P2P Podcast Series: Mira Vogt from Business Law to Builder
Mira Vogt (LinkedIn) is a Full Stack Engineer at GetYourGuide, a Berlin scale-up that is a booking platform for travel experiences.
Mira became a developer 2 years ago after attending the Ironhack bootcamp. She studied business law, first in Switzerland and then in Germany, but after working she felt mismatched there. SQL exposed her to becoming a builder instead of a lawyer.
In our chat today we talk about language, power structures, gender, inclusivity, pronouns, gatekeepers, and the value of staying a generalist.
This episode is packed with insights about:
- using rational self-care as a career booster
- when GetYourGuide had trouble hiring mid-level female engineers, they did something radical
- being selective with opportunities
- translating skills across jobs
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: Hello and welcome to The Introspective Developer. My name is Zeke Arany-Lucas, and I am talking with software developers who started their career without a computer science degree. We find out what drives them and how they think.
I am convinced that building the best software engineering teams requires better diversity by hiring more entry-level devs from outside the traditional grad pipelines.
Now in early 2021, I had the pleasure of meeting Natascha Nihsen from GetYourGuide. She's in my top five for awesome recruiter experiences. 10 out of 10 recommend. So when I started this peer-to-peer series, I knew she could be one of the people that helped me out, wrote her an email, did a call, once again, totally fun.
Um, I'm super excited about today's show because I'm actually going to be talking to a total stranger. And I love first contact because the innocence to make mistakes without meaning it and to be curious and stuff, I don't know, it just adds an extra special zing and flavor to it.
Um, yeah. So this is Mira. Mira, can you introduce yourself?
Mira: Sure. Um,
I'm Mira, I'm a software engineer, fullstack engineer, uh, based in Berlin. I've been in the tech environment, however you want to call that, for one and a half years. So I'm a business lawyer by education. And then I bounced around a few jobs before doing a bootcamp two years ago and transitioning into tech. Um, yeah, I dunno. There's probably some other fun facts I could tell about myself, but maybe let's go from here.
Zeke: Okay, okay. So business law, how did you end up in business law, first of all?
Mira: Uh, I was 17 when I needed to decide what to study and I was very clueless and at the time I lived in Switzerland, I also went to school there. Uh, so I decided to study law just because it sounded very interesting. And, uh, I figured that there was plenty of stuff to do with a degree in law. So I did that and in Switzerland they have a bachelor's master system.
And after the bachelor, I decided that I very much wanted to move back to Germany where I'm originally from. And, um, upon moving back, I realized that Germany has a very different system of, uh, like state exam where you do not really have this bachelor master's recognition at all. And so I would've had to start all over again to do the very traditional law track, which would've enabled me to become a lawyer.
And, um, I decided that I was not gonna throw away my three years of studying and I did another master's in German law, but in German business law, which is kind of which exists because there's too little more low level business law lawyers let's say. Um, and I did that and I got hired in a venture capital kind of company builder firm, where I took care of early stage startups, legal support, and founding and liquidating companies all over the world.
Um, but yeah, I realized pretty soon that, due to there being lawyers with a, let's say more proper education than me, um, it was a very frustrating job because you're constantly being told this on the job that you're kind of a second tier person in your field of work.
And, uh, yeah, and I was, I think 22 at the point, and I, I, I remember sitting down and thinking to myself, okay, do I want to spend the next 30, 40 years of my life in a job where there will always be somebody like dangling their full blown law degree, uh, in front of my nose and telling me that I'm not that good. Um, and also of course this kind of limits the growth opportunities in that area a bit, right?
Because at some point, everybody, if you want to, um, kind of consult independently, then you need to be a full blown lawyer because of, um, insurance kind of liability issues. So I just, uh, decided that even though I very much enjoyed my law studies, this was not gonna be the path, I was gonna go down on.
[00:04:11] Systems have gatekeepers
Zeke: Gatekeepers, man, gatekeepers.
Mira: Yeah,
Zeke: And there's like, there's, there's actually a lot of, I mean, I mean the gate keeping in society just in general, right. But, um, in the, in the tech industry, too. I mean, I've seen, um, there's a amongst my, kind of the hacker community. There's a whole thing about certifications and whether certifications are real or not real, or who decides which certifications are important and stuff like this.
I I'm not even sure how it got started because you know, most of the, the kind of security people that I've known are all self taught, almost all of 'em. Because the thing that they're doing is breaking the rules at the core, which is not what schools are good at teaching, right? They're like, it's like a teacher, a lawyer they're teaching you the rules with the idea that you're going to help people follow the rules. Right. Um, now some lawyers are actually pretty good at breaking the rules too, or stretching the rules.
But, um, but I've noticed that the psychology of it, you know, so hackers, kind of, I'll say hardcore hackers in my experience, hack everything.
They actually just see everything as exploitable systems. And so it's not software that's, they're particularly interested in, they're interested in, you know, hacking the law and doing social hacking and doing, you know, coupon hacking and you know what, whatever, I mean, literally anything that can be hacked should be hacked, right.
Uh, but yeah, gatekeepers
Mira: Yeah. I mean, there's kind of the, the more structural ones, which I also felt. Even though I did the bootcamp track. Uh, it causes you a lot of anxiety. I, I remember before, even when I already had the offer from GetYourGuide, you of course, kind of got LinkedIn and you look at your colleagues' profiles, your future colleagues, and every single one of them had a computer science degree.
And I remember sitting at home and freaking out completely because I thought, oh God, I'm gonna arrive at this job. It's gonna be my first job. And they're all gonna think I'm stupid. And they will talk with words that I do not understand. And like throw concepts around that I do not understand and will do some deep algorithm calculations that I will not understand.
And in fact, nothing of that happened.
Zeke: That's pretty nice!
Mira: Yeah, but I think it's always how it goes. I mean, even, even in a law job. I mean, if you kind of, if you actually work in courts and like, if you actually do kind of, also creation of law, let's say, or like bringing it forward.
Then of course you need a law degree because it also teaches you a lot about the whole system, but a lot of the lower level law stuff, also like a lot, lot of things about, for example, founding a company, you can kind of teach yourself. It's not that hard because it's processes, it has rules. It's always the same pattern.
[00:07:01] Our internal gatekeepers do the most damage
Mira: It's not like it's changing intensely. And then of course you always have special cases. And it's kind of like that. I would say in almost every single industry and the only difference is, well, that's maybe put medicine aside. I would not want doctor who just Googled everything he does. But, um, the gatekeepers, I think the most, the hardest ones and the, the ones that are actually doing the most damage are the ones in our heads and the ones kind of, which are there because of certain images portrayed.
I was also very shocked by how often I was, kind of told, like sometimes directly, sometimes like through the, through the, how do you say it when somebody doesn't directly tell you something, but you can very much guess what they want to
Zeke: When you infer it.
Mira: yes. Uh, that women can't be good engineers.
Zeke: Hmm.
Mira: That was super shocked. I was like, okay.
