P2P Podcast Series: Julia Miller from Analyst to Engineer
Today, Julia Miller (LinkedIn, Blog) is a Software Engineer building the orchestration platform for Machine Learning workflows at Zalando, a public online fashion retailer based in Berlin.
She joined Zalando first as a working student, while studying business mathematics. It was such a good fit that they were her first choice after graduation. Julia started as an analyst, shifted to product manager, and finally decided to go full developer by attending an Ironhack bootcamp over sabbatical.
In our chat, we talk about joining the right company, finding the right teams, natural networking, product engineers, and leaning into joy.
This episode is packed with insights about:
- going broad before going deep
- how she creates her own luck with simple acts
- speaking up for what matters (your leads may surprise you)
- how Zalando created a new upskilling program for women based on Julia's journey
Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Overcast, or your favorite platform.
Zeke Arany-Lucas is a developer, leader, and consultant from Seattle, living and working in Berlin since 2014. He has been in tech industry for more than 25 years, starting with web browser development in the 90s, including long stints at both Microsoft and Amazon in multiple leadership roles. You can also follow him on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.
Artwork by Emre Aydogan & Laura Diezler — ©️2022 Zeke Arany-Lucas
Read the full transcript
Zeke: Hi, uh, welcome to The Introspective Developer. My name is Zeke Arany-Lucas. And, uh, today I have a cool show. I'm meeting Julia Miller, and Julia Miller is a developer at Zalando. Um, she has an interesting story cuz she actually changed jobs within Zalando. Um, so welcome to the show, Julia.
Julia: Hi! Thank you very much. Thanks for having me here.
Zeke: Yeah. Um, just to get started, can you tell me a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Julia: Yes. So currently I am a fullstack, uh, developer at Zalando. Um, I am working on tools that we provide to our machine learning guys, internally, people not guys. Um, and I'm doing that for around two years.
Zeke: Okay. So you've been a developer for two years.
Julia: Yes. A little bit more, but roughly two years
Zeke: So I, the first question I have, um, what job did you have before you were a developer?
Julia: Yes, that is kinda a longer story. So I'm with Zalando for over six years now and it's my third job family. So, I studied business mathematics. And then I, after my masters, I started to work for Zalando as a business analyst. And sometime like a year later, I switched to product management and that was my first encounter with IT. And then I did that for around three years and then I switched to engineering.
Zeke: What triggered the first switch?
Julia: It was kind of funny. So, um, I can, I can go even one step before that, how I ended up, uh, working for Zalando in the first place,
Zeke: Yeah, please.
Julia: this is also, I, I think it's kind of an interesting detail. Um, so I studied business mathematics and bachelor, and my master's degree was about, um, financial services and risk management. So no one could predict that I would end up at Zalando because Zalando does not do financial services, but, uh, while I was studying, I kinda. Was very curious about different kinds of companies. So I looked into a consulting and into a bank and into an insurance as a working student or doing an internship.
And also at some point I used to work for half a year as a working student for Zalando. Back then it was logistics, uh, analytics, logistics operations analytics, something like that. And I really loved it there. It was a young company. Uh, the atmosphere was great. Uh, the questions that like the problems that we worked on were super interesting.
And when I finished my studies, I was, it was kinda hard to decide where to go and where to have your first real job. And by that time, I realized that I don't want to be part of that financial system that we have because there are so many things I hate about it. And I remember like, Hey Zalando was kind of cool.
And I looked for the job offers they had, and there was this business analytics job. And I'd had no idea what I'm gonna do there. I just went to the interview, I met my first, uh, lead at Zalando and he was amazing and we instantly had a connection. So during the interview, I kind of forgot to ask what I'm gonna be doing there.
On my first day when I joined, I just came to work and was like, okay, dude, show me what you got. Then, and then it,
Zeke: So you applied Zalando without applying to a job description. I did that too once. Yeah.
Julia: Yeah, basically. Yeah, business analyst sounded good enough
Zeke: Yeah, totally. I actually, when I applied to, Forto, um, I was actually just talking to the, the VP of engineering and the, um, senior person in product, beforehand. And then scheduled the interview, had a, you know, really good connection and then scheduled the interview, went for the whole loop.
And at the end of the loop, I thought that I had been applying for like some sort of director role. But then I was all like, after the loop, I was like, I don't think I was interviewing for a director role. And so I had to go back to the VP of Eng.
And I'm like, so I had a pretty good time in the interview, what job was I interviewing for?
And he's all like, oh, that doesn't really matter. He's like, I think we, you know, I think you're, you'll be a good fit, a good asset for the company. We'll figure that out after you've joined. I was kinda like, huh, interesting.
Did. So did it work out, did you end up finding, were you in, was the job that you got when without knowing it, was it a good?
Julia: Yeah, yeah. So it was a good one. Um, we were responsible for basically like optimizing some internal processes.
And it wa like for the first experience in the real job, it was really cool. I really liked the team. I liked the people that I was working with. I liked the, the problem statements.
But then it somehow happened that we had in our team, an internal software, um, that other employees at Zalando were using with some data and some forecasts and some actions that you could take inside of that.
