Mentoring Developers

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In this episode, Jay Bobo discusses his experiences as a mentor and recalls how he got his start in software development.

Jay’s Bio:

Jay Bobo is a software engineer & serial entrepreneur. He has 10+ years of experience in product development and strategy working with companies such as Microsoft (MSN), Nike-Pacific, State Farm and Coca-Cola. He currently works in healthcare building meaningful products for physicians, pharmacists and patients alike.

Find him on Twitter @jaybobo

Episode Highlights and Show Notes:

Jay: I am a student of life and a student of programming…

Jay: It was actually my intent to get a Computer Science degree but, like a lot of people, I felt like I wasn’t ready for that and I got scared…

Arsalan: We find that a lot of software developers in the industry are self taught… this is a big myth with high school students and people still thinking about their careers and every time I ask them about, perhaps, choosing software development or software engineering as a career, they always say, “Well, I don’t really have a degree or Computer Science scares me.” and it’s very difficult for me to communicate to them that you don’t actually need a degree! A lot of people that I work with – and they are fantastic developers – they never studied Computer Science formally and it doesn’t seem to matter in our industry because there are some skills that you can pick up and employers really don’t think about it as much as people think they do…

Jay: I started building websites for other people when I was in college full time for 6 or 7 years…

Jay: To level up your skills, meet new people and tackle challenges…

Arsalan: You don’t need a job. If you are a web developer, you can make a website very cheap or even free and tell people what you can do. If you are an app developer, for example, you could certainly build an app for the iPhone or Android… You can show people what you have with a very simple set of tools – usually just a computer and maybe some software and you’re not bound by your location. If you are in a place where there are no jobs, move where there are jobs. You have to be flexible in order to create that opportunity for yourself…

Arsalan: You don’t need to be a Math guru to be good at programming… All you need is passion and the attitude of not giving up. You have to enjoy the creative part of it, the constant learning and this career can be pretty rewarding…

Jay: Pair programming is a bit slower than one person working on a task but it helps prevent the silly mistakes that tend to happen when one person is working on a task. You have more ideas and more feedback when you run up against a problem…

Jay: Code every single day until you have a job!

• Ruby Tapas
• The Ruby Rogues
• The SysAdmin Casts
• LiveCoding.tv
• Twitch
• Cooper Press weekly newsletters
• Hacker News
• Pair Columbus

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