Randy is about to start a new job and has a number of opinions about the job search, hiring, negotiation process he recently went through. Don tries to play Devil's Advocate as the employer/hiring side, but Randy's not hearing any of it! Don uses coconuts as the example of currency and Randy somehow manages to quadruple the asking price for labor in the Hawaiian produce marketplace Don tried to set up.
Randy and Megan recently worked on a Single Page App and Megan learned how to use Cypress for integration/acceptance testing. Don and Randy discuss how Cypress works vs the old stalwarts, like Selenium. Automated testing for the win!
The show begins discussing setting up a product roadmap for AspirEdu, but things devolve when Don mentions he is considering swapping Wordpress for the marketing website with a static site builder. Randy thinks adding more developer dependencies is a bad idea and coins the term "Free-time Driven Development" (tm) and can't wait to make T-Shirts and Medium posts promoting the brand.
Don and Randy discuss the "New Microsoft" and how a change in leadership has led to a completely different experience with one of the largest technology firms in the World. We also take a road trip back to the early days of developing on the MS platform and laugh about how badly Steve Ballmer did with predicting the future. Bonus: Clippy gets a mention!
We have an exceptional guest for our 50th episode in Jess Szmajda, CTO of Axios, and we cover a whole lotta ground: From building "horrible PHP sites", to constructing retail tech teams from scratch, we then tackle the subject of taking on the role of CTO of a fast-growing media firm, being a trans CTO, and promoting a more diverse community in technology. Whew! We start out discussing the difference between a CTO and Director/VP of Engineering, title creep, and whether the idea of a "software a...
Don and Randy discuss the latest installment of the Chasms app saga. Don heads out to Denver for a sales conference loaded with potential customers of the Chasms text-to-chat system, but finds no takers. Further research finds a well-funded competitor, named after a dubious fruit. Is the Chasms project dead on arrival?
This week we review an old, but good, blog post by Andy Skipper named "Looking at the life of the CTO through the stages." We discuss our own experiences across these stages and the ones we haven't reached, yet. Randy also continues his rant on tech developer/manager hiring practices, so no surprise there!
After years of testing with Ruby on Rails and rspec, Randy never had quite the flow with testing on the JavaScript and Node side of things... until now. We discuss the value of testing with Node, Express, and in the context of Firebase Functions and why Randy is happier with TDD, or at least, Test Something, Sometime, Somehow development.
Over the past two decades of working in tech, the use of Continuous Integration (or CI) has become a mainstream approach to product development. Randy and Don discuss the systems they used before (or lack thereof), what they use now, and why Continuous Integration meets the hype.
Randy is working with a client that uses Pantheon for Drupal hosting and he loves the tools. After spending a good decade using cPanel on cheap hosts, the stability that WPEngine and Pantheon gives PHP developers the best hosting options around. The conversation moves into discussion of Heroku, as well.
We discuss business metrics, reporting, statistics, and how many of the numbers, without context, lack much value. Can your business deliver the Five Nines? Does it even need to? What kind of performance can you guarantee when upstream providers are involved?
Randy is diving back into the Chasms backend using Firebase Functions, which is written (by him) in Typescript. We discuss the ins and outs as to why Typescript was chosen, some pain points that cropped up along the way, Randy's attempt to rip it out, and ultimately why sticking with Typescript was necessary in this particular case. Alternative episode title: Typescript. Do I need this crap?
Don's firm is looking to hire a non-senior Python developer to help spread the workload of the engineering team. We discuss how he's writing up the job description, who he's really looking for in the role, and what kinds of skills the person must have to be effective in the role.
While continuing work on the Chasms app, Randy asks Don for his two cents on an approach to solving a document datastore (firestore) schema involving a many-to-many relationship. A discussion ensues to make sure the whole approach to the project is right.
A customer claims the service provided didn't meet expectations despite them choosing the more “economical” solution. Another client’s manager felt a contractor “yelled” at them, but the contractor felt they barely raised their voice. This week we talk about the human side of handling different opinions and trying to prevent problems like these in the first place.