I thought this is something that people thought 40 years ago, but, uh, it's a very interesting thing to think about like where these come from and, uh, why, if maybe it's some, it's some to some degree they also have some right to be there. I mean, there's still tons of job ads, which have a requirement of you having a computer science degree,
Zeke: Mm,
Mira: even though, then from the other requirements.
I mean, sometimes these are frontend positions where it's about building UI components and then I'm like, I'm not really sure why you need a computer science degree for that. Like.
Zeke: well, CS has two letters. You know, CSS has two of the three letters of CS. So that's pretty much computer science sheets.
Mira: Maybe, maybe that's why the, what the recruiter,
Zeke: no, I, I, when you talk about the internalization of gatekeeping. That resonates with me so much because I'm constantly, I really surprise myself by how I create blocks without knowing I created a block. Right. Like I like where the block is there for a long time, silent. And I would even tell you, like, if you ask me, like, does this, you know, do you put this restriction on yourself?
I'd say absolutely not. But then if I watch my behavior, it turns out that I do have this constraint. It's like some internal constraint. I actually, I just ran into this recently where, um, I've been, you know, working in big corporate environment for so long that I've internalized many of the kind of axioms of corporate life.
So even when I'm thinking about, oh, I'm gonna do something for myself, I think like, yeah, but what's the profit motive. right.
And it, and it's so weird. Cause I'm like the whole point is I'm not doing it for a profit motive. I'm doing it for myself. Right. But some part of my brain is like, you know, you just don't, you're not supposed to put attention on something where you can't say what, how the outcome is really gonna benefit, or the impact, you know, like there's this, you know, very corporate, I mean, big corporations, especially, it's like, like we know how to measure impact and it looks like this.
And so don't work on stuff that can't be measured because you won't get recognized for it. And, and I, I mean, I've just been around long enough that even though I would've tell you that, no, I don't do that. But there I was, I was totally doing it. I'm not working for a corporation anyway.
[00:10:26] can we avoid avoid hidden extrinsic constraints?
Mira: it's interesting. How, from how many parts of life they can, they can come to you, right? I mean, there's the classic big ones, probably like, I don't know, gender nationality, the, the, the things that I'm very much kind of also given to you at birth and which you are even less aware of because of that. Um, but yeah, also these kind of what, who you surround yourself with.
Like I also, I'm not a very anxious person by default. I would say, like, I kind of just do things and I normally don't really think about what could otherwise, I mean, look at my CV. Like, otherwise I wouldn't be where I am right now, but I, when I have a group of friends or when I spend more time with people who are very anxious, knew you, then, you know, then it also happens that I'm like, oh, I'm gonna do this now.
And then you suddenly get bombarded with questions on like, have you thought about this and what, what happens if this happens? And then I'm starting to become anxious myself because then I'm like, oh my God, all of these questions, like I knew they were there. I'm not, I'm not super blind and super naive, but like, I didn't think that they were too important.
And then you see other people like attributing importance to something, and then you suddenly become self conscious that you didn't attribute that importance to it. Maybe you should have. So it's even on these very low level things. It's super interesting to see how easily we are, manipulated into questioning what we before were very secure in.
Zeke: I, you just, you just crossed two things, which I think are fascinating. One was that we have the subconsciously we can actually absorb this signal. And my, my classic one here would be, I'm not afraid of flying, but if I'm sitting next to somebody who's afraid of flying, I start to become anxious. I'm and it's just, literally, it's just palpable. It's coming off of them. And then I'm like, like this.
But the other one is sometimes I feel nothing about something, but somebody else feels it. And then I'm questioning like, am I supposed to feel it? Should I be faking it? What do I mean, do they, is there some social dynamics of, you know, oh, what is it that I'm missing here?
Why is it that they know what to do here? And I don't know what to do.
Oh my God. That's so crazy.
I, um, I was trying to, I was thinking about my, my childhood as you were talking about gender roles. And when I was really little, I would say I was misgendered a lot in part because I refused to be good at following gender rules. So I liked, like I had a very favorite polka dot dress when I was five. And you know, at various times I liked long hair. And I remember when I was six, I was really into barettes, for a while. You know, and, and I wore skirts all the way up into my twenties, you know, and kind of played with my hair the whole time.
And it wasn't like, I mean, some people are all like, you know, fuck the man or something that wasn't me. I just, I didn't, I don't know. I wasn't very good at, I didn't like it. First of all, I didn't like, they'd say you can't wear that, that whole notion, like, you know, like that that's not yours and I'm all like, Who says, why, why is that true?
And nobody can give you a good answer other than, you know, them's the rules and you should follow 'em otherwise we're gonna beat you up. And I'm like, yeah, I don't like being beaten up, but I don't like arbitrary rules either.
Mira: Ha ha ha. Yeah, stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Zeke: Yeah. And you know, and with my, my kids, I have, I have three daughters and they, they have a much richer kind of, they're actually probably your generation.
How old are you?
Mira: I am 27.
Zeke: Okay. My eldest is 30 and my youngest is 22,
Mira: See, right right in the middle.
Zeke: Right in the middle, right in the middle.
But it's interesting cuz growing up with them, like when I was a kid, it was like you're either gender conforming or you were a problem. And there wasn't another language other than you fit the mold or you're a problem.
And usually problem is then you must be gay, you know, but right. Because like you're either like fitting or, and the only other answer was really you're gay, but my kids are all have, like, I don't know, they have a full, I mean, I mean, so like the pronouns on LinkedIn, so I'm, you know, I put my pronouns up there, but mine are the default pronouns.
And then, and then I'm like, what do I do with, you know, like, I wanna be good, but I don't have the kind of, I don't know, internal like conditioning vocabulary to be, I don't know. This is me being,
Mira: You mean, like to be conforming to the, uh, how
Zeke: so I don't have, like, I don't want, I don't need people to conform and yet I still have a hard time changing pronouns. Do you know what I mean?
Mira: I mean for, for me, it's interesting because I think my generation, or like the people slightly older than me in my generation, we kind of also were very much used to still to this. Like you're either girl or boy, and there was not even the thought of there being something else. So I also remember when this first came up, I was like, Hmm, this is very peculiar.
Like, I, I, I didn't have a strong feeling towards or against it also because I'm, I'm not personally affected of course. I mean, it's also, um, that, that what gives you the privilege of not caring about it. But, uh, I think that for us, it wasn't that much about, you know, touching power structures. I think the, one of the big reasons that, and I'm not me, I'm not saying to like, meaning to imply that this is, uh, the reason that you are struggling with it, but the older you are, the more you are used to how things were.
And we are inherently just used to, like, we like patterns. We like things being in order. It's just making life a lot easier. And then if you're also not directly affected by it, like, I can imagine if one of your daughters said, oh no, I, I identify as non-binary or anything else. Then this would probably affect you so much closer than you would.
Maybe. I don't know. It would be easier for you to remember.
Zeke: my youngest, that's my youngest. Uh, and she's given me, she, they have given me books. I see this is really and it's, it's really hard, admittedly, because you know, like it's actually easier for me to change somebody's name.