[00:05:44] "Helping out" can become a new career path
Julia: And the product manager of this tool was also part of our team. And he was like the, the single responsible person for this tool. And since I just joined and I did not have. A lot of responsibilities yet. I had some time to help him out. So I started helping him out in product management and somehow another like healthy year later, I realized that this is currently the main thing I'm doing.
And the users come to talk to me. And the engineers started to come talking to me when they had questions. And then when that product manager, uh, left for another department, my, our VP at that time came to me was like,
Hmm. Somehow it happened that you are the only person who knows what's going on there and you already are doing the job. Do you maybe wanna call yourself a product manager as well? Since you're doing that?
And I was like, yeah, yeah. I kinda like what I'm doing. Let's call it, like, let's call the baby by the name. Let's call me a product manager. Uh, so I joined the job without knowing anything about it. I didn't read by that point of time, I didn't read a single book about product management.
I just like, started doing it. And then when we started to call me a product manager officially, then I was like, okay, I need some like theory base. And I went to a training for product management and I read like whatever, tons of books and articles and started to get better in this and started to really like, understand how I'm doing things and why we are doing things and stuff like that.
Zeke: I love that. I mean, just dive right in and then backfill the knowledge that you need.
Um, so when I started my career, Microsoft was very engineering led just kind of across the board. All the managers were engineers first.
And I remember kind of product people kind of very slowly kind of trickling in.
And I even now, I think most of the time when I meet product managers, you ask them, you know, how did you become a product manager? Their story is kind of similar to yours.
Like they were started off as an analyst, or they started off as a developer, or they started off as a business manager or something like this. And they ended up kind of, you know, sideways moving into product management.
Julia: I don't think I know a single product manager and I know a lot of them, obviously, I don't think I know a single one where this was the first job. Where it was from the beginning, it was like, okay. I am applying now as a product manager for my first job in my career.
Zeke: Is there like even a particular school training that would be product management? Hmm,
Julia: By now, by now there is by now, I think you can even like get a degree, like a bachelor degree in something like that. At least some like, at least at some universities, but this is like very new and I have no idea how their curriculum looks like. . Yep.
Zeke: It's interesting. Cuz that means that basically everybody in product management or mo many people in product management are, uh, you know, career jumpers. Right. Um, you know, whereas that's a lot less common in developers and it gets to, you know, you're actually made another career jump obviously to becoming a developer from a product manager.
How did you do that?
Julia: Yes. That was another kinda interesting part. Um, so. I started working as a product manager. And in the beginning, I just had like a team of two engineers and their engineering lead, uh, because the product was already there and it was basically just about maintaining it and like improving it in a small details.
Um, but then few months after I started, um, my first move was to write a document, um, about how we need to build this thing from scratch again, because of reasons like business opportunities, whatever.
And it was convincing enough for our VP and he read it and he was like, yep, that totally makes sense. We gotta hire a team of engineers and give it to you. And then you're gonna do that.
I was like, okay, I was not actually implying that I'm gonna do that because I have no idea how to. And he just said like, yeah, you're a fast learner. You gotta figure it out. I trust in you. Like let's do that.
And then they hired a team of engineers and, uh, we really started building it and it was super cool to build like something new from scratch with super motivated, smart people.
Zeke: What were you building?
Julia: Basically like a new version of this internal software. That, uh, few hundred people at Zalando were using to optimize, um, the, our assortment, something like that.
Zeke: Sorry, optimize what? Ah,
Julia: to optimize our assortment, like the stuff that we're selling. We had people who were responsible for like different parts of the assortment. Like, for example, I don't know. Men's shoes or women accessories or kids clothes, and they needed data and some like actionable stuff, um, for improving the assortment for choosing the right stuff in the right amount, selling it to the right price. Is this a tool to kind of predict demand? Is it a demand prediction tool?
Part of that, part of that, like the it's much more than that, but part of that is also predicting, uh, or showing the forecast for the demand to the people who are responsible for it.
Zeke: So were the users then the buyers. So like the internal buyers?
[00:11:58] One form of luck is support from your team
Julia: Yes, partially. Yes. Um, yeah, so we started building it and I started to get more interested in the technical part of things, because I mean, I'm a technical, like I'm a, I'm a tech person. I studied mathematics. I knew a little bit of programming from what I did during my studies. So I got interested. And luckily, like that was the first moment where I got super lucky.
I have different experiences or I've heard different stories, um, of the situation where a product manager starts to get interested in the tech stuff. And the engineers get annoyed by that. I got super lucky. My engineers, like the engineers working in the team that I was working with, they were super supportive. They thought it was super cool that I'm trying to understand the technical details of what they are doing. And they encouraged me to do more.
And at some point we had like at Zalando, we have like a yearly evaluation rounds. Where you collect feedback from your peers and from your leads and from your customers or users. Um, and then your lead kind of summarizes that and presents it to you.
And in that evaluation thingy back then, you had to tell what's like good about what the person is doing and where are like the improvement areas. And in that year, the only thing that I had on my improvement areas was coming from my engineers and was like,
Yeah, we would. Um, so we would be very happy if Julia would get more time, uh, that she could invest into learning about this technical stuff.
And they came to me and they were like, okay, here I am the person who wrote that. Um, and it's not because you don't know things, or we think that you don't understand enough. But we thought it would be like a good point for you, if you could argue with that, that you're spending more time on learning about tech.
And I, oh my God. You manipulative people, I love you for that, thank you very much. Because it was actually a good selling point. So started first for the first year. I think I was just doing like online courses. I'm a good like self-taught person. Like I can learn by myself. Um, so I was doing some online courses in my free time or a little bit also during the working time. And it was super fun and I loved it.
Zeke: What, what kinds of, what kinds of classes were
Julia: There are tons. I can share a list with you later, if you want. There are like tons of websites that are offering just like introductory courses for JavaScript, for Python, for, um, I think I also did a react one because I wanted to touch like a little bit of everything. Um, and they are extremely easy to follow and you get like a piece of theoretical knowledge and then you can immediately try it out.
So it was fun and it didn't feel like effort. It felt
Zeke: was just curious where, where your focus was, right. Were you like, oh, I'm learning about frontend stuff or you're gonna go dig into like ML or you're gonna say, oh, I'm gonna learn Scikit Learn from and in Python or, you know, Jupyter notebooks. I mean, there's just so many places, so many areas to focus on.
And so I was curious which ones were holding your attention?
[00:15:43] Is being a generalist really an issue?
Julia: You are pinpointing my biggest kinda issue of all times. I'm a generalist and everything is so interesting and so tasty and I just want everything. So.
Zeke: I love generalists. I'm also a generalist.
Julia: I was never able so far to figure out, okay, this is THE one area where I wanna go really deep.
So before I joined, uh, engineering, when I was a product manager was like, okay, I wanna know a little bit about that. And a little bit about that. And this is also fun, and this is also cool. So I was jumping around and just trying out stuff. Um, and then at some point I realized, my second problem is I'm an extrovert and I love people and I'm a very social person. And it got, at some point it was getting harder and harder to find the time to continue to do this online courses on my free time, because pretty much in my normal state, four or five evenings during the week are blocked with some social activity, meeting a friend, going to a cinema, going to eat something with a group of friends, like something like.
Zeke: healthy.
Julia: It is, but I also wanted to have time to look into this technical stuff. So at some point I figured, okay, if I cannot combine it in a really good way, and I really want to get deeper into it, I gotta do that full time. And I discovered that there are this coding camps and there were some of them also offered in Berlin.
And somehow I went to my lead and I told him that I want to take a sabbatical. Because Zalando is offering sabbaticals. And I thought it's like a good idea, uh, for, um, nine weeks. And he got curious and he asked me what I wanna do in my sabbatical. And I told him that I want to take a, uh, like I wanna go to a coding camp and I wanna learn programming. for whatever reasons he got super excited about this. He was like, oh my God, this is such a great idea because I also, um, like argued that, that would also make me a better product manager, if I know what my engineers are doing, and I can like talk to them on the same level of technical understanding, or at least like some kind of level of technical understanding.
And he got super excited and his first reaction was, this is amazing how you gonna pay for that? Because that stuff was also pretty expensive back then. I was like, I have no idea now right now, I'm probably gonna like, lend, like, I don't know, borrow some money from friends and then paid off. I, I, I, I'm not true yet.
And he was like, okay, hold your horses. Let me try and figure out if the company can pay for it.
Zeke: Wow.
Julia: Okay. I did, like, I did not ask for that. I did not imply that in any way, but I love you for asking that question and saying that, thank you very much. And he went on and he really managed to, uh, convince our management that this is such a great idea, and the company paid for it.
And the only thing that like the only string attached was that I had to sign like an educational agreement where the company would pay for this course, and I would promise to stay with Zalando for another year. I were like, I was not planning to leave within the next year, anyway, as you can see, I'm still there.
Uh, so yes. Oh my God. Where do I sign?
Um, so this was like super surprising and super amazing. And that was the second time where I got super lucky and the company paid for it. So I took like unpaid leave, sabbatical. But at least I didn't have this. What was it? Six K at that point of time, it's a lot of money for me.
And that's how that happened. And then I went to this. Yeah. You
Zeke: I was just gonna say the, the incredible thing about this story is the amount of consistent support that you've gotten from Zalando.
Um, but, but the thing that impressed me was that you, in that first experience, you had such a positive connection to the company and the culture, that you, you know, when you had a chance to go, you know, find your first job, you, their first choice was to go back to this company without knowing what you're gonna do and just say, do you have a spot for me?
[00:20:32] Find a team that wants to grow with you
Zeke: And then once you get in there and they find a spot for you, you know, you work and they, they actually say, Hey, this is a great person to have on our team. As she grows, we grow with her. Uh, I mean, that's incredible. I mean, they're really supporting your, you know, own development.
I mean, you basically, you become the canonical product engineer. There's this term now, right. Called a product engineer. Have you heard this?
