Vidya Srinivasan is an engineer, speaker, and singer, who works as a program manager at Microsoft and holds bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science.
When she's not on the job, Vidya stays busy with tech-related volunteering and activities. She loves to hack-for-good, and has won multiple awards at the Microsoft One Week hackathons. She has been part of the Grace Hopper Conference leadership since 2014 and regularly speaks about tech at various conferences and presentations.
Vidya is also passionate about music and her family. She holds a degree in Indian classical music and performs with Seattle bands to raise funds for nonprofits. When she recently became a new mom, she added time with her daughter to her busy schedule--and carried on doing the other things she loves as well!
In our conversation, I speak with Vidya about how she's balanced her career and passions with her experiences of pregnancy and parenthood. She gives advice on juggling responsibilities, staying involved in activities, and being transparent with your colleagues and company while starting a family.
See the full show notes on the Learn to Code With Me website.
Thank you to this episode's sponsors:
Allan Leinwand is the CTO at ServiceNow. Over his career, he has built a reputation for managing the world’s most demanding clouds.
In his role at ServiceNow, Allan is personally responsible for overseeing all technical aspects and guiding the long-term technology strategy for the company. He is involved in building and running the ServiceNow Enterprise Cloud--the second largest enterprise cloud computing environment on the planet.
During college, Allan knew he wanted to be involved in tech, though he wasn't sure in what specific capacity. His first post-graduation job was at HP, where he fell in love with computer science and networking. He then worked at Cisco, and now ServiceNow, where he has delved more into machine learning and cloud computing.
In our conversation, we talk about how Allan pursued a career in tech leadership, the difference between AI and machine learning, what to do if you want a career in machine learning or technical leadership, and more.
See the full show notes on the Learn to Code With Me website.
Thank you to this episode's sponsors:
Lillian Pierson is a freelance data scientist for SMEs and entrepreneurs, as well as a trainer, speaker, and coach for people who want to get into data science and analytics.
Before she got into data science, Lillian worked in engineering. However, her interest in the tech space began early: she started teaching herself basic code in sixth grade, and always enjoyed working with data. When she decided on a career change, data science was the natural choice.
Lillian is also the author of Data Science for Dummies and the founder of Data-Mania, the company through which she offers data training services to professionals seeking career advancement. She works remotely as much as possible, which allowed her to move overseas to Thailand, where she's currently living the island life with her family.
In today's episode, we discuss freelancing as a data scientist, how to manage remote work and travel, the importance of building your personal brand, and more.
See the full show notes on the Learn to Code With Me website.
Thank you to this episode's sponsors:
Bill Sourour is the founder of DevMastery.com, the founder and president of technology consulting firm Arcnovus, and a frequent consultant for the Canadian government.
Through DevMastery, Bill offers a weekly newsletter full of tips and resources to help developers program better and advance their careers. Bill has 20 years of experience as a programmer and architect, which he uses to help both individual developers and large organizations as a teacher and consultant.
Bill's secondary passion was for acting; after studying theatre at Concordia University, he balanced both pursuits for years until he decided to fully commit to his tech career.
In today's conversation, we talk about the early days of Bill's career balancing his tech and theatre passions, how he got into consulting and started a business, his advice for people who want to work freelance, his goals for helping developers with the DevMastery newsletter, and more.
See the full show notes on the Learn to Code With Me website.
Thank you to this episode's sponsors:
Bridget Kromhout is a DevOps professional with a passion for giving back to her community.
In her professional working life so far, Bridget spent 15 years as an operations engineer, and now works at Microsoft as a Principal Cloud Developer Advocate.
Her spare time is full of tech-related and volunteer activities: she leads the worldwide conference organization Devopsdays, runs community tech events in her home city of Minneapolis, co-hosts the Arrested DevOps podcast, and frequently participates in tech conferences as both a speaker and committee member.
In our conversation, Bridget talks about how she worked her way through college, what the day-to-day of being a tech advocate looks like, her experiences attending, chairing, and speaking at tech conferences, and the various side projects she's involved in to do her part in helping others.
See the full show notes on the Learn to Code With Me website.
Thank you to this episode's sponsors: