Software Engineer – HerHelloWorld

How to Make the Most of Your Online Course

Holly Boothroyd — Mon, 05 Sep 2022 21:00:00 +0000

The tech world requires almost constant learning – there are always new technologies, language updates, and sector-specific knowledge to acquire, regardless of whether you are new to the industry or have been in it for many years.

It is almost inevitable you will eventually turn to an online course as a tool to upskill in pursuit of breaking into the industry, career advancement, or the simple desire to learn and build. They are great, affordable, and often free, learning resources that can give you the foundation to use these new skills and extend them more easily through experience and further research.

To gain the most value from your course, follow these three tips:

Find a course that teaches theory and practical content

The combination of theory and practical knowledge is powerful. Learning both gives you the skills to execute, but also the depth of knowledge to understand why something works and, importantly, figure out how to solve more complex problems using that underlying knowledge.

Look for courses that have explanations of topics and then dive into project work. Courses that have projects to complete that can go onto your portfolio are a double win that you should seek out.

Practicing along is crucial to absorbing the knowledge and being able to independently create using that knowledge. Just watching is often not enough to cement what you learned in your brain in a meaningful way.

Build high quality notes

While you learn and practice along with your course, take the opportunity to build your own “Wikipedia” as a memorisation technique and an ongoing resource to take away with you.

Studies show taking notes helps improve your memory of new topics. By putting concepts into your own words and spending thinking time digesting your learning, you can better recall what you have learned.

You can later refer to your personal “Wikipedia” to refresh your memory on concepts or techniques. As you continue to learn from other sources and experience, your “Wikipedia” can continue to grow as a comprehensive guide.

Check out tools like Notion.io and OneNote to take digital notes that are cloud connected so can be accessed and edited from anywhere. Notion is handy for its structuring elements, templates, and special programmatically updatable elements. OneNote benefits from the ability to handwrite notes using a pen or touch screen, along with integration with other Microsoft products.

Share your progress

Sharing your progress is motivated by three things – building in accountability, finding community, and boosting your visibility in industry.

Putting your goals out into the world can build in accountability to your process. If you are doing a coding course, many people do the 100 Days of Code challenge (there are also 30 and 50 day challenges). As part of the challenge, you are supposed to share your daily progress. It gives people a way to celebrate their daily wins and meet like-minded people.

There are a loads of tech communities online that are passionate and interested in the same things you are. Connecting with them with help you find resources to learn from and hear about the latest changes in the industry. They also help establish a feeling of belonging for those who may be new to the space.

For daily reminders to share you progress, check out my 100 Day of Code Journal! Use it to help you formulate your goals, track your progress, and celebrate your wins!

To find out more about the ways it can help your industry visibility, head to SheCanCode for the full article!

So, You Want to Be an Engineer, but Don’t Know How

Holly Boothroyd — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 18:21:00 +0000

Diving into the tech industry can feel a bit overwhelming at times. The vast expansion of the tech industry in recent years and the historical lack of diversity means not enough people are getting the information and mentorship they need to make strategic choices about getting into tech. Let’s change that by giving you a basic framework to focus your efforts and land you a role you will thrive in!

Working Backwards

The joy of tech is that it impacts basically every industry, in every part of the world. You want to find the intersections between what you love and your work. Finding the intersections helps boost your motivation, increases how quickly you learn, and ultimately leads to finding greater success. Allow yourself to think boldly – anything is possible!  

The first place to start when finding your tech pathway is by looking at what you truly want to do and working backwards!

Ask yourself questions like:

What am I passionate about?
What are my strengths? Consider both technical + professional skills (eg. Communication + collaboration).

What impact do I want to make?
What products or companies align with my goals and/or passions?

With a better idea of what you want to do, it’s now time for a bit of research:  

Take a look at Job Postings:
Look for ones at the companies that speak to your mission or are building the tech that you want to work on. This is the clearest indicator of what skills you should be gaining. However, don’t let job descriptions prevent you from applying to certain roles if you don’t have all the skills – not everything is a must-have to land the job.

Use Online Social Platforms:
Find people on LinkedIn, Twitter, and/or reach out to people in your network who are doing similar things to what you want to do. Look at their journey and focus on the skills they learnt that led them to where they are now. Make note of the things that stand out to you.

And that’s it – a data-driven, personalized process to inform what skills and experiences to gain to reach the life that YOU want. By planning backwards, your moves are more strategic, and you can feel confident that you’re always heading in the right direction.  