Julia: No, not yet.
Zeke: Oh yeah. Um, uh, I, so I think it's just kind, it's starting to migrate into the, the general consciousness, but it's these engineers who have an awareness of the product side of their, the product thinking that goes into building code.
So you're not just saying, oh, this is what I'm, I'm not just building my component. I'm, I'm building it in the, in the context of what my customers care about. Right. So the same way that product managers are, you know, kind of a relatively late comer to software. I think that now that we're talking about the product engineers is almost looping back in and
Julia: Yeah, it is definitely, it is definitely an advantage to know both sides. Definitely. I, I felt it for the past two years, big time. Um, wanna cycle back to support from everyone?
Zeke: Yeah. Yeah, no, totally. You got, you got more support. That's what you're gonna tell me is there's even more coming.
Julia: Yes, this is basically just the, the tip of the iceberg. Uh, and obviously the, the main point where I got super lucky, because this was also I think on your question list where I got lucky in, in what parts, and this is like the biggest one. Um, so I got lucky that Zalando paid for this. And I took a year, almost a year of preparation to prepare my team to work for like over two months, uh, without a product manager, um, everything was sorted out.
So I went to this coding camp, um, and at that point of time, the thought was really to become a better product manager,
Zeke: Mm-hmm
Julia: Not to become an engineer. And the coding camp itself was such an amazing experience. Yes. I had maybe 20 peers with me there. And, um, I was doing it at Ironhack and they had a pretty cool strategy of how they selected people.
[00:23:01] Bootcamps are not for everyone, they are exhausting
Julia: So you really had an interview and some kind of pre-work and they were only taking money from people who were full into this were like completely committed to this experience to managing it, to completing it. Um, and this was super cool and super important because it was hard.
It was the hardest learning experience I had in my entire life, because for nine weeks you would start at nine in the morning. and if you were lucky, you would end at nine in the evening, usually more like at 11, and then you would spend additional 10 to 15 hours on the weekend because there is something you want to read up on and here is something you didn't try out yet. And there is something you didn't fully understand and you want to really understand it before the next week is starting.
So it was super exhausting on the one hand, but also was a lot of knowledge compressed into this nine weeks.
And after I finished that, I came back to work as a product manager, and I worked as a product manager for another few months until I realized, okay, I really missed it. I miss doing engineering for the whole day and I really wanna try it out. And then I did the last like sanity check. Um, I thought, okay, maybe I don't want to switch careers. Like I, maybe I don't want to switch the job role. Maybe I just got bored in the team because like, the topic that I'm working on for the past three years is the same. I know it in and out. I know every detail. Maybe it's just that.
So I thought, okay, let's do the last sanity check. Let's go do another product job and see if that would already be satisfying enough. Um, I went to a completely different topic. I went to a team that was dealing with data governance.
Which is a huge and very interesting topic, and. I work with the team for nine months. And we introduced a data catalog for the whole company, which was like a big project and also super interesting.
But after half a year of that, I was like, Nope, I really wanna code. And I wanna be paid for coding. So I went to my lead and I told him that, and we made an agreement. Um, and the deal was, um, I had basically three months to deliver a, a pilot that we were working on.
And if I would find a team within this three months, that would take me as a junior without having any prior experience in coding, then I'm free to go. I was like, okay, that's a fair deal. So for the next three months I was interviewing internally. I basically first talked to every engineer that I knew from all the years at Zalando and was asking people like, Hey, do you know a team that is doing something cool and that you think is able to raise a junior to take care of a junior.
[00:26:41] Searching for a team by networking internally
Zeke: Hmm.
Julia: And people started recommending me teams and leads and like other engineers. So I was in just writing to them and inviting them for a coffee and telling them the story like, Hey, here I am, I can do this, this and that. And I want to become an engineer. Would you take me? And then with six teams, I had really like formal interviews with some life coding with some like technical discussions.
And from those six teams super surprising for me, four of them offered me a job and we were like, yeah, You don't have much experience and yes, you have a lot to learn, but your eyes are glowing when you are talking about that. Stop, teach you everything, just like join. And then problem was to pick one of those four teams because they were all amazing.
And they were all doing interesting stuff. And I picked the team that I am still with. And it was in like the, the only right choice and the only right decision. And the reason why I picked this team was kinda simple. In every other team when I was going, uh, like when I was doing the interviews with them, at some point they would ask me, uh, whether I want to become a frontend or a backend engineer. And I was super honest, and I said, I don't know. I did not try any of both. I have no idea. I wanna try it out and then decide.
And the team that I joined, the lead of that team during the interview did not ask me that question. But he said like, by himself, without me touching that topic, he was like, yeah. So, um, my plan for you would be that for the next three years, you get to touch everything. We have a backend in Python, we have a frontend in JavaScript and React, and we are doing a lot with, uh, AWS services because we are building tools for machine learners and our infrastructure is built on top of AWS services.
So you gotta touch everything. If you want, you can also touch machine learning. And then after three years we have a talk and you tell me whether you want to specialize in something or whether you wanna stay a fullstack. And I was like, oh, I, God marry me.