Mira: Yeah, because you probably think about it more as something individual, whereas pronouns are kind of more generalist. I don't know. trying theories on you here.
Zeke: Yeah. And I, I, cuz it's, it's that one's really, especially when there it's like, I mean, honestly, if it's not using a bunch of cues that if you're kind of like, because they didn't change any other cues, they just change their pronouns and identify as non-binary. And actually when they introduced their friends, as they, it was actually, it was easy. Yeah.
Was it somebody who was telling me, um, that people's names? Actually, this is interesting. We were talking earlier today. We're really far off the topic of engineering of course, but we'll come back to it. We'll
we'll come back to it. We'll come back to it.
We'll come back to it. Um, but earlier today I was talking with my friends and we were talking about why do we sometimes use the wrong name with the wrong person?
Right. So I know that anytime I'm using a scolding tone, the chances are pretty high that one of my kids' names will be used with it, regardless of who I'm talking to. Because for many years, the only people I scolded were my children. Right.
And at the same time, sometimes I'll call my mom, honey. Because usually like when I have an effective affection term, I'll be talking to my, about my talking to my wife or about my wife. I'll be like, da, da, da. Yeah. Oh, that's so great, honey. Let's do that. Right. And so with my mom, I'd be like, oh, that's great, honey. And I'm like, oh my God, because there's a, like a, kind of like an emotional coordinate space in the brain.
And those terms are not actually, the, the direct terms, they're more like the inflection points for the feeling patterns, right? So like, it wasn't like I was really using honey to mean, I mean, what I'm talking to, my wife, who else am I talking to here? We're at home. It's just the two of us. I just use honey as a, like a, a check mark on the sentence, like a period or something.
It's just punctuation.
Mira: Decoration
Zeke: It's a decoration, right? It's a decoration.
which it's,
a semicolon, right? It's a semicolon at the end of the line. I mean, I.
Mira: so interesting how language works, but it also kind of, I think puts an argument to the, to the kind of question of why it's important to try to kind of also be inclusive in language. I mean, I understand, I mean, when it started that, um, more people were using the gender neutral forums or were kind of using the, the asterisks, uh, on, on words, especially in German, like texts were starting to become very, very long.
And at the beginning, I also was like, how, why are we doing this? Ever since I think it started evolving a bit as well. And there's also just words that, uh, are used now that are just by default neutral. So you don't have to do the whole like male and female form, which also is maybe better to even like have gender neutral words because it then also includes anybody else by default.
And, uh, I find this more natural almost by now than, than the opposite. And it's it. It's interesting. Like, I understand that for many people, this was very artificial in the beginning, but in a sense, language will always just, uh, adopts to societal changes. And that's what it's kind of made for. Doesn't really have an inherent place to be, I think, but it's, it's absolutely fascinating how fluid it is.
Like even in one lifetime, how much language and how you talk about things, can. Yeah.
[00:20:37] Language is eternally evolving
Zeke: Absolutely. And in fact how important it is to be, I, I, in my opinion, to be conscious of it, that's why I'm, you know, I'm actively talking about it even where I can't seem to rewire my brain very much. I'm openly gonna say like, yeah, I would like to be better here. I would like to be, I would like to have more plasticity.
Right. And, and as you said, inclusion is pretty important to me. Diversity and inclusion is pretty important to me because of my past of, you know, like having all kinds of exclusionary behaviors being going on about where I could be or not be, or how I can dress or what kinds of, you know, Avenues are open.
You know, I very much am attracted to, you know, creating more inviting and inclusive spaces and specifically in engineering. So here we, we get back to software type of thing.
[00:21:28] quitting a career is a leap of faith
Zeke: How about maybe you can tell me a little bit about how you decided to go from law, where you had the gate keeping to GetYourGuide.
Mira: Sure. Um, so I basically, when I quit my, my job in law, I really was very panicky because of course I had studied this for five years and I had never thought about what else I would do with my life and to get it to the point where you're like, okay, now I have to actually rethink what I'm, what I'm gonna do was a very interesting one.
And I decided to just kind of jump in and do as many internships as I could in one. Which also meant that I started internships, and if I realized after a month, this was not something for me. I just quit. I think I also pissed quite a few people off in that year.
But it worked out in the end because I started at some very, very early stage startup. Um, and I think originally as a product intern, but as it goes there, you know, I just kind of was tasked to do some analysis in Excel, no, in Google sheets, even. Um, in the first week. And then they made me the business intelligence intern, even though I, I could not do Excel, I could not do Google sheets. I had no idea about any data analysis whatsoever.
And, um, that's how I kind of got into that field and on my, the job that I had afterwards in that field, in business intelligence, I learned SQL. And I realized that learning, like getting this task of, okay, we need to find this and this information from the database, figure out the query to kind of get this done was the favorite task of my whole work, where I just had to express something in logical terms. And, uh, it was very kind of clear what to do.
So I figured, okay, this is interesting. Uh, and by coincidence at the same time, my, my boyfriend at the time was a software engineer completely self-taught. And in his company, there were juniors who did a bootcamp. And, uh, that was the first time that I heard that you can do a bootcamp and transition to tech because he is kind of the prototypical guy who at 15 years old taught himself to, to code, and then did some, like hacking in his teens.
And then like at the, when I met him, had 10 years of experience and was incredibly good at coding, but incredibly bad at explaining it to somebody who had no idea about coding. So I always felt very intimidated because even though he, he did a good effort and he also managed to explain me something, so I always felt incredibly stupid. Because there was just, I, I could feel the amount of knowledge that he had about something and how hard it was for him to kind of try to break it down to such a level that I would understand with no prior technical background.
Um, but anyways, that's kind of when I, I started talking to people who did a bootcamp and they were like, one of them was musician and like they all had zero background in tech and I was like, okay, then this might be something I can do.
[00:24:20] Use free tools to verify interest before investing real money
Mira: And I started looking into Code Academy, Free Code Camp, all of these free coding things that you can do just to get an idea if I would still be interested in this after several months, because it's, it's an investment. Like it costs several thousand euros to do. And, um, I dunno, I'm not, even though I jump into things when it comes to spending money, I'm not that lighthearted.
So I, I actually spent some months looking into it and I decided like, yeah, this is something I want to do. Um, and then I did it and then I got
Zeke: where, okay, so first of all, SQL is your first crush for programming languages.
Mira: I don't know if I would now call. Yeah. But yeah, it was just the first touching point. I had to, like now at my, at my current position some weeks ago I had to write a query again and I sat there. I was like, no, I cannot do this anymore. I need to get back into it. And, uh, I realized that like, I would say, this is less fun than actually building something in JavaScript, but yeah, that was the first, first touching point and something that made me realize how nice it feels to be able to manipulate something.
Zeke: So what, what school did you end up going to?
Mira: Iron hack,
Zeke: Iron
Mira: Yeah. And Berlin quite popular back then. I think they were the only ones to teach React as well. That was the kind of, and the people I, I talked to, they also did Iron Hack. So it was kind of referral slash, also being a bit lazy to research
Zeke: Uh, I don't know, referral systems work. That's why human beings like them.
