The Solo Coder Podcast

I spoke with John Calderaio. John is as a technical writer currently working with Mosh Hamedani from Programming with Mosh.

If you haven't heard about Mosh, he is a great content and course creator. John writes for Mosh's website.

But John's story goes way beyond coding. As we discussed about his career, he revealed his troubled time from 12 to 20 years old when he dealt with drugs and alcohol, which lead to a car accident that got him in jail for 1 year. According to him, this was the worst time of his life.

Thankfully he got himself clean and he shared with me that after jail, he went back to University, got his bad grades removed and finished with a 3.9 GPA in Computer Science Engineering.

Unfortunately as a result of the car accident, he started suffering severe backpain which is still a constant in his life 24/7. Just to give you an idea of how bad the pain is, he was talking to me from his bed during the chat.

Nowadays, John is looking forward to a surgery that should fix the problems on his back. If all goes well, has plans to go to med school and combine technology with medicine.

I will leave you with the positive John Calderaio - technical writer and developer.

Enjoy the chat!

Full show notes and links: https://SoloCoder.com/99

I spoke with Ottawa based Ihab El-Waly. Ihab has a Computer Science background, but nowadays he works mostly with Digital Marketing.

Ihab caught my attention as he was the one who reached out to me to be part of the podcast. Usually I'm the one inviting guests and the proactive approach that Ihab took was an interesting surprise which made me want to talk to him even more.

I spoke with Ihab about his time as a Computer Science student and how he transitioned from University to becoming a freelancer website developer to then moving to digital marketing.

I have worked with many digital marketers in the past as my clients, but never had the opportunity to talk to one for the podcast and this looked like a good chance.

Ihab said that he was not cut out to be a super tech developer because of his business interests. He sees himself more as a middleman between technology and business. I think many of you listing to this might be in the same boat.

We also talked about the fact that Ihab's family and friends didn't support him much initially but now, after positive results, they are more convinced that this was a good career choice for him.

I will leave you with the soft-spoken digital marketer Ihab El-Waly.

Enjoy the chat!

Full show notes and links: https://SoloCoder.com/94

This was a different episode and we had a live audience asking questions. I think we will be doing this more and more over time and I would love to hear your opinion about this format. Do you like it? Don't like it? Hit me up on LinkedIn or Twitter - Links can be found @ SoloCoder.com.

We spoke with Cristian Florea. Cristian is a Frontend Developer working for Novartis, the big pharma company.

The format was a bit different from the traditional one and Cristian delivered a lot of valuable insights about the industry, getting experience as a frontend developer and many tips to help people landing their first job as a developer.

Aside from working at Novartis, about 2 years ago Cristian started helping aspiring developers by creating a coaching program to give them a hand on landing their first job.

Coming from a different background - Cristian studied Law - he has first-hand experience of how someone with non-traditional experience, can break into the industry.

We have also explored the fact that Cristian is a bit nomadic right now, going from country to country for only a few months at a time. Sounds like a dream come true to many people who love to travel.

From electronic music producer to barista to coder, you will take away a lot from this chat with Cristian Florea, coach for aspiring developers.

Full show notes and links: https://SoloCoder.com/93

I spoke with the dual Matt Lawrence and Mike Karan. Together they run a web development agency in Hamilton, Canada called "Digital Dynasty Design".

Beyond that, they also run their own podcast show called "HTML All The Things" where they talk about web development, design and running a small business.

I was interested in speaking to them about how and why they started their own web development company. I wanted to shed some light into this as a career opportunity. They were very candid about it. They covered the feast and famine cycles that are so common when running a small business.

They also spoke about their focus on trying to create some sort of passive income stream that can help to minimize the ups and downs of the business.

Of course we also talked about their own podcast and how they are able to keep it going with so much consistency.

It was great to be able to talk such a good combination of business partners. They have so many complementing skills to add to each other. This is key when picking someone to go in business together.

I will leave you with Matt and Mike from Digital Dynasty Design.

Enjoy the chat!

Full show notes and links: https://SoloCoder.com/91

I spoke with David Jorjani. David is Director of Product at Ideal.com and Instructor at the University of Toronto.

Great to see a professional like David with a foot in Academia and another one in Startups.

At UofT, David wants to help students getting real life experience to be ready for the industry.

Then at Ideal.com, he needs to hire talent. Also, Ideal itself is a platform that helps companies with talent acquisition.

So David seems to be surround by talent. From one end he needs to hire and select them, from the other end he helps to build them!

We have explored what it means to be working for a start up and I asked him to help me sell the idea of being part of a start up to my students.

We also spoke about teaching and his experiential learning practices of having students working with real projects. These projects are brought by real companies with whom he forms partnerships.

I will leave you with David Jorjani, product builder and people developer.

Enjoy the chat!

Full show notes and links: https://SoloCoder.com/89