Zeke: That's crazy cool. I mean, they really saw you for what your potential is, right?
[00:29:22] Tell leads what you want, maybe they support more than you think
Zeke: So after the Ironhack, which was very intense, immersive, right. Um, but I dunno, maybe this is just me, but a lot of times after I'm like learning such intense skills, I have to use them right away. Or they, they start to kind of fade back.
Did you have a problem keeping yourself sharp for those?
Julia: I got lucky there too. I'm a very lucky person. so, um, One of the engineers that I was working with at that time. Uh, his name is Morgan Roderick. Uh, while we were working together, we became friends. And when I came, like when he was also the person who encouraged me to spend more time on tech and to do this coding camp, um, and when I came back from the coding camp, we were, I think we were just drinking some wine on my balcony and talking, and I was telling him that I'm not quite sure whether I want to really switch to engineering, but I really would like to keep practicing because exactly of what you just said, because I'm afraid to lose all the knowledge that I
Zeke: mm-hmm
Julia: And this amazing person offered me to become my mentor. And this is now three years ago. And for the past three years, We were having a call at least once a week. Sometimes we meet in person. Sometimes it's just zoom and we are coding together. We have like a little site project, um, that is basically like a, um, URL, shortener and Q generator that we build ourselves and everything that I knew when I was joining engineering, I basically knew from him.
He taught me about, uh, clean code. He taught me about how to, how to meet architecture decisions, how to investigate, what technology to use. Um, with him I learned how to work with another engineer on the same project. And this is how I did not lose my knowledge over the year from the coding camp till I joined, uh, engineering. And we are still doing that.
[00:31:54] Mentorship doesn't count enough towards promotion
Zeke: That's super cool. I mean, that's a really long term, uh, mentorship. I'm gonna ask you kind of something sideways here, but did he get a promotion during that time?
Julia: I don't think he got a promotion during that time, no.
Zeke: But for this long term stuff, it means that he's getting something significant out of it too. So I wouldn't be surprised if his growth trajectory is increased, you know, especially if you're, if you're challenging him asking good questions, then he has to realize like,
What is it that I know? What is it that I can share? How does that work?
Julia: Yeah, right now he's leading a team, uh, at Pleo and in one of the conversation, he also told me that he can apply some of the things that he learned while working with me while mentoring me while growing me from a, I have no idea person. To a middle, middle level engineer, and that he can apply that in his current work. Yes.
Zeke: Yeah, cuz that's, that's what I would assume.
Julia: Yeah. And maybe also, obviously over that time, we became really, really close, good friends.
Zeke: Yeah.
Julia: then that.
Zeke: Yeah. Um, so you talked about getting lucky in these different things, and definitely, obviously luck was playing some of a role here, but some of this luck you, you created for yourself. I mean, you didn't, it didn't just fall on you. Right. Um, what are some things that you think that were helping to create this luck?
What are some of the things you did? Hmm.
[00:33:25] Create luck by asking and listening with kindness
Julia: I think, there are two main points. One, I am a very curious person and I'm asking questions. And the most knowledge I got was because I asked stupid questions and I met people who enjoyed explaining stuff and I was a good listener and they enjoyed explaining stuff to me because I was a good listener. And because I asked them follow up questions.
So this is like one part of that being curious. and the second part is probably about being kind to people. So with pretty much every person I used to work with, I had a good relationship, not because I was trying to create a good relationship, but because I generally am interesting, interested in people and I genuinely like people and I feel it.
And so whenever I needed help, like I got, I got such an incredible amount of support when I decided that I want to switch careers. And then when I decided that I want to be like to start interviewing for an engineering job and I started talking to, again, pretty much everyone, I knew at Zalando and also like I have engineers in, uh, the group of my friends and everyone. Every single person that I talked to, and it was probably like a hundred in the end, every single one of them tried to help by sending me, uh, resources, like sending me articles, books, podcasts, YouTube videos, whatever on how to prepare for an interview. So many people offered to make, to, to, to do like, um, a fake interview, like a mock interview with me to prepare me for that. So many people sent me contacts of other people that might be helpful or might have a open position in their team.
And this, you, you don't, you probably don't do that for a person that you don't like. It's like a second part of my luck. People usually like me because I like them, I guess.
Zeke: I well that, you know, like the, or how to win friends and influence people. One of the most basic ones is if you want people to like you, just go ahead and like them first, just start by liking them. And then yeah. People are like being liked and so they tend to like it back. Yeah.
Julia: That is how it works.
Zeke: Um, I was trying to think about, um, the little bit of the meta there and, the way we are as human beings, this tribal thing, or this, you know, cooperative thing, we actually tend to value being in a good working relationship more than the, what they can do for us. And I'll just use kind of a random example, but you know, like if somebody is fun to cook with, it probably means they're also fun to work on other things with, right.
You know, or so like sometimes you work with somebody and you're like, they're good for this. You, you wanna call them when you can use that skill, but not for the. Other people you're just hoping they come hang out while you're doing something right. You invite them over, and even if they're not going to be helpful at all, like I'm gonna build a house.
