

25:04

didn't , I didn't have that 3am

25:06

, you know , feeling anymore it

25:09

wasn't the same , and so that

25:11

is when I kind of

25:13

started to again expand my horizons

25:15

a little bit more about , well , where do I

25:17

fit into tech and how can I use these

25:20

skills in a way where I

25:22

can combine a lot like some of the things that I'm

25:24

doing outside of my career in terms of , like

25:26

the communities I'm involved in and

25:29

still , and get that , get that feeling

25:31

, you know , get that feeling back right and

25:33

so , yeah , but

25:36

where you tempted at some point to bring

25:38

your financial

25:40

expertise into the mix and

25:43

combine this to . Yeah , so

25:45

I was . Initially I was . I was thinking about

25:47

, like , fintech companies , you know

25:50

, fintech startups , anything related to banking

25:52

or investment or insurance , and but

25:56

ultimately , like , especially in Atlanta , there's actually

25:58

a really big fintech scene here but

26:00

ultimately I think I would have probably still

26:02

run into that same kind of like altruism

26:05

feeling , lack of thereof

26:07

, because , if anything , I wanted to work on

26:09

financial literacy and financial education

26:11

, which isn't exactly a . You

26:14

know , like a VC hot button

26:16

, like topic of you know teaching

26:18

people how to you know how to budget and how to

26:21

like manage their money , but but

26:23

actually teaching everybody and not just people who

26:25

only have high net worth . And so I , yeah

26:28

, so I ended up kind of leaning away from that and

26:32

when I started at Cyprus

26:35

, I saw the magic

26:37

of what it can be like to work on

26:39

developer tools because

26:42

you are a part of

26:44

every single thing that the developers that use your tools are building

26:46

and

26:48

it feels it feels like a cheat code

26:50

because it's a like a

26:52

force multiplier . If

26:55

I can help somebody , like if

26:57

I help to make this tool better , than every single

26:59

thing that is built with that tool becomes better . And

27:02

we would get so excited , like we

27:05

found out that I think the NASA website was using

27:07

Cyprus to test their website and we're like , oh , like we're helping

27:09

NASA . This is so cool and like you

27:13

know everything from nonprofits , from like

27:15

cutting edge , like medical applications

27:18

, everything you get

27:20

to feel like you're a part of that in a way

27:22

. And that's

27:24

where I was like , okay , this

27:26

is , this is the juice , this is like I'm

27:28

getting the feelings now of this

27:30

is pretty cool to be able to have

27:33

that massive impact across

27:36

, like literally , like you know , millions

27:38

of projects right and

27:40

yeah , and that's so . That's when I started

27:43

at Cyprus and really fell in love with developer

27:45

tools and also with open source .

27:48

So what happened that led you to leaving Cyprus

27:50

at some point ? It sounds like a love story .