Education Paths

With this in mind, you now know what to learn, but the question remains how should you learn it? Again, your choice depends on what works best for you. Tech is a special industry because it does not require you to follow a certain educational path to gain the necessary skills. This means you can choose your path based on how you learn best and your individual life + financial circumstances. Let’s go over some of the common educational paths:

University

Apprenticeships

These are quickly becoming a popular approach and one of the best ways to get the best of all the different paths into tech. You will learn on-the-job (so is ideal for people who don’t enjoy a traditional classroom learning environment), get paid for your work, and, depending on the apprenticeship scheme, earn your degree with a partner university absolutely FREE! Plus, you will likely get a post-apprenticeship job offer. Apprenticeships that include completing your degree are generally as long, or possibly longer than a traditional 4-year degree, but you end up with multiple years’ experience and no debt. I highly recommend looking into apprenticeships if the university path doesn’t appeal to you.

Bootcamps

This is a much shorter, highly focused learning path that will teach you the fundemental skills you need to get a job in tech. Many bootcamps focus on a particular tech stack (eg. web development or data science), so you will not get as much technical breadth as a university degree, but you will complete it in a fraction of the time. Good bootcamps will teach a mix of theoretical and practical content, will require you to create projects to demonstrate your skills and have something to put on your GitHub . They will also provide career resources to help you get a job after completing the course, and have clear metrics on how successfully their students went from doing their bootcamp to having a job in the relevant industry. Bootcamps are fairly pricey – they can easily be several thousand pounds, but there are often scholarships available for those needing financial aid or if you are part of an underrepresented community in tech.

Self-Teaching

Regardless of if you are trying to get into tech or are already in it, you will have to self-teach at some point to stay on top of the latest changes in the industry. This path requires the most amount of self-motivation and drive. You are solely responsible for your learning and how quickly it takes. However, you also have the flexibility to learn whatever you want at a far lower price than through a university or bootcamp. This is generally the hardest path with which to get into an entry level role but is entirely possible and is quickly becoming a common path as tech resources become more widely available and the need for technical people continues to rapidly increase.

The choice is yours! Getting into tech does not require following a single path. You can choose the path that best aligns with you and your circumstances.

To find out about which languages to learn, head to SheCanCode for the full article!

2021 Techie Gift Guide!

Holly Boothroyd — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 21:51:49 +0000

Techie treats for everyone in your life – or maybe even a treat for yourself!

(Contains affiliate links)

Clothes + Accessories

ScienceScribbles

Coding Crystals

MNCO

Books

100 Days of Code Journal

Invisible Women

The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google

Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine

Coding + Electronics Kits

Geek Club 3D Electronics Kits

Raspberry Pi

Kano Harry Potter Coding Kit

Tech

FitBit Versa 3 SmartWatch (Android + iPhone compatible)

Hue Starter Kit

Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones

Birdie Saftey Alarm (Currently 30% off)

Xbox Favorites

Xbox Game Pass + Xbox Live

Xbox Gear Shop – Gaming Apparel + Accessories

Xbox Custom Controller

Xbox Controller to PC Adapter

5 Things I’ve Learnt Developing Software

Holly Boothroyd — Sun, 21 Nov 2021 19:06:00 +0000

Releasing my first product to the public was, to put it into Xbox terms, an “Achievement Unlocked” moment. During my first internship at Microsoft on Paint 3D, I worked on the project from prototype to release.

It was a very unique year and an opportunity that interns don’t often get.

Since then, I have released features for the Xbox app, developed the new Cortana in Windows app, created new components for the Edge browser new tab page, and am currently working on a project set to be used by millions daily.

I’ve learnt a lot about user feedback, building + shipping products, working within a big corporate, the evolution of products, and even about myself.

Here are the top 5 things I’ve learnt developing software:

About Development

Engage User Research and pivot based on user feedback. A developer, designer, and project/product manager are going to get tunnel vision. They are going to know the quirks of the project and come with bias on how easy it is to use and the value it is providing.

Get your product in front of real people – you’ll likely find it wasn’t as intuitive as you thought. Use this feedback to make a product people want to use.

About Building Projects

Being critical of your product or company isn’t a bad thing when it is constructive. I drank the Microsoft Kool-Aid from a very young age and my passion for its products led me to my role as a software engineer.

Growing up, I struggled to say anything negative about Microsoft – it felt disloyal. When I joined my first Microsoft team, I was shocked at how critical the team was of everything.

I’d soon learn it was their superpower.

They didn’t get stuck in the corporate bubble of “we make the best products”. They came from a mix of companies so could say “this isn’t great” and “here’s how we can do better”. They were obsessed with building a product people loved to use. Calling out what was bad and being entirely customer focused was how they kept quality up.

It worked! Press attention was enormously positive and now Paint 3D has a really loyal base of users. Use a constructively critical eye on your product – it will be better off because of it.

About Working in a Big Corporate

Plan for a long-term vision and build the minimum lovable product (MLP) – not the minimum viable product (MVP).

A minimum viable product is generally understood to be the version of the product that has the minimum number of features to solve their problem – the golden path through your main user journey.

A minimum lovable product is similar to an MVP, but it goes beyond just solving the customers’ problem. A MLP has greater consideration for the look, feel, and delight of the user’s experience when using your product.