And I invite this person over, not necessarily because they know a lot about building a house. But because having them around provides energy and you know, like maybe they help me build the house or maybe they only help me think about how to build the house or something like this. But, you know, like that, that, that feeling of working together is so compelling.
Julia: That is a very good point and a very good example, yes. I have. I actually have, um, so if you're talking about people who influenced, uh, my engineering career, the most, uh, one is definitely Morgan who mentored me and another person is, uh, Krzysztof Szafranek. Who is my, basically most favorite coworker. We are on the team together right now.
So we met each other when he joined, uh, the engineering team where I was working as a product manager. At some point, he switched to the data governance team. And in the moment when I was thinking about another product shop, he was like, Hey, we need a product person. I love working with you. Would you please join us and introduced me to his engineering lead and the team.
And I was like, okay. Yeah, that sounds interesting. And I also enjoyed working with Krzys, so yeah, why not? And I switched to that team.
And then when I was, uh, thinking about, uh, what team to choose for the, for the first like engineering job, Krzys was switching to the team that I'm currently working with.
And he was like, oh my God, that would be so fun. If we too would find it work together as engineers and introduced me to his lead and to the team and was like it so cool to work with you again. So I joined that team. and I kind of think that whenever in the future I will be looking for a new challenge or a new job.
[00:39:02] Reconnect and ask your network about opportunities
Julia: I will probably ask those people that I enjoy working with what they are doing right now. And if there is like an open position in their team, because this is such a big part, like you, you spend so much time with those people, it's super important that you kind of click and connect and that you like working with them.
Zeke: Mm-hmm . Yeah. And, and, uh, also you, you know, you have this trust relationship, which allows you to move more quickly, .
Julia: Yeah. That's that's true.
[00:39:39] Zalando learned something new
Zeke: So are there things Zalando that they're doing, you know, to actually, you know, to structurally or systematically kind of support people like you.
Julia: Yes. So this is another really cool thing about this company. Um, at some point maybe like a year ago at Zalando published a, uh, diversity and inclusion report. Where, one of the statements or one of the numbers was the share of women in tech and it was ridiculously lo low as it is in this industry right now.
Um, but Zalando, um, said, okay, we wanna change that. We wanna increase, uh, the share of women in tech. And we are committing to a target that we wanna reach in 2024 or something. and then they hired a person, um, to drive that they gave her some budget and they were like, okay, you are now in charge of increasing share of women in tech at Zalando do something.
And the person was first. A bit overwhelmed with the task because how, how, where do I get this women in tech from like, we don't have that many in the industry, what should I do? And then she stumbled upon, uh, my article and she was like, Hmm. Hmm, sounds cool. I need to talk to her. She called me. We had a call for like one and a half hours and she asked me all the details about the process, about what worked and what didn't work.
And then in the end, she was like, we can scale that. Like oh, okay. How, how exactly. And she went on and she, um, created a program within Saland where we just had the, have the pilot, uh, going on right now. Um, and Saland offered, uh, any woman that works for the company for longer than a year. I think in whatever job and whatever non-tech job.
um, to, um, apply for this program and to do a coding camp, completely paid by Zalando keeping your salary. Uh, and when you finish and you say, yes, I like it. And yes, I want to become an engineer to find a junior job within the. So, this is like the first pilot it's currently, I don't know, maybe 20 women in there that are doing that, but I think it's such a cool thing to do to raise this internal talents who had this idea of becoming an engineer and didn't do it because it.
Scary difficult, hard. And they are now supported by their employee to do exactly that. And if they, so the, the other side is also when they finish the, uh, camp or when they in the middle realize now that's not the right thing to do. They can go back to their job that
Zeke: Mm-hmm
Julia: or look for a new position within the company. So.
Zeke: Wow. That's a really cool program who who's leading that.
Julia: I'm not sure who is the responsible person right now? I would lie. I know that, uh, Virginia, who was, uh, starting it recently left the company for, I, I have no idea, uh, for what reasons, but it's a joint effort of many, many people.
Zeke: That's really cool. So it's what you got through little bit of luck and, uh, you know, I'll say, uh, ambient support from your teams is now something that, uh, is systemically or structurally available to people who work at Zalando.
Julia: And I had a very funny conversation with Virginia at some point when, um, so. Like I did not do much for this. I was more like an consultant role for this program. Um, so from time to time, she would just share a document with me and ask me about my opinion. Like, if I see any pitfalls, if I see anything that they did not think of, um, and then I helped a little bit with like marketing it because.
The person who already did it kinda and could share experience with the people who are interested. And at some point we had a conversation and she asked me like, Hey, I kind of feel bad, uh, asking for your help. And I'm like, eh, why? Yeah. Well, you kinda had to do it on your own. And maybe it does feel unfair that others would like get this much support now.
And I just started laughing for like a minute straight. No, it's so cool. And I'm so would get easier for people who want to do the same thing. So for I'm, I'm really, really happy that Zalando is doing it.
