What exactly do you do? I’m a staff writer at Lifehacker mostly covering technology and productivity news. I write about stuff that helps you get more work done with the tools you have. This could include a productivity app or calendar apps, for example. I also help you find services that assist you in making the most out of technology. What’s been the most interesting part of your journey as a tech writer? It’s been a wild ride, and it has been weird. I know a lot more about the
How did you get started with Indie Hackers? August of last year, I was looking for something new to work on. I had just quit my job as a freelance developer, and I was burned out on startups. I had taken a few years off to freelance, but I got an itch to come back to start-ups. So, I figured why don’t I sit down for a few days and try to come up with an idea. I knew that I had a few criteria in mind, I wanted something
Tell us a bit yourself and what you do? My name is Kevin Stewart, and I’m VP of Engineering at Heptio. Heptio is a company that was started by two former Googlers who were co-founders of the Kubernetes project as well as co-creators of Google Compute Engine. Heptio is looking to modernize IT by bringing Cloud Native technologies (like Kubernetes) to enterprises. As we are a startup, my primary role is to build the engineering organization and ship our open source projects and products. We are currently hiring for multiple
What made you decide to work in tech? Working in tech happened pretty organically, and was born from several interests I had as a child. Science fiction and video games were popular family pastimes and cultivated my interest in technology early on. My grandmother was the first in the family to get a computer, and whenever we visited, I would lock myself in her bedroom to draw characters in Microsoft Paint based on the stories I wrote in WordPerfect. Once I left New York City and went away to school,
Tell us about your career up to this point. It’s been quite nonlinear. My first job was as a reporter covering arts and theatre for the local edition of a national newspaper in Bangalore, India (where I grew up) at age 19. It was interesting because I knew nothing about arts and theatre. I was studying to be an engineer at the time. My first full-time job after graduating from college was as an engineer at JP Morgan Chase — I worked in a project management team that designed and
What are you doing and how did you get into your current career? I’m working on the Growth Team as a Customer Success Director for Peg, a company that has built a suite of software for marketers to search, message, and collaborate with social influencers. It’s something that I love, and it took a bit of serendipity. Networking with friends (and friends of friends) and being honest with myself about what I needed from my next role was the key. After a grueling interview process, I landed what I would
How would you describe your job to somebody who is outside of the design and tech world? I help guide the brand identity team. We build the standards, rules, and creative brand expression for our team to breathe life and souls into our brands at Vox How long have you been there at Vox? I started August 2016. I was a speaker at one of their company retreats in 2015 where I spoke about work-life balance. I’ve very familiar with the company and their brands; I loved SB Nation and
What made you decide to work in the tech industry? I was initially in an administrative/office management roles. It wasn’t planned. I started a blog, and I became interested in learning how to code and started looking into boot camp programs. A lot of people who I knew had changed their careers and I thought maybe I could do the same since I wasn’t very happy doing what I was doing. I was eventually accepted into a program at a nonprofit called the Coalition for Queens. They were running a
What made you decide to work in the tech industry? Initially, I was pursuing a career in accounting. I declared it my major at college. After an accounting internship, I decided it was not for me, but I had done it for so long I couldn’t see myself doing anything else. So, I decided to do a second internship, with the hope of getting a full-time offer. It didn’t happen. I was devastated at the time and had no idea what I was going to do next. I was counting
What made you decide to work in tech? Problem-solving. Specifically, problem-solving with little costs for exploration. I was really attracted to solving problems with code. I loved that code could be changed to explore new ideas and improve on existing ones with the only real costs being my time and energy. What was an obstacle you faced and how did you overcome that obstacle? Transitioning to management, though I saw and see that as a challenge more than an obstacle. At the time I was a peer of the teammates