27:53

Yeah , it was , and I honestly I still love

27:55

the Cyprus community . I am they're having their

27:57

first or , like you know , I still talk

27:59

to a lot of them and like their events , that they have coming

28:02

up and I have a lot of friends there . But

28:04

I Cyprus was definitely

28:07

a proving ground for me and it was a learning

28:09

arena , like I learned probably

28:12

, I feel like five years , five

28:14

to 10 years worth of things and that to in

28:16

like the just over two years that I was there Because

28:19

of the stage that we were at . I was the first hire

28:22

on our success team , so I was working

28:24

directly with all of our Cyprus users . We

28:27

didn't have a community team at that point so I

28:29

was handling a lot of that function out function as

28:31

well , in addition to speaking about

28:33

Cyprus at conferences and events

28:35

, and so I was doing a lot of different

28:38

things and it forced me out of my comfort zone . I

28:41

remember where I had a conversation with

28:43

my , with one of the co-founders , and

28:45

we were integrating our team

28:47

with a brand new tool and it

28:49

was going to be a big . We had to all of our customer

28:51

data . It was like kind of like a CRM adjacent

28:54

type tool required a lot of database configuration

28:56

with our business database , and

28:58

he was like I want you to lead that project . And

29:00

I was like , oh , I'm not sure if I'm the best person

29:03

to do that . I don't have that expertise . And

29:05

he said , well , who would you recommend do it instead

29:07

? And I realized

29:10

, oh yeah , like there's no one else , like

29:12

there's no one to pass this to , I just

29:14

have to figure it out and make it work . And so

29:17

that really got

29:19

me in the mindset of , okay , yeah

29:21

, like we just have to run with things . I have to be super

29:23

uncomfortable , I'm going to have to learn new

29:25

things that I haven't done before and

29:28

and hope that it works out . And if it doesn't work

29:30

out , then trust that I can fix it . And

29:32

and even when working

29:34

on things that are customer impacting and working

29:36

directly with customers and answering their questions

29:38

, and so that was really

29:40

a massive period

29:43

of growth for me at Cyprus

29:45

, because I was given so much trust and

29:48

I was given so much agency where

29:50

I didn't feel like a junior developer . I didn't feel

29:53

like somebody early in my career . I

29:55

felt like somebody who was part

29:57

of the team and really helped pushing everything

30:00

forward , and they wanted my

30:02

opinion and they wanted even if it was bad

30:04

, they wanted to know what I thought , and

30:06

that was new for me and so

30:08

it really shaped me into

30:11

really like being much

30:13

more confident to try new things , to do things I'm

30:15

uncomfortable with , to be

30:17

, you know , to be the rain in the parade sometimes

30:20

and say , hey , like , have we thought about how this is

30:22

going to impact this ? Or , you know

30:24

, I don't know if this is going to work . Do we think about that

30:26

? And I think , if

30:28

anything , that is , those are the some

30:30

of the traits that I think took me from kind

30:33

of more of like a junior to somebody

30:35

who is more of a leader and being able

30:37

to make those high impact decisions

30:39

. But I

30:41

know you asked about why I left .

30:44

So great that along the way . So

30:46

that was good , you took that the way .

30:49

Yeah . So , as I mentioned , I started at

30:51

Cyprus on the success team and I was very customer

30:53

facing , but we didn't

30:55

have a community team , we didn't have a dev route team

30:57

, and so when opportunities arose of

30:59

, hey , we'd like somebody to talk about Cyprus

31:01

or do a workshop on Cyprus , I

31:04

would be the person to who could do that , especially

31:07

once we kind of got more

31:09

like the team , got a little bit bigger and I had been there for

31:11

a while and I was one of the most even after a year

31:13

and a half you're like the more senior person

31:15

as it's growing from 20

31:18

people up to over 100 . And so I

31:20

actually ended up developing an entire 20

31:23

hour workshop series that

31:25

I would use for our enterprise

31:28

customers and I did various workshops

31:30

out in the community and I

31:32

really at the same time , in tandem

31:35

, had been working with external communities

31:37

more like women who code and like out and out

31:39

and tech , and I

31:42

could feel that pool

31:44

of really wanting to do something that was more community

31:46

focused , unless maybe like customer facing

31:49

and but

31:51

the way that Cyprus was at the time , it just

31:53

there wasn't , the opportunity wasn't there

31:55

, and so I ended

31:57

up looking for that elsewhere and

31:59

, you know , found a different other companies

32:01

that I could work at , but I've always still

32:04

like love the Cyprus community , continued

32:06

to do some Cyprus talks and workshops

32:08

and answer questions around that , because it

32:11

was . It was a place where I met so many amazing

32:13

people and so many and they're solving really cool problems

32:16

. I think they . I think they still are so

32:18

, but that's where I ended up

32:20

, how I ended up at replay as a community lead

32:22

.

32:23

So how did you find

32:25

another tool in open source

32:28

to get your

32:30

, your , your , your , your vibes on

32:32

to that sounds like the planets

32:34

aligning .