Mira: they do also got a bit of a discount. So it's also good
Zeke: Oh, that's nice. That's nice. Uh, so were you in a class like a cohort based class or
Mira: I was, yeah, I was the only course in that year because it was 2020 to actually be in person on campus. And I'm very happy about it, to be honest because, uh, I mean the, this, the format is that you have eight hours of classes a day, so it's really like a school thing, but yeah, a bit longer than school used to be from what I remember and, um, do that remotely, especially back then when I was not that used to doing things remotely, I think would've been very exhausting and you just have the added benefit of also venting to the, to the person sitting next to you when you get frustrated and just having somebody come over and have a quick look at your laptop without having to set up a zoom call.
So like. I think all of these things were really, uh, important at least from my experience, um, in doing the bootcamp. But yeah, that was, it also feels ages ago already, even though it's two years.
Zeke: And, um, how did you, how did you decide on React?
Mira: Yeah. Uh, I just like there, I was just talking to my boyfriend at the time and asked him, okay, what are the, the languages that are most likely gonna get me hired? Because of course I was also very anxious of whether somebody would trust my skills after completing an eight week bootcamp. It's not like it's a long, like eight weeks is nothing.
If you think about it once. And, uh, he said that like JavaScript for sure, but if JavaScript then either React or Vue, and, um, then that was kind of the starting point.
Zeke: And did it lead straight to a job or, or not? Like eight weeks?
Mira: It did, uh, or like not straight. I, I searched for the, to be fair. I also searched for a job in October of 2020, which was another lockdown. And there was really not that many junior positions because there was not that many companies being keen on hiring juniors, uh, in the middle of a pandemic. Uh, but it took me two months, I think, around 30 to 40 applications I wrote, but I also applied for mid-level and senior level jobs because I was simply like. I had to, I felt like I had to do something. Um, and I had a few, I had one more interview before where I got to the technical challenges and stuff. And then I had the interview at GetYourGuide and that was pretty fast.
Zeke: Does getYourGuide, have like a formal, um, apprenticeship or, I mean, do they have a formal program for, you know, getting entry level developers? Is this like, did you, did you apply to something specific or, yeah.
Mira: They they just have junior level positions, they call it associates. Uh, but it's very much focused on, on people, either fresh from university or fresh out of bootcamps. And they, what I found very encouraging there, but it's probably something I only realized after I got hired. But, um, they actually like hiring people from bootcamps because most of us already worked for some years in some other industries.
So we are pretty good at self organizing and you can really see the difference because, of course, you are then also thinking, oh God, I must be so much worse than all of the computer science students that they hire. But there's a very interesting. Uh, kind of balance between how much energy, certain tasks at work take you.
[00:29:21] previous professional experience makes you more professional
Mira: Right. And I was, for example, pretty good at project management because I worked in law before I worked with X amount of companies that I had to handle documents that were very similar. So I needed to be very structured even before I ever did the wood camp. And, uh, this allowed me to then focus more on the technical challenges because I didn't have to learn how to collaborate.
I didn't have to learn how to communicate with stakeholders. I didn't have to learn how to communicate with my teammates. Um, so this kind of very much allowed me to then also ask more efficient questions, which is something which I was very important to me because I, I didn't want to annoy and, uh, take too much time from, from the more senior engineers.
But, um, the expectations in this role are very much that you are learning. So for the first half year, you basically the. Not really required. I mean, you are required to, to contribute to the code base of course, but it's not really required of you that you perform, um, at a level of a fully contributing member of the team.
And, uh, for me, the most important part, and what I really, really cherish about GetYourGuide is that they have a very, very genuine and great, um, attitude to mistakes and to, to failures, let's say. So even
Zeke: learning opportunities, learning
Mira: exactly that they will be called out and you will get very direct feedback on it, but they will never.
Be a, like at least in the teams that I work with and also on the company level, from what I've seen, they will never be blame. Um, and I remember one, I mean, we also had a, a, a group for the associates because we, at some point they, for example, coming back to the gender topic, um, they decided that because they had such trouble hiring, um, mid-level and senior female engineers, that they were gonna grow them themselves.
[00:31:07] Companies can grow diversity with intent and priority
Mira: So for the first, uh, I was one of the first en associate engineers to be hired of that batch. And I think for the first half year there was only women being hired. So we were around 16 associate women, uh, before the first male was hired because they had this hiring goal of, if you have equal candidates, then the woman will be hired just because we need to have more female engineers. Which led to very interesting, uh, things, because then you suddenly had a group with 16 women in the engineering department, which normally never happens.
Um, but yeah, we had this situation, huh? Yeah, it's incredible. It's pretty nice. Yeah. But
Zeke: But it also, but it also says that, you know, it's possible to build structures that change dynamics. So one of the, one of the, so I worked at the diversity council at Amazon for three years. It was very hard to change anything.
And when you, and, and even when everybody cares, even when everybody I'm talking to, nobody is like, you know, resistant, right. But the institution itself is resistant because everything's already structured there. And to get everything to change is just, just really hard to change the incentives and change the, you know, unconscious behaviors and stuff like this is just so there.
And, and then of course they're always kind of thinking institutionally, right? So they're like, well, what we really need is we hire from universities. What we really need is the universities to change their behavior. Right. Well, I mean, how long do you think that takes. Another 50 years or something to before we can get like, multi-generational cause you have to have change the teachers, the teachers all have tenure, you know, like you gotta, I mean, you gotta change everything all the way back to the stone age.
I mean, the industry hasn't even been around that long, you know, like at some level. And so I'm, I was like, all right, now that I'm outside of Amazon and I meet people who come through the bootcamps, I'm absolutely certain that the best way to get diversity for companies that really care is to hire through alternative channels.
That's bootcamp self-taught whatever. So I think that's amazing that GetYourGuide, you know, I, I don't know. I feel like I should talk to whoever has instituted that policy now and find out what, what it took to get it kind of set up that's that's crazy.
Mira: it works. It also works because, mm I, I mean, this is purely my, my personal observations of course, but I do think that. Women, and especially if you are starting somewhere and you are somewhat young, they do have a bit different requirements. Like what I see, I think I'm very atypical in that sense, because I'm quite loud, I'm very direct.
Like I don't really care what people think of me. Uh, if there's a problem, I will tell you that there's a problem, but I will to fix it. And, uh, but I, I realized that there's a lot more, especially women who are very timid and who are kind of a bit afraid of speaking up who do not trust themselves and to instate, or like to find a way to also have that support system, maybe also to have a mentorship system to, um, grow these people because it is super scary.
Like I was also freaked out the first few months that I started there. And even though everybody was super supportive, even though that was, I would say one of the best environments you can started as an associate or as junior, I was terrified. For the first few months of not being like performing well enough of asking stupid questions of doing mistakes, even though I didn't like, I, for example, never broke production up until I think two months ago when I was there over a year, then I broke it twice in a week.