Zeke: I, I have the same attitude. You know, when I, when I taught myself how to code there's hardly any resources, but I would not wish that on somebody else. Right. Like now that there are so many great resources, I'm more interested in figuring out, you know, how do we help people navigate what's available? You know, really make it.
Um, and, and what Zalando's doing, I feel like should be the default. I feel like they should just be say, cause cuz my, my observation has been in the tech industry. You know, like if you wanna hire people who are not. um, part of your default pool, then you have to hire them from, from a different pool. You can't just keep on going back to the same pool and saying like that.
So if you like, Hey universities comp sci grads, this is, you know, they're 90% male coming out of this pipeline. You can't expect that to change just because you're saying, I wish you would do have more women in your pipeline. It's like, if you wanna pull from a different pool, if you want a different result, you have to change your behavior. So
Julia: I would really love to see that happening in the big tech companies from now on. I really hope that Zalando will be this first example. Like, hey, look, this is how it could be done. And this is working and that everyone else, like, I don't know, Amazon Facebook, Google, whoever will catch up quickly and start doing the same thing.
Zeke: Yeah.
I remember I was just gonna quickly ask when you did the Ironhack, what did you study?
[00:46:45] History helps integrating the fundamentals
Julia: It was a web developer course. So it was built in a kinda pretty cool way. Um, it had like three modules or stages and the first one was, it was kind a little time travel. So the first one was about, okay, how did they used to build websites 10 years ago? And it was the basics. So HTML, CSS, a little bit of JavaScript.
And the second part was okay, how did they do that, five years ago? And they introduced some frameworks and they introduced NodeJS and Express and Bootstrap and whatsoever.
And the last one was about, okay, how do they do it now? And that one was focused on React.
And it was, I think, uh, genius how it was built up, because if they could basically, theoretically, they could just tell us how to use React from the very beginning.
And we would probably learn how to use React, but we would not get an understanding of why it's cool and how it's actually working. And with this, starting from the very basics, it kinda gradually like built, built up in our minds of what is happening there. So it was like that, that development course.
Zeke: That's cool.
Um, out of your, out of your bootcamp class, do you stay in touch with those people? Do you know what they're doing? Hmm.
Julia: Just a few. Uh, those that I kept, uh, in touch with switch to engineering are working as engineers are enjoying it very much. Um, the thing is that when I was doing this coding camp, I had some personal issues and it was, it actually was very untypical.
Like usually when I go out in a room, when I go in, in enter a room with 20 people, there are like-minded and, and excited for the same thing. I would immediately start talking to pretty much everyone and normal situation would be that after that nine weeks, I would be friends with everyone. We would totally keep in touch. But, I had a kind of difficult personal face and I did not have any energy to connect with new people. So there were like a few that were so cool that even in that state, we became friends and we keep, keep in touch, but not, not many,
Zeke: That's that's cool. I, I was just, I was more curious about, um, what percentage of those people, cuz you said that they had a very strong selection process at the beginning. What percentage of those people went on to continue into software engineering?
Julia: Almost everyone, almost everyone. Because their situation was also a bit diff different from mine. So their situation was a bit different from mine. I was, I think at that point of time, I was the only person who actually had a job still. And had a job to come back to. Everyone else in this room was doing something completely different before and they quit their jobs, spend the money on this coding camp and were completely determined to find an engineering job after that, directly after that.
And Ironhack was also supporting, um, them, uh, like after the, immediately after the course for the, for one week they did kinda little job fair where, um, they helped them prepare their CVs and prepare for the interviews. And then they had interviews with different companies. Um, so almost everyone is in engineering by now.
Zeke: That's fantastic.
Julia: Yeah. They have a very high conversion rate and they're very proud of it.
Zeke: I, I mean, you've had, uh, pretty intro, like I'll say a, a rapid trajectory. Or, or maybe not, I don't know. It's like a lot of vector changes. But what comes next? What comes next for you?
[00:51:16] Sometimes it's ok to not have a next
Julia: I honestly have absolutely no idea. And I am kind of very fine with that. So I know my options by now. I already had several conversations with my lead that he totally would see me in management because it is kind of the next logical thing to do because I'm good with people. I know a bit about business. I know now a bit about engineering, but I'm not ready for that yet.
I really want to spend more time on becoming a good engineer because for me. The seniority of an engineer is not just about being a fast learner, being smart or knowing how to write clean code. It's about experience. So you can read a book on good architecture patterns, but it's just a book and it's just theoretical knowledge, at least like as long as you didn't try them out.
Zeke: You gotta, you gotta have prod break a few times.
Julia: Yes, you have to do things wrong. You have to, I don't know, break production. You have to fall on your nose and then you become a senior engineer, if you learn from that. And I don't have that much experience yet, like I'm, I'm in for a bit more than two years. I just need more practice before I can genuinely call myself a senior engineer.
Zeke: So for that trajectory, there's two things that I, I I'm curious about one is, are you mentoring other junior engineers yet?
