This is part two of our new series Fashion Meets Tech [see part one here], in tandem with onchek Jordan, a software designer at Etsy and formerly Twitter, is one to talk about music, art, and design. As a creative, who currently shares his creativity through software, he can easily go in depth on fashion and poetry as well. In his world, creativity is fluid. It can can take any form. “I’m glad to be here,” he said as he walked in. “I’ve never really done this before, but let’s
Tell us abit about yourself and what you do? I am a Bay Area native, Filipino-American feminist, activist, and software developer. I grew up in the East Bay and attended UC Berkeley. I am a full stack developer at Carta, where I mostly work with Python/Django and Javascript/React. I help make our software bulletproof by maintaining legacy code and triaging bugs. Our company is a fintech company. Coming from a Cognitive Science, Linguistics, and pre-medical background, getting familiar with the codebase, data flow, and data models remains to be a steep
I decided to write a blog post on 4 things I have learned in my 7 months as a junior data engineer to document my learning and in the attempt to help others. These points are in no particular order and can be applied across engineering roles. When you have an idea, build it! There was a time when I raised my idea for a project, then waited for validation before I built it. I was told my idea was okay, and it remained in the backlog of tickets to do
What makes up the ideal programmer, in your mind? Is it a computer whiz who has been coding since they were seven years old and making million dollar apps? Is it an experienced developer with 10 or 20 years in the biz, who knows every language (but only the good ones, of course) and can build a website in the time it would take you to get another cup of coffee? Is it a code artiste who can write code so beautiful that it makes everyone simultaneously weep in awe
Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do? After being raised in Saginaw, MI, I graduated from the prestigious Tuskegee University with a BS in Computer Science. I came to the DC area right after college after landing a Government contracting gig. I did a lot of soul-searching those first few years of my career after I realized Government work wasn’t for me. I eventually broke into the startup world which is much more my cup of tea (I like my tattoos and jeans). After some time, a
Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do? I’m originally from Lagos, Nigeria. I moved to the US about four years ago to attend New York University. I currently work at LinkedIn as a software engineer on the design systems team. My team creates the building blocks for developers across the company to build their sites. Outside of work I consider myself more of an artist that uses code as a tool. I graduated from the “make your own major” school at NYU, and my concentration was at the
I sat down with Dara Elass only expecting to discuss life as a Data Engineer at Spotify. As I went on to uncover the amazing person that she is and more about her life journey, I knew that this discussion would go more in-depth than work and her life in tech. We thank you, Dara, for being so brave and welcoming to POCIT and for understanding how important it is to share your story with the communities and individuals you may reach. Tell us about your journey into tech. I
We spoke to Safia all the way back in Episode 50, and it was time for an overdue catchup to see whats shes been working on. What made you start the projects you’re working on at the moment? My biggest project at the moment is a platform called Zarf. Zarf is a content marketplace where writers can sell a subscription or one-time access to their work. Before I “officially” started working on the project in June, I had been thinking about building a platform like Zarf for a while. I