But you know, you have these things and you still think that you're not good enough until we had the first like proper performance recycle. And the manager finally told, be like, yeah, please just stop worrying. Just please just trust, trust the process. If everybody's happy with you, nobody's complaining.
Just trust us that you're doing a good job. And it's, it's like this kind of anxiety, which is also great, great gatekeeper, because
Zeke: mm-hmm
Mira: you already took the risk to do this bootcamp and to, to transition into an industry which from the outside very much seems overwhelming in, in the terms of how much knowledge you, you think you have to have to enter it.
Uh, people who already did this step to say, okay, I will do. They then need to have some positive affirmation, I think, in the job to tell them, okay, it'll just take some time. It will take some months, but you will understand what's going on here.
Zeke: There's also, I mean, as you're talking, it reminds me that like, there's a lot of opportunity for toxic, uh, dynamics that go on when, when you have that kind of, I'm gonna say. Uh, lizard Blain brain level of insecurity, kind of going on, um, manipulative people, you know, can or exploitative, people can identify that and they say, yeah, you do need to work harder. You do need to work
Mira: Yeah.
Zeke: you know, like longer you do, you know, like you have more to prove.
And this dynamic, um, can really, you know, pretty quickly lead to different kinds of burnout, not have high trust.
[00:36:11] Build structures that build trust by default
Mira: I mean, yeah, there would there, I I've witnessed this in a sense because of course it also depends on the team you have and, uh, due to, I mean, there's always problems with having enough senior engineers in, in tech. I think that's kind of across almost every company. And I remember that there were some associates were in a team where there was a lot of change where the manager changed a lot of times in the first half year, and then one or two of the senior people left in that time.
And they were really thinking that it's their fault that they're not progressing fast enough. And they were thinking that it's something wrong with them. And I also had talked with 'em was like, Hey, look, if I was in your team, if I had to kind of manage this amount of transitions around me and I, if I didn't have these structures that my team provides me, I would also suffer a lot.
And I would also struggle a lot. And you have to then kind of also reassure people and like make them understand that not everything is their fault. That there needs to be structures. And that's kind of also something which I learned in previous companies and where I'm in a way, uh, some would say an annoying employee.
[00:37:17] You have value, so expect something from the environment
Mira: I would say I'm a very good employee because I very much and understand that this is a two way street. Like, I'm not your slave, I'm not employed and you give me money and then you can do whatever you want with me. I'm your employee. I'm a valuable resource. If I'm somewhat good, there's not enough people who are intelligent and want to work for whatever.
So if you do not give me an environment where I can learn and I can grow and I can do that without burning out within one and a half years, I will simply leave. This is something like for me, which I would give as advice to every single young person starting their journey on the job market is like, be aware that you have value, be aware that you have value and that you have a position to also stand up for what you need to succeed.
And it's not all on your shoulders. There's also some expectations to be put in some, uh, requirements to be put on the environment that you work in. And I think this is something very important to understand that because it's very easy to just blame yourself. It's very easy to think. Ah, if I only now in the evening, put in three more hours of work and do this, and this course, then I will finally understand what's going on at work.
If you are at that point already, then something went terribly wrong in your work environment.
Zeke: You know, as you were talking, I got shivers up and down my spine. I still have it. Like, if you look, if you look on my arms hairs right now, all my hairs are sticking up here. Cuz I got like, you know, Gansehaut. I have the chicken skin, the goose skin there because I'm like, oh my God, she's speaking the truth.
That's the truth. Oh, you know, stand up for yourself. I, I mean, it's at it's at every stage of your career and your, and in your relationships.
Um, wow. Deep breath, deep breath.
The first thing I wanted to just kind of ask you is. With these skills, this awareness, maybe even because you were working with lawyers and gatekeepers and these hyper institutionalized things, you know, it says, you know, you have to, you know, have a different internal structure in order to, to navigate it.
I'm curious. Did you put those things on your resume? Did you know to bring them with you when you started, obviously, after you got in, you were using some of those skills, you said about how to work with others and to, and did you.
Mira: I, I, I do keep it on there because, uh, the, the company that I work for as a lawyer is Rocket Internet, which you probably know, and which a lot of people, especially in the startup environment in Berlin know, and which is known for being a high pressure environment. But yeah, I kind of, what I put on there is not like, okay, I'm good at working with people.
I do put this in the, the small, weird intro that you always put on your CV, which I always struggle with filling out. Um, but I do point out that I have worked there like, um, administering to 200 plus international companies, which kind of, I would hope points to the fact that I am really relatively well organized, but, um, that's kind of my, my pitch whenever I apply.
I mean, right now I, I left GetYourGuide. I'm I'm only there for a few more weeks. And, uh, right now I'm in the process of applying again. And my, my biggest pitch is, Hey, I might only be in software engineering for one and a half years, but I have transitioned several times.
I have the confidence that I will be up to any challenge that you give me, if you also give me some support in solving it.
And, um, I'm well organized. I can communicate well. And I will tell you what is going wrong with your processes. And, um, if you're not the company who wants that, then it's also not the company I want to work for.
Zeke: Mm-hmm
[00:40:54] Retain the confidence to refuse what is unwanted
Mira: But for me, the most important thing that I learned from these transitions and I also learned from, from starting in a relatively intense environment, is that I know what I do not want, and that I also know how to spot relatively early on when there's a culture that I do not want, or when there's behavior that I find not okay, that this is the confidence that you need to build.
Right. And it's also kind of in a sense, uh, relaxed mindset that you have to have that like, I'm, I don't really. I mean, I I'm, I'm kind of confident. I will find some job if I'm really down to, I don't know, zero euros on my account. I, I will find some job to work at. So until I'm at that point where I have to beg for a job, I will have the confidence to also refuse what I do not want.
Zeke: Yeah. So, alright. This gave me two, two questions for you. Um, I'll put 'em together. One is, what did you add to your resume? Like what did you learn about yourself that you could add your resume, which is not GetYourGuide experience, right? Like, so, Hey, these are attributes. I already have assets I have had before I got, but now I realize there're actually things I need to call out when I'm applying for a job, you know, whatever that is.
Mira: I learned at GetYourGuide or.
Zeke: no, so to me it sounds like what you learned. One of the things you learned is that, when you switch jobs, when you're a lane changer, you have a whole bunch of assets that you developed already about being a professional. And when you're applying for a tech job, you might not know. And certainly somebody who comes from university does not even know that those skills are super valuable, right?
Like they don't know what they don't know, but you actually do. And it could be that when you're applying to GetYourGuide, you didn't realize like all my lawyering actually gives me X, Y, and Z skills.
Mira: Yeah. Um, I mean, there's probably still a lot of skills that I do not realize that
Zeke: Well, nobody here, this, this is very crisp. Actually. What skills, what things, what assets did you put on your CV that were not there when you put on GetYourGuide, but they're not specific to GetYourGuide. Meaning did you add something to your CV and say, Hey, this is an asset I already had. I just didn't know before, and now I do.