Building the MLP helps your first-round product hit the shelves, delighting users as well as building external and internal buy in for the next set of updates.

Long-term visions can be hard to achieve when leads, particularly in large corporates, change roles – bringing new agendas and shifts in company direction. This will help bring longevity amongst change to your project by building a quality product where the metrics speak volumes.

Invest in your telemetry and data pipeline. Data will help drive important decisions about product focus, assist in product health improvements, and demonstrates quantitatively that you are reaching your key performance metrics (KPIs).

About the Evolution of Products

Not all software is released or sticks around forever. As hard as it is to see something you built not survive the test of time, your contributions can still be very valuable. These products help prove a concept, inform future decisions, or may be repurposed into something new.

A great example is the innovative Microsoft Kinect, which shipped with the Xbox 360. The Kinect enabled users to play games with their whole body thanks to advanced motion and room tracking.

Unfortunately, the Kinect didn’t get the public buy in it needed to be continued at scale. However, its technology was later transformed into the HoloLens.

The HoloLens is a world-leading MR headset that companies and individuals use around the world. The technology wasn’t lost – it was repurposed into something even better. Plus, the Kinect itself is still quite popular with developers for AI/ML projects and research

To find out what I learnt about myself, head to SheCanCode for the full article!

Is Instagram Being Facebooked?

Holly Boothroyd — Sun, 21 Feb 2021 10:36:24 +0000

An opinion piece | Views are my own

Remember when Instagram was just a 1:1 aspect ratio photo-sharing app that came with a few good filters? This simple platform quickly grew to be the platform of choice for many creatives and young people. It prioritized craft and quality, and felt more genuine than its competitor Facebook. Instagram is, of course, a tech business, so I won’t over hype them, but there was something that drew us first in.

When I started HerHelloWorld in 2018, I very specifically chose Instagram as a platform over other social platforms like Twitter or YouTube for two main reasons: 1. I was looking for a mix of photo and text content creation 2. I wanted to be on the platform where my target audience, people early to middle of their education + careers, particularly women and less represented communities, spent their time.

Two years on, Instagram is a battleground of features and algorithm changes. It has a very different feel to what it once did. If we look back two years in Instagram’s history (and amusingly just two weeks before I started HerHelloWorld), one very big thing happened: the founders of Instagram, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, stepped down from the company. At the time, it was seen as the end of pseudo-independence from Facebook. I had my suspicions at the time on how Instagram would transform and now looking at what Instagram has become, those suspicions have been confirmed.

Instagram is showing strong signs of following Facebook’s trajectory: as a user, the content is becoming a series of ads; as a creator, it is an endless endurance race + obstacle course to simply be seen; and as a software engineer, there are signs of rushed development pushed by executives to hit KPIs and keep up with competitors by any means necessary. Take a look at some of the other moves they’ve made to keep up with competitors over the years.

All of this culminates in people becoming disinterested and moving onto the next platform. It is being Facebooked.

This isn’t to say that there isn’t still a healthy community of creators and users, but it does mean that competitors like TikTok have an opportunity to fill the role in the social market that Instagram once filled for Facebook by becoming the cooler, more genuine platform for users. Plus, as a creator, it is amazing to see TikTok recognize and support some creators through the Creators Fund.

Forced to Use a Competitor

Despite this, I watched the rise of TikTok as an outsider for a long time. I felt attached to Instagram and the community I had fostered there. Plus, I didn’t want to get distracted by another platform (especially one I had been warned was quite addictive by friends ).

It wasn’t until Instagram came out with Reels that I finally HAD to get a TikTok.

Why was I forced to go onto a competitor’s platform? Quite simply because the feature was laden with bugs on Android. It became basically unusable to the point where I had zero trust that I would be able to successfully create a Reel.

I gave it my best shot, but it took me 3 Reels before I gave up and downloaded TikTok. A 30 second Reel would take me, no joke, multiple hours to make. It wasn’t because I was doing anything spectacular in the videos, it was because at almost every step there was a bug.

Here are just a few examples I ran across:

- If you resized the text element after completing the initial entry then the text became distorted and skewed. It is only after you post it that you saw this bug, so it is too late to fix and you have to start over.
- Saving to a draft didn’t work, so that time invested to create it ahead of time to share it at the “optimum time” was wasted and your content is delayed because you have to start over.
- Instagram crashed several times at random stages of creation which meant that all work was lost.
- Instagram even managed to crash my entire phone. My phone got progressively slower until the phone was forced to restart.

Reels felt rushed – I find it hard to believe that it was shipped without Facebook knowing about these bugs. At the same time, they altered the algorithm to shift engagement to Reels thereby heavily encouraging people to use their not-quite-ready tech to compete for their existing audience.