Julia: Yes. I, um, so several months after I changed my career for the last time, um, my lead encouraged me to write an article for Zalando tech, uh, for Zalando engineering blog, about the change, about the reasons about how I did it, about what I like about it and what I don't like. And I did, and it had different implications to that. so on the one hand, um, people started approaching me. A lot of people started approaching me asking like, Hey, I like I'm thinking about for the last five years and I never dared. And now I see that you did, can you mentor me? Can you help me do the same thing and switch to engineering or become an engineer?
Um, internally, externally, um, people who were already in the process of that and were trying to do that and just wanted to check in if they're like doing the right thing, if their approach will work out. So, yes, I had, I don't know how many, I did not count, but a lot of conversations, just like one time conversations.
From those one time conversations, I had several people where I helped them to get across the finishing line where I helped them like to, I don't know, to prepare their CV, to. Find the right courses to build the right portfolio to, to then go interviewing. And I had several people where I was mentoring them for over a year and we are now like just good friends and casually keeping in touch and, and, and talking about whatever is happening in our lives.
Um, so yes, I am generally trying to give back the support that I got when I was switching.
Zeke: That's beautiful. I mean, pay it forward, right?
Julia: Yes. Yes. That's that's exactly what everyone should do.
[00:55:21] ADHD, browser tabs, and bringing joy
Zeke: Um, let's see. I wanna just switch to something totally random here. How many tabs, how many browser tabs do you have open?
Julia: Not many. I'm the one like the, the kind of person who is very, it's trying to be very efficient and optimized. So I regularly clean up everything. And also my browser, I have strict criteria, like, okay, if this tab is open for more dense three days and you still did not look at it, you will not. Just close it and forget about it. If it's super important, it's gonna come up again.
So right now, Nope. Right now I have the one tab open with you with Z and I have one other tab open with, uh, the questions that you prepared for this. That's it.
Zeke: Wow. Now that is focused.
I mean, that's incredible. I I regular, regularly purge my tabs, but it's more of a, like, I can't deal with this many tabs again, but in a, in a period about, I don't know, usually about half an hour or something like this I'll end up with 30 or 40 tabs.
I mean, it's pretty quick. And then I'm like, okay, new window.
Say I've been trying to think about, you know, what is it, you know, I have ADHD and I'm like, what is it? That's important that adds value about my ADHD and what it is it that's actually distracting and problematic about my ADHD. Cause there's both, it's not one or the other. Um, the, like we talked about earlier, the generalist part, like I love investigating as today.
I was like, I love investigating project management tools now, but is it actually a good use of my time? And this is, this is hard to tell, you know, because I would love to have a better system for managing how the stages and steps for producing a podcast. Better than just notes.
But would a more complex tool actually be better or is it just kind of satisfying my curiosity of just digging through all these different tools and how they work?
Julia: I have a very simple and probably very stupid approach to that. Um, my take on this is whatever, like if what you are doing right now brings you joy, then it's definitely worse the time. And it's an effective use of the. And I try to use that as a rule for pretty much everything. So you see those bookshelves.
Zeke: Hmm.
Julia: I'm very much into books. I, I try to switch to an e-book reader at some point of time. I hated, I need a book to touch, to smell to. I love books. Guess how many times I rearranged the books on the shelves within a month.
Zeke: Within a month.
Julia: mm-hmm,
Zeke: I can't guess.
Julia: at least three times and it's not efficient and it's probably not a good use of my time, but I enjoy it so much that I will keep doing it.
Zeke: that's, that's a really, uh, I think that's a pretty good criteria for most things, you know? Does it bring you joy?
Julia: Yep.
Zeke: Um, I would say don't lose that as you kind of take your March down the, you know, The, the tech economy, I, I think, uh, productivity, porn and hustle culture often likes to kind of say, yeah, I ignore that part.
It's like, you're supposed to strip out all of, you know, like you rearrange your bookcase three times. That's three times too many, you know, um, yeah. Hustle porn, uh, Twitter is full of it. Twitter is just full of people that promise to, you know, reclaim all these hours back in the day.
Julia: Yep.
But then, yeah, I dunno. I think it's like a person that is efficient, a hundred percent of their time is so heading towards burnout, usually. Our brains don't work that way. Our brains need the slack time, where you just randomly rearranging books on your shelves or watching out of the window. It's like watching birds playing in this tree behind my window is not an efficient use of my time.
Not at all, but it's the time that my brain needs sometimes to do some sub processing in the bag. So who am I to tell my brain? What's the most efficient right now? It works well enough on its own.
Zeke: I actually really like that as a place to close up. Follow what brings you joy. And don't worry too much about efficiency. You know, like it'll, the efficiency will follow what brings you joy?
So, how, how should people follow up with you if they want to learn more about what you're doing?
Julia: I am on LinkedIn. I don't answer right away usually because I time presents, but it's a good way to reach me. And I will definitely answer the call.
Zeke: All right. Well, um, thank you so much for joining me on the show and, uh, I look forward to seeing what you do next, some zigs and zags are probably in your future.
Julia: Thank you very much for having me. It was a really cool conversation and I will keep you informed about what I'm doing next.