Mira: I have, but I'm not sure that there's one asset that like, what. The the, the,
Zeke: Then I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say you do have one and you just haven't put it on there yet. If you're applying for jobs, you should be adding something to your CV, some way to describe this fuzziness, cuz cuz you described it pretty well, to me. Like, there's a set of things which you know, you bring or
Mira: for me, the, the one asset I should probably maybe also call out a bit more is that I'm very, uh, I adapt very easily. That, that is the thing that I learned that there's where on whichever job you are. And in whichever system you are, there are rules and there are patterns that it follows. And this is also what kind of took my anxiety away from software engineering, because, um, you start, and then you do not understand half of the code that is in the code base.
And then somebody shows you the backend code that's in Java. You almost start crying because you, you think you will never even understand two lines of that. But then once you understand the patterns behind it, it also just becomes easy.
[00:44:20] Don't personalize failure, adapt and learn
Mira: So for me, kind of the, the main attribute that I call out and that I also think is what sets you up for success beyond just certain positions and specific, let's say career tracks is adapting and a very big love for, for new things.
Like I'm very curious, I'm I kinda something which I'm still working on, but which I've definitely gotten better in the last years is not. Um, personalizing failure so that when I'm tackling something new, I'm not making this like part of my self worth. If I'm, if I'm managing to do it or not, which I very much in the beginning did that, like if I'm not managing to solve this project or this ticket, or this issue without asking for help was also in the beginning, a lot of my requirements, then I'm not a good engineer.
And then you spend hours and hours and like the anxiety of thinking, oh my God, now I spend so much time on it. This must mean that I'm not a good engineer. And then you ask somebody and it turns out that you forgot a semi on somewhere. And even like, and then always this moment where you sit there and you just say, yeah, I'm stupid.
I'm stupid. I couldn't solve this. I'm stupid because I thought that I need, and I just was too proud to ask for a second opinion on something, which was so easy to solve was just a second pair of eyes. So like, I'm trying to get away from this from, from attaching my, my pride and like my kind. Thinking that I'm then a better engineer if I solve this issue because in a lot of times it just steals time.
It doesn't really help anybody. And it happens to you so often that it's just something super, super stupid and super simple. So I'm trying to get better at just really thinking about this is something that I do and something that is only beneficial to the company or the project that I work on, and that is most easier to solve with teamwork.
And it's, it's, it's a bit of a two, two sided sort, right? Because you can also get into the direction where you just immediately ask for help when there's an issue. And this is also not the right way to go, I think because then you don't challenge yourself.
But at this point where you start just kind of going in circles and also ex having this thought of what God, I should be able to solve this then normally is the time where you should just say, okay, but I am not able to solve it right now either.
Also very good tip I at the beginning, take a 20 minute walk. Have a look at it again, also just wonders. Or just quickly ping somebody, ask them, hey, do you have five minutes time? Let me walk you through. And even by just walking somebody through your problem so many times you're like, ah, yeah, that step I forgot to think about before.
So the, I think a lot of the issues that come with with tackling something new and, and with getting into new environments, they're very much connected to us thinking that our work is, is something that, that defines our value. And that's kind of, there is some huge pressure on performance and performing.
And, um, when you get rid of that, suddenly things also flow a bit better and you just are more prone.
Also, it's the same thing with, with like stupid questions. Let's say I was in the beginning, like I'm kind of relatively straightforward and I oftentimes ask questions and. I don't know. I would say 90% of the times there were just like questions that I did not know.
And then you always, one out of 10 times you hit the, the golden ticket and you ask something and you thought it was gonna be a super stupid, straightforward question. And then there's this five second silence because you realize nobody in this room has thought about it and nobody can give you an answer.
Zeke: The the other, the other one that's like, this is when you ask what looks like a stupid question. And it turns out that everybody else had the same question and that nobody was willing to speak up and sound like they're stupid. Now you look like a damn genius for just asking the stupid question.
Yeah. It's like, it's kinda like, what does gibber walkie mean? Because you guys are all talking about gibber walkie and
Mira: And that that's you see, like you have these situations so much. I mean, it's kind of it, everybody knows the situation. You have a room full of people, of smart people. And nobody asks the very obvious question. And I think that the, the cause and the roots of these issues and of these also like, I mean, it's very time consuming, right?
If just, nobody speaks up the root of this is that everybody is too afraid of exposing themselves as the stupid person, because they think that asking a stupid question automatically equals them being stupid. So I think this is also very important skill to kind of, or like an attitude more than a skill to, um, to have and to, to build, to just not take yourself too seriously and to not one to one, attribute yourself worth to your work.
I mean, it's good to be proud of yourself when you did something. There's nothing wrong in that. But especially when it goes the negative way, then
Zeke: There's, there's also a challenge here, which is the environment you're in has to have a level of psychological safety that says you can do it. I mean, you, you talk about GetYourGuide and they do a good job of having blame free kind of communication. And that's pretty crucial. You have to kind of know that even if it were a super stupid question, it's still okay. Right.
Because in some places, in some environments, once you say ask the stupid question, they will, I mean, they'll hound you with, it'll be like, you know, some sort of grade school thing, like, haha, guess you that's the person who always ask that one stupid question, you know, 10 years later they're like, ha ha.
You're
Mira: Remember?
Zeke: what in the world?
Um, I, I wanna jump back to, you said you're better at detecting environments, which would not be a good fit, you know? And. And when interviewing at companies, I, I guess, so you you've been interviewing at some other places other than GetYourGuide over the time to,
Mira: uh, I only now started because I, I will take. At least, or like I will take two months off. Um, so I will only be starting work again in November. So it was kind of always a bit too far off to seriously start applying. But yeah, I now started applying to, to a few, which I found very interesting. And then in August I will do the serial applying if I haven't found anything by then.
So we'll
Zeke: But I here's, here's my question. My real question is what do you ask or do you have a set of questions you can, you know, that you've kind of can calibrate off of for detecting, I'll say just crappy situations.
[00:51:10] Recruiter communication sets the tone for company culture
Mira: Um, I think one of the biggest, and actually I find easiest ways to, or like, uh, not sure if easy, but, uh, for me the communication also already with the recruiter and like how fast you get answers is for me, very crucial thing, because I find it just incredibly. Rude and like you, I mean, you have to imagine, right?
If you are the recruiter, there's a person who is currently searching for a job who is very much, depending on, on your reaction to what they, they, whatever they send you be it that you want to reject them or whatever you want to do. But it's a person who is in some kind of limbo. And, um, even more surprising to me.
I mean, if it's a position that you really want to fill in, this is a person that you really want to hire, and then you wait to get back to them for one and a half weeks. Like I had this now I applied to something and I was absolutely sure that they are not like that I was rejected kind of on the first step.
Right. Because after 12 days I didn't have a response and I was like, yeah, okay. Forget about it. And then they text me back, gave me an appointment for the first interview in three weeks. And I was like, sorry, this is, this is just not gonna work for me because this has already then taken kind of five days of my life in a sense, of course I'm not actively doing something, but if I'm searching for a job.