32:37

I don't know , I'm so lucky , I don't know if I

32:39

somebody like , if I did something

32:41

like maybe I found a rabbit's foot along the way

32:43

or something like that but you know , I've

32:45

, I I've been embedded

32:48

or I shouldn't say embedded , but involved in really active

32:50

and engaged is maybe a better word with a lot

32:52

of different open source tools . So a lot of what I

32:54

would do to is talk about how Cyprus can integrate

32:56

with other open source tools , with the communities

32:58

that I've worked with , kind of contributing to different

33:00

communities , and so the open

33:03

source dev tools community is not small

33:05

, but it's also not too big , and so

33:07

typically , I'm always on the lookout

33:10

for new things and things that catch my eye

33:12

, and I actually found replay

33:14

of just you know , through social media

33:16

. Somebody had kind of mentioned it on

33:18

Twitter . I looked into it and I was

33:20

like , oh , this is like pretty interesting , like , oh

33:22

, cool , it's open source . Oh , wow , like another

33:24

kind of cool , unique problem , and I

33:27

like to joke that I really

33:29

love working on things that , like developers hate

33:31

like the hardest thing . So testing

33:33

everyone hates end to end testing , debugging

33:36

like people like you know , pull their

33:38

hair over debugging and deploying

33:40

mobile applications to app stores , which is

33:42

again like the most tedious process . I don't know

33:44

if I've ever been through and so it's

33:47

. I could kind of see that . Okay , cool

33:49

, this is a real pain point

33:52

and maybe a pain point is the better word versus

33:54

like things that devs hate , but it

33:56

was a real pain point and it was open source and

33:58

the product team was really cool and

34:01

the nice thing about the work that I had done

34:03

up to that point with my open source work

34:05

and then also with the community work that I had done

34:07

, is that it wasn't really an interview

34:10

process . It was more of a hey

34:12

, let's chat . Hey , like okay

34:14

, yeah , we've seen your conference talks , yep , we know your work

34:16

with Cyprus , like , we're familiar with all

34:18

of that . I've never had to do a technical

34:20

like algorithm test

34:22

or anything like that , because everything

34:25

that I do is pretty , is open source and

34:27

it's public and everything I do is out there , and so

34:29

I ended up being I could just kind

34:31

of a chat and then I ended

34:33

up making the leap . It was very tough decision

34:35

but I ended up making the leap to

34:38

replay with that , which at the time was a very early

34:40

stage startup , like earlier than Cyprus

34:42

was for me , so that

34:44

came with it's with . Yeah

34:47

, it was a very unique experience .

34:51

I feel there is some stuff to impact behind

34:53

the word unique .