Randy has started working on the Chasms project again, and after the previous episode with David Rogers, he chose to use (and learn) Vue.js to get it started. Don and Randy discuss the various libraries being used to build the app, along with some strategies for other folks to get started with the framework.
This week we talk about how we’ve hired consultants in the past, where we’ve failed, and the perspective of consultants that might help tech leaders understand who they’re hiring.
As a continuation to a previous episode, Don discusses why he's going to roll up his sleeves and handle a data-gathering project himself. He attempts to support his choice using a reference to a Liam Neeson movie quote and Randy begins berating Don with more Liam Neeson movie examples than is appropriate. Along the way, the discussion covers some good considerations about business management, outsourcing, training in-house, and how hand-on work can ruin actual job duty focus.
This week we discuss the various C-Level titles in the tech world: CTO vs CIO vs CDO vs others. What do folks with those titles tend to do and do the titles really matter? Also, Randy talks about his newest hobby: Kitten pictures!
We interview David Rogers (a.k.a Al-the-X) about his career path among the front-end frameworks and his latest roles for firms switching from Angular and Backbone to Vue. A very valuable discussion takes place about why both firms chose Vue.js against a "shootout" of Angular, React, Ember, and RxJS, and how aspects of Vue worked well for the switch.
Don's company ran into problems when their email provider, Mandrill, suffered a significant outage. Randy and Don discuss how they handle outages, prepare for switching to other providers (before or after failures), and how to go about communicating those issues to clients. Don debates whether using a scooter rental requires a helmet and Randy tells him to ignore his mother's advice. References are made to Matthew McConaughey, and we apologize, in advance.
Don follows-up with previous guest Megan Schemmel, who is learning how to be a full-stack web developer. They talk about how she went from being a non-developer to knowing HTML and CSS, launching websites with Wordpress, picking up skills in accessibility, and what she's learned about JavaScript so far.
Following up on another Elon Musk communication, we discuss the side effects of working too many hours, burning out, and how you might be guilty of causing extra-hour angst with only a simple email sent after work.
We begin talking about the career aspirations of sports officiants (tennis gigs) and upcoming technology projects Don wants to tackle, but it slowly morphs into a discussion about outsourcing, build/buy, and trying to maintain perfection simply because you have Subject Matter Expertise in a particular area (yes, the code stuff). The result was a great episode about self-reflection as you try to figure out what your role should be as you climb the management ladder, while still loving to build ap...
Don is setting up goals for AspirEdu for 2019, which takes us into a discussion about how to set up big projects and campaigns for small firms that have lots of small tasks to get done at the same time. How do you get executive buy-in, maintain momentum, and prevent project goals from fading away amongst other distractions?
Randy has a possible conference presentation coming up in the next few weeks, so he gets Don to listen to the outline and poke some holes in the outline. Along the way, they discuss what Firebase Authentication is, why it's a worthwhile consideration for app builders, and what Randy needs to research to fill in the blanks.
As we move into 2019, Randy and Don discuss a new meetup concept they aim to create called Tech, Managed. With goals to build upon the growth of the CTO Think and This Old App audience, the Tech, Managed meetup will create a learning space for managers and founders to learn about technology at a management level.
About a year has passed since we last spoke to Mark Thompson about his journey through a solo developer application build for TotallyStrong.me using the new framework, Flutter. This week we talk about missed deadlines, family focus, Flutter achievements, and the upcoming launch (finally!) of the TotallyStrong.me app. A great episode for those folks trying to build their own way.
Don and Randy discuss a recent exploit that came to light in the Kubernetes container framework that seemed to fade off as a widespread concern. This leads to a discussion about how much diligence is required by technology managers regarding the risks posed by distributed services, such as AWS, Heroku, and even small players, like Honeybadger. At some point, Randy compares Bernie Madoff to AWS and completely takes things off the rails.
Don has an idea for a building a watch app to service American football referees and discusses with Randy whether the concept is viable for a build. Randy provides the customary ref jokes and insults in addition to playing Devil's Advocate with the idea. In the end, the question arises: Are watches and watch apps really a thing?