Do they expect me to just put everything else on hold that I potentially have for five weeks? Like how important can I be as a, as a potential employee to that? And there are these kind of things even more, um, when asking for feedback, for example. So when you get rejected, do they respond to that? Do they not?
I mean, this is kind of, you are already kind of out of the process then, but when you are in the process, you have questions. Does somebody get back to you? How easy is the scheduling, uh, are people, I don't know, just, is there a vibe that makes you feel like this is not super awkward? Is the recruiter that you're talking to open for questions or is it just kind of them hacking off a list and just seeing kind of, okay.
Are the points filled? So if there's no small talk in all of these interview steps, I'm already very cautious because in the end I want to work somewhere where primarily everybody is seen as a person
Zeke: Mm-hmm
Mira: and whenever an interview process gets very, very. Technical, not even in the interview sense, but just technical in the sense that you realize you are just part of this process that is direct across a Jira board from like one process to the next.
And nobody really is invested in, in how you're doing and how, what this might mean for you in terms of time investment. I'm already very put off because it's kind of the same thing that I said before. Right? It's a two way street. It's not me going there to beg for a job. I'm like the attitude that I go into interviews with is also checking, okay, are you a good fit for me?
Would I like to work with you? Like,
Zeke: Mm-hmm
Mira: does this organization fit my standards of how I want to be treated? And, um, I, I think it's, I mean, you can argue art. I mean, HR is not who you work with later, but in the sense HR is presenting the organization very much and also very much the values that are, um, that are shared across the organization.
And that's very hard to get away. Even if your team is super nice, if the organization and the, the values that are presented, there are not matching what you want. You will always be frustrated because at some point you will have to leave your team bubble and you will have to interact with the organization.
And normally those things can get very, very frustrating. And normally those things that you have to interact with the organization and are also more prone to be very personal or like touching your life in a more meaningful way. Let's say.
So let's say for, for example, GetYourGuide. Even though they had four or five interview rounds from the time I applied to offer, it was 10 days, not 10 working days, 10 days in total.
Zeke: That's slick.
Mira: And I was, I mean, I was an associate, I was not expecting to be, and, and there was constant updates on like kind of how it was going. Like, what are the next steps? When is this about to happen? Like what, what is being kind of, where are the decision at right now? So this, I mean, this is kind of, I think as good as it can get, but this really made me also so motivated for the job because it was such a smooth experience.
Like I had a recruiter that was there for my whole process, where I talked to time and time again, who was super happy for me as well, when it worked out and you just guided through this process so nicely, and then you are also, I think performing better in the process because you're less anxious because you're not like, oh, what is gonna happen now?
Am I gonna receive an email in three days? That's gonna explain me something or not. When will it come see if you keep people engaged, it just shows a very high level of respect. It's also gonna be more likely that they then accept your offer. And I think if, if, if this care is not put in the recruitment process, then I always feel that they don't even think about this, this possibility that somebody will, like, I don't want to work for you.
Like this process was hell, I don't want to do this. And that it's more like, yeah, but it always feels more like, yeah, you can be glad to work for us. And if whenever I encounter that, that attitude, I'm like, you know, I'm, I'm gonna pass on this. I'm sorry.
Zeke: I'll tell you that's that's Facebook right there at a nutshell.
Mira: Yeah.
Zeke: Oh yeah. They're like, you know, they talk to you. They're always kinda like, you should beg us to work here. So like, I think I'm work anywhere when you come and recruit me. You actually, you gotta, you gotta recruit me. You don't get to say, Hey, we're Facebook, we're calling now, come work for us.
And I'm like, why, what have you got that I need? And they're kind of like Facebook and then they say it again. Well, it's Meta now, Meta.
Uh . But really I, that human aspect in the recruiting cycle is so magical. What happens to, oh, to be fair, Natasha, who works for GetYourGuide. You know how my interaction and she was one of the best recruiting experiences that I had. Like she really, when she, the first conversation that I had with her was so non-factory feeling and, and we talked.
Mira: like we had the same recruiting experience,
Zeke: Yeah, well, I mean, she's good. She's really good. I mean, I actually kind of used her as, uh, as an example, when I'm talking to other people about what recruiters can be like, I'm like, yeah, this is my experience at GetYourGuide, you know? And we had, we covered these conversation topics and, um, yeah, I felt valued.
Mira: Yeah.
Zeke: in the conversation.
Um, so it's possible. It's possible.
Mira: Yeah. And I mean like, these are, these are just the very early flags that you see. Right. I mean, I also worked at companies and then realized while working there that stuff is maybe not as they portrayed to be then of course it's harder to get out because like kind of harder to, to find the point where you really say, okay, no, this is not working for me. But, uh, in general, most of them are always related to treating people respectfully, which I'm still surprised is something to point out that you should treat your employees respectfully.
Zeke: I don't know. I look around the world and I feel like human beings are pretty terrible at this.
Mira: it seems like it
Zeke: Yeah. Um, so we we've, we focus mostly on, like, I'll just say, uh, the human aspects of being a software developer and, you know, building teams, things that are actually universal in every industry, um, which is, these are all topics that I'm super invested in, uh, especially after as much time as I've spent in it.
But I do want to ask you kind of, you are a software developer that usually comes with some curiosity about the technical parts of the job, too. I'm curious about what kind of pulls your interest right now or where you're thinking you wanna go next with your, your technical direction.
[00:59:18] New directions in web3 or pre-seed
Mira: I have, I have two directions that I'm searching jobs in because either would be fine for me. One is, uh, actually going into web three into the whole blockchain world. Which a lot of engineers are very, very skeptical about. I'm very, very, uh, interested to find out why they're so skeptical. Because like I, I'm also relatively skeptical about the whole, that's an ecosystem, not from a technical side, like there's so much. Obvious scams. I mean, that's kind of for sure. I mean, I, I, I like to compare it to the, what I imagine the early internet days must be like right, where there was also a lot of stuff that nobody needed and that nobody needed and knew how to, how to handle. And there's so much promise and so much kind of praise of this new world that we're all gonna live in, which I don't really believe in.
Like, I don't think that is true, but from a technological perspective, I find it so interesting that somebody came up with this and that somebody came up with this somewhat viable, alternative to the VA that we know, and simply this sparked my interest so much that, uh, I started going to hackathons and kind of dive more into that, uh, into that area.
And there's just a very nice vibe to the whole, to the whole thing. I mean, as uninclusive is, as it might feel from the outset, because there's so many keywords and phrases and names and company names being thrown around and like certain words and memes that are everybody knows. And you're just like, I have no idea what you're talking about when you get there.
There's a very kind of warm feeling of everybody kind of come aboard, we'll build something and this, like this will build something is what I'm kind of searching for. So there's, there's this, and then the other thing I'm I'm currently searching for is very, very early stage, um, pre-seed or seed startups, because I'm very interested.
So like at GetYourGuide, you have a code base that has been around for 10 years or longer, I think longer. So you mostly spend time, optimizing, I would say. Of course you build new components. Of course you also build new functionality, but you never really touch the core of what it is to set up a app application. Right.