34:55

Yeah , I mean . So I'm

34:57

a very transparent person , like anybody that I

34:59

talked to . Like replay for

35:02

me ended up being too early . I

35:04

am . I joined Cyprus

35:06

when it had , you

35:08

know , we were about 25 people and

35:10

it was like there was already a

35:13

very robust community at that point

35:15

. It was more about expansion of

35:17

the community and finding new audiences

35:19

versus starting from scratch . Replays

35:22

was very early and I just found

35:25

that with the way the types of skills

35:27

that I brought to the table was

35:29

the words necessarily the skill set that they actually

35:31

needed at the end of the day , but you don't know

35:33

that , right , when you're early in , right , you know

35:36

you don't necessarily know that in the early stage startup

35:38

because you have to be able to pivot so frequently

35:40

. And so I

35:42

have a lot of love for the team like I actually have

35:45

met , seen many of them in person at different events

35:47

because , again , open source DevTools not

35:49

big , not small . So and

35:51

there I left , I said

35:54

I know part of me is going to like

35:56

kick myself , because I know you're going to do great things

35:58

, and they really have . They've come out with some really

36:00

cool new tools in the testing

36:02

space and I'm really excited

36:04

to see what they continue to do there . But for for one

36:06

of the things that I could do well , I

36:09

didn't feel like I could do those things

36:11

well for them at that time , and so , and

36:13

again , these are all things that you learn along the way and

36:17

you have to be comfortable with that and that's

36:19

something that again , early in

36:21

my career , I was very much

36:23

a people pleaser , like yes

36:25

person . I struggled a lot with

36:27

feeling like I didn't belong there , which

36:30

meant I would do anything and everything

36:33

to keep from being you know , quote unquote discovered

36:35

and kicked out . I

36:38

felt that , oh , they're going to figure out that I'm not smart

36:40

enough , not technical enough , not whatever enough

36:42

, and so I need to say yes to everything

36:45

. I need to learn this , I need to learn everything

36:47

, and I ended

36:49

up doing a lot , a lot of work in

36:51

different areas . That maybe wasn't the most

36:53

productive work I

36:56

did still did do productive work as well but

36:58

I probably could have gotten away with doing maybe like 80%

37:01

of the work and it's would have been the highest impact

37:03

work right . And so I think , as

37:05

I've gone through my career , I've

37:07

been able to identify not

37:10

just always saying yes right off the bat , but

37:12

asking questions , challenging

37:15

a little bit , pushing back , kind of figuring out

37:18

, okay , is this really the highest impact

37:20

work that I could be doing with my time ? And

37:23

that happened actually at

37:25

Cyprus . There was something where I

37:27

, because of something that had that happened , I needed

37:29

to manually update like rows

37:32

and rows and rows and rows of some

37:34

data , and I was like

37:36

, all right , I'll just , you know , I'll just stay up late and I'll just knock

37:38

this out . And we realized is

37:40

like , okay , the solution is not Cecilia stays

37:42

up late and knocks us out . The solution is how

37:44

do we do this in a more automated

37:47

way ? How do we make sure this doesn't happen again ? And

37:49

I think I learned that if fires

37:52

keep happening I tend to like

37:54

to follow the chaos I'll throw myself

37:56

on the grenade , but if fires keep

37:58

happening , the answer is not buy more

38:00

fire extinguishers , the answer is get

38:02

the gasoline out of the building . And

38:07

so the nice thing was is that by the

38:09

time that I was at replay and

38:12

I do feel like I did a lot of really good , impactful

38:14

work there I was able to rewrite our documentation

38:17

. I did a lot of product work , I talked

38:19

to a ton of developers about their debugging experiences

38:21

and I did quite a few conference talks . But the

38:24

nice thing is , at that point I had learned hey

38:26

, am I doing like I'm working a lot

38:28

? I'm doing a lot of things , but is this the

38:30

most value for what the company needs

38:32

right now , yes or no ? And

38:34

it ended up being that the answer was no , and

38:37

you know they could , like it would

38:39

make it would make more sense to to

38:41

not to not like continue down that path . And

38:43

so I

38:45

learned a ton , though , about like it's

38:48

like , wow , I've , like I said , I've been so fortunate

38:50

to have been at series a stage

38:52

, then very early stage , like seed

38:54

stage , and then now at

38:56

Ionic , which you know

38:59

had been post a and has been

39:01

acquired . And so , seeing

39:03

the community development , seeing the business strategies

39:06

again what you would think are similar

39:08

, three open source developer tools being

39:10

incredibly different . But those

39:12

skills that I learned along the way , that

39:14

were not technical , that were not tech related

39:17

, but were related to being able to see

39:19

high impact problems , make decisions and feel

39:21

comfortable pushing up against that is

39:24

, I think , what had the most impact on my

39:26

career .

39:27

I love how , how the path

39:31

go right and left at some point . Come back

39:33

. I mean you haven't really talked

39:35

about journalism in . I haven't mentioned

39:38

journalism in your late career , but it's there

39:40

, and you mentioned a bit in financial

39:42

education . That would be there

39:44

as well . And now the community work that you're doing

39:47

. I'm sure there's tons of writing

39:49

, tons of of summarizing , tons

39:51

of asking questions , all kind of skillset

39:54

that you learned back then , and

39:56

I'm sure the financial

39:58

pieces are there as well . When you

40:00

talked , you didn't mention that which , when

40:02

you talked about kind of understanding the

40:04

systems and the modules and how things

40:06

are pieced together , I

40:09

kind of see the financial

40:11

person looking at a very complex

40:13

systems and seeing where the pieces fit etc

40:15

. So it's all coming together , I think , really

40:17

nicely .

40:19

It really does . And so I think , for

40:21

journalism , obviously , being able to communicate

40:23

, being able to talk to all kinds of people because I would talk

40:25

to senators and I would talk to , you know , the

40:27

guy who on the corner like you know , hey , what

40:30

happened with this robbery ? Kind of you know , we've been able

40:32

to navigate all those different types of conversations

40:35

. Obviously , writing is a big one , but

40:37

then from financial services , I think what actually

40:39

has helped me a lot is being

40:42

able to take complex concepts

40:45

and break them down . There's a lot of times

40:47

that you're working , so I'm trying to explain , you

40:49

know , a very complex investment vehicle

40:52

to somebody who's about to retire and

40:54

, you know , has . It was like a teacher , like has not

40:56

worked at all in finance , and so

40:59

at the end of the day , I feel like , really , I

41:02

, I love being an educator

41:04

, I love being a communicator , and

41:07

that just all happens to take place in

41:09

a technical field . I'm talking

41:11

to developers instead of , you know , retirees

41:13

, and I'm teaching about development

41:16

tools . But it's all engaging

41:18

with individuals is engaging with those communities

41:20

and being able to leverage

41:23

that communications and educational

41:25

skills .

