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 podcast, for those of you new listeners, welcome. 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. 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, Builders in Singapore. If you find this episode valuable, it would mean a lot to me.
If you can share this with your friends, your colleagues, your social media. Also, if you haven't, please subscribe. And follow this show wherever you get your podcast from and leave your valuable rating and review. So that these podcasts It can be service to more people who can then benefit from it. Thank you again for tuning in. Stay safe and healthy and I'll see you next time.