There's already so much abstraction. There's already so many. I mean, there's whole teams in place only for that certain frontend product project that I work on there. So there's a platform team only for that project because it's our main, main frontend project, of course, but they are taking care of all of the, kind of, let's say infrastructure or like more meta things like bundling all of this.
I have no idea how this works or like I kind of read up on it. So I have some idea, but I have no idea how this works in the production environment and to get into it, you have to go through so many layers. So I'm kind of what I'm searching for now is to, to find something where I will be so much forced to understand these low level things by just being flown into them that, uh, I'm, I'm gonna be more confident in actually understanding how to build something myself, because that's kind of midterm.
I, I'm also thinking about like maybe founding something, if there's ever something that comes to my mind, that's worth founding. But, um, in general, like what I want to become better at is actually understanding things holistically. So like, I'm, this might, like people have told me already, this might be my, my downfall, but, uh, and that I will never remain a full stack engineer.
I have to specialize at some point. And I think it's probably true, but I really like understanding everything. And it's my problem that I need to focus probably on some things a bit more, but I really like to understand how to build things for whom to build and what to look out for when to build. So unless.
Maybe I'm less of a kind of classical engineer or developer in the sense that I'm only interested in kind of hacking away and doing, like getting my requirements and building something. I'm also very interested in where these requirements come from and the, the different opportunities that you have to, to make them a reality.
So I'm kind of trying to get as much exposure to that, uh, in the future
Zeke: Can I give you some advice?
Mira: please
Zeke: Fuck all them motherfuckers. and, and, and I mean that in the best possible way.
So of course the advice is always niche down. It's always go specialist. And the reason is, is that it's much easier to sell a specialization.
Mira: yeah,
[01:03:58] Don't prematurely specialize
Zeke: it's but, but if your nature is not to be a specialist, then do not do that. Because you will only you'll pigeonhole yourself and you'll become depressed or something like that.
If you like this and what I've heard throughout this entire conversation, it's totally clear to me, what attracts you is systems thinking.
And it can be applied to organizations and build to software. It can decide to operational stuff.
I mean, you're trying to build a comprehensive notion of how a system work and how to develop systems so that they work, basically without people, right? Like, I totally advise you to lean into what you like.
And they're not wrong. That if you niche down, if you go specialist, it'll be much easier to figure out how to get your career trajectory someplace. You'll be able to say, this is the ladder I'm crawling, you know, like, oh, this is how I go up these levels. That's where I go. But if that's not what, you know, if that's not, what really gets you moving, then it doesn't matter how quickly you can move up that ladder.
If you end up someplace hanging out where you don't wanna be. So do not.
Mira: Gonna note down systems thinking as something to look up.
Zeke: Um, what was the other thing I was gonna say there? So first of all, the big companies, the big tech companies. They hire for generalists, by default. They're looking for generalists because most of the technology they use is, is first of all, as like internal.
So you can't just hire a technical specialist from the outside and expect 'em to bring their specialty in because they're gonna have to learn. So like, like at Facebook, every single platform or thing you have to use is all built by Facebook, Microsoft, all built by Microsoft, you know, Google all built by Google, right?
So you can't, and, and the external versions of these things are also different than the internal versions, right? So you have to relearn. Amazon, maybe not as much now, AWS originally there is a completely separate version of all the, uh, prod network, but they've been trying to get as much as possible into AWS for all the internal versions of things too.
Um, but the other reason that they hire generalists is because they don't know what comes next. They don't actually know what problems they're solving. And so they're constantly kind of readjusting the teams and they want, I mean, at Amazon they say they want fungible developers, people that we can throw at any problem.
Just like you talked about earlier that adapt adaptability. That's what Amazon wants. They want people who are like, Hey, there's some new idea that somebody has and we have to compete with them or crush the living, you know, you know, we've gotta crush them now. So who can we put on that? We need a bunch of people who don't know anything about the problem, but that we can trust to get things done.
Right. Yeah. So they, there's a, there's a real, those skills are real useful adaptability, curiosity, generalist skills. Um, you won't, you won't go wrong. And of course, in a startup, I mean, you gotta wear every hat anyway. Right. So if you're really trying to go for the startup thing, um, yeah, don't sell yourself short for sure.
[01:07:00] Companies need to do retention early
Mira: I'm very intrigued by it. Like, I mean, it's a very interesting thing also now, now like that I, when I handed my resignation only, then I realized how valued I apparently was at GetYourGuide because a lot of people were shocked. I claim my manager asked me to talk to the CTO to figure out some way for me to stay.
And I was like, I dunno, maybe like I, it's a very interesting position to be put in, uh, because this is my first job in tech and I have no idea what my value is on the market. Right. And this is also something very interesting to figure out. I mean, I was aware, I was aware that. Engineers with a certain amount of experience will always be like, there will always be demand.
I mean, you get so many LinkedIn offers, but on the other hand, I also 50% of the LinkedIn head hunter offers, I getta for senior Java developer. I'm always like you did not read my profile
Zeke: Hmm. Well,
Mira: but, uh, it's a very interesting position to finally, like, because in the, in the business roles you really have to think more about, okay, will I find the next job?
And it's, it's a bit harder to position yourself in a sense of that. You can be that picky. Whereas as a software engineer, if you also have a little bit of confidence, you can really ask for things and like be picky. And it's the first time in my life that I can do that and that I want to do that. And that I am very picky about where I want to work next.
And it's a super empowering, um, feeling, but, uh, I still have to get used to it. I
Zeke: I think that's a pretty good place to close off here. Um, before we, before we go, are there anything that you wanna kind of call out about like, uh, where people can find out more about what you're doing?
Mira: Probably right now, not. So add me on LinkedIn. If you're interested there, you can also see where I will end up next, but, uh, no, maybe I need to work on my personal branding of it. Who knows?
Zeke: well, I mean, it's just, if you have it, I wanted to make sure give a chance for that. Um, and is there kind of any kind of final questions that you have for me?
Mira: no, no. I mean, maybe we should do a follow, but sometimes this is a really interesting discussion.
Zeke: I, I did think we could have an entire follow up on web three, so,
Mira: yes.
I think we should do that follow up would be very interesting. I would be very interesting to hear your perspective on it.
Zeke: Yeah. Skeptical.
Mira: I think you always should have a very, very healthy amount of skepticism for anything that is that much, that, that hyped
Zeke: that's right.
Mira: always, uh, never trust the hype. Yeah.
Zeke: Never trust the hype.
Mira: Never trust the hype.
Zeke: All right. Thank you very much, Mira. Um, and, uh, yeah, we'll talk again soon, I
Mira: Yes. Thank you. Was a pleasure.
Zeke: Thank you so much for listening, you can find show notes and transcripts and more episodes like this one on the website blog.introspectivedeveloper.com.
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I am Zeke Arany-Lucas, and you can connect with me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Please reach out there when you have questions or suggestions. Thank you.