41:26

Makes perfect sense . I

41:31

guess that's the best place to

41:33

stop this . I usually ask for

41:35

an advice and I'm short of an

41:37

advice , right ? I'm wondering maybe

41:39

if , if somebody was facing

41:42

the same challenge that you had

41:44

, feeling where I'm not at my place

41:46

right now . I don't feel

41:48

I belong where I'm . How

41:50

did you put it ? You didn't find

41:52

your juice , or to find your , your right , I'm

41:54

sure how you put it . But anyhow , your

41:58

answer to that was I quit

42:00

my job , I enroll in the boot camp , let's go

42:02

. Is this the advice you

42:04

would give ? Is there another advice you would

42:06

give to the person in this , in this situation

42:08

?

42:10

Yeah , I think the important thing is to

42:12

you have to be self aware , and that requires

42:14

work . You have to do some analysis about yourself

42:17

and figure out what it is

42:19

that will work for you . As I mentioned

42:21

, I later on was diagnosed with ADHD

42:23

, so I realizing , oh , that

42:25

juice that I need is what helps to motivate

42:27

me . I tend to work well in things that are deadline

42:30

driven , like journalism or like writing a talk

42:32

for a conference , and I like to learn

42:34

new things , and so I need new developer tools

42:36

and integrations and things to work on . So

42:39

I've been able to identify the things that work

42:41

well for me . But I would

42:43

say , do the work and kind of

42:45

being reflective on yourself and finding

42:47

what are your priorities , what

42:49

is like not just a role , not just

42:51

a title , not just a stack , but

42:54

at the , at the base , a more base

42:56

level , like what is it that you

42:58

get joy out of ? What

43:00

is it that you feel that

43:02

you could do for the next 20 , 30 , 40 , 50

43:04

years ? And and go from there

43:07

and figure out a plan to make that happen , because

43:09

I guess that every person is going to be different

43:11

. But you need to look in , look inward first

43:14

.

43:14

Why is move ? Thank you for that .

43:17

Maybe don't . Maybe don't quit your job . Just

43:19

yeah

43:22

, please don't take away also . So you told me to quit my job , so

43:24

that's there , you can link

43:26

back to your person just say hey hey

43:28

fantastic

43:31

.

43:31

Where would be the best place to continue the discussion with

43:33

you ?

43:34

Yeah , so I'm at Cecilia creates

43:36

, I'm on GitHub , I'm on Twitter

43:38

. That's also my threads username

43:41

, if you're into that . I haven't used it much

43:43

yet , but but , yeah , cecilia creates

43:45

is . You can find me pretty much on any platform

43:47

there . And yeah , and

43:49

also you know , and any of the various communities

43:51

, women who code out in tech and

43:53

then also in their , you know , ionic Discord as

43:56

well .

43:57

Anything else you want to plug in ?

44:00

I'll be at testjs summit in early December

44:02

in Berlin . It's one of my favorite conferences

44:05

because it is about testing

44:07

, but it's also a focus on the JavaScript

44:10

stack , so a lot about web testing . It's a really

44:12

great community . It's the first time that we're having the

44:14

event in person . I'm on the program committee as well

44:16

. So , I'm extra biased

44:18

, but I think we put together a really great

44:20

event .

44:21

So and I link to

44:23

all of that , including testjs

44:25

summit in the show . Thank

44:27

you so much , celia . It's been really

44:29

fun listening to it .

44:30

Sorry , yeah , thanks so much for

44:32

having me . It's been great .

44:34

And this has been another episode of the first journey

44:36

with each other next week . Bye

44:38

, bye . Thanks a lot

44:40

for tuning in . I hope you have enjoyed

44:42

this week's episode . If you like

44:45

the show , please share , rate

44:47

and review . It helps more

44:49

listeners discover those stories

44:51

. You can find the links to all

44:54

the platforms the show appears on on

44:56

our website devjourneyinfo

44:58

slash subscribe

45:00

. Creating the show every week takes

45:03

a lot of time , energy and

45:05

, of course , money . Would you please help

45:07

me continue bringing out those inspiring

45:10

stories every week by pledging

45:12

a small monthly donation . You'll

45:14

find our Patreon link at

45:16

devjourneyinfo slash

45:18

donate . And finally , don't hesitate

45:21

to reach out and tell me how this week's

45:23

story is shaping your future

45:25

. You can find me on Twitter and at teamathabinfo

45:31

at devjourneyinfo

45:34

. Talk

45:37

to you soon .