Their decision to ship like this puts an unnecessary strain on creators who are providing their platform free content to show their ads amongst.

So, I started using TikTok to create my Reels – the software was just better and easier to use. Given I was creating the content on TikTok, it made sense to post it publicly and build a TikTok account simultaneously. Plus, with it becoming an increasingly popular platform for my target audience, there was a big benefit in creating an account.

It took me 9 videos to create one that took me from 50 followers to 1000 in one day with over 43k views at the time of writing. On TikTok that is just a common jump. Conversely, that level of discoverability and reach is hard to produce on Instagram, especially as a new account.

I started seeing videos on TikTok and even discussions on LinkedIn about how to grow your audience on Instagram, Reels hacks, tips for the ever-changing algorithm, and jokes about the endless struggle to reach anyone and get engagement despite trying all these things. The common advice to get growth you need to post at least 3 feed posts and 3 Reels a week, plus 10 stories a day.

A platform demanding that much content creation using a feature that increases creation time for such little returns leads to creator burnout. You lose genuine, quality content in a rush to produce anything to stay relevant to the algorithm.

The Scaled Impact

The control Instagram has over the world can be scary, and one of the ways it exercises its control is through the powerful, yet elusive algorithm. It manipulates weightings on engagement to reach those KPIs while sacrificing the very craft and art that made the platform popular. Each time they bring out new features, the demands to even reach those already following you increases. These algorithm changes have real world impacts on the content and the creators.

Instagram isn’t alone in this. You can see similar examples on YouTube as a result to changes in their monetization policy. Initially they restricted mid-roll ads to videos that are at least 10 minutes long which led to a massive increase in videos being 10 minutes long, and at times having content stretched out, to hit the threshold.

More recently, YouTube changed this policy allowing videos of 8 minutes to enable mid-roll ads and will automatically enable them for existing eligible videos, even those that previously opted out of ads (they can be turned off later).

As you can read here, the reason behind this move could be due to their advertising rates dropping nearly “50% since the beginning of February”. YouTube is looking to regain ground by increasing their content inventory to insert ads within and attract creators who bring viewers to the platform.

Music streaming platforms have even explicitly recognized the massive impact they have on the industry – Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said:

“Some artists that used to do well in the past may not do well in this future landscape, where you can’t record music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough. The artists today that are making it realize that it’s about creating a continuous engagement with their fans. It is about putting the work in, about the storytelling around the album, and about keeping a continuous dialogue with your fans.”

Some creators find success in this high-volume strategy, but many others find that it isn’t a sustainable model for their sector. This is especially true when streaming services pay such low royalties per stream, or in Instagram’s case, supply engagement per post.

Are we okay having platforms who chase after KPIs and ad revenue define and control what quality and success mean for other industries? Is “continuous engagement” really the key metric we should be aspiring to - and what gems would we lose if we were to retroactively apply this gate?

Watching the evolution of Instagram through the lens of a user, creator, and software engineer has been an interesting use case. It is another reminder of the massive sway that technology and a few well-placed decision makers can have on industries and people’s lives. We should be asking ourselves how an algorithm change is going to affect everybody and whether that change is for the better.

And please, stop shipping code that isn’t ready. Ty

If you like my work, I’d love your support!

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Ive just completed another interview loop and, as ps. save this post for the list of Competencies! As an interviewer, I want to see you succeed, but I can only evaluate what you tell me Too many times ppl have said that they don’t have an example (no marks) or share an example where they actually dont come across well… And honestly, compared to the technical interview THIS SHOULD BE THE EASY PART!!! But folks invest all their time into one part of the interview and forget the other. So please do yourself a favor and prep for these questions! Follow for more insider advice on tech + careers!" aria-hidden="true">

After earning 4 promotions in 5yrs in Big Tech, I’ Frankly, your career is a bit like a game - you have to learn how to play Starting with the work you pick up… There’s always work to do, but not all work is as valuable. If you want to move fast, you have to work on the important stuff with visibility and big impact. Even better when the leads especially care because it leaves a good impression for promotion conversations And then realize that promotion decisions are made by people, so your relationships matter Building raport and real connections makes a difference in who is going to be advocating for you in the decision rooms and the feedback they hear from others Plus, it helps ferry the right work your way when you need to demonstrate different skills But before you get there, you need to make sure it is known that you want a promotion Your boss will work harder to help you, if they know you want it And I even know execs who refuse to promote if the report doesn’t ask, so you have to advocate for yourself You want your boss on your side and that starts with honest conversations about goals, gaps, and timelines And finally, to get you over the edge… you need to be different There are other awesome people on your team - why should you get the promotion? This is where your unique skills and passions come together with your proactivity and problem solving to have impact beyond expectations Show you are already working at the next level! It’s not always easy, but these 4 things have helped me get promoted faster than I expected Hit follow for more tech + career strategies from a big tech insider!" aria-hidden="true">