From Linguistics to Devops: Scarlett Interview

This is what it sounds like when Matthew and I have a few beers and start talking about the tech industry. I humbly apologize to all tech people who are offended by this and all who celebrate.

I sit down with my friend Scarlett to learn about her journey from linguistics to DevOps, job searching in 2025, things she wishes she'd learned earlier, and a whole lot of valuable advice from her experience in the tech industry.

00:00 Intros 02:45 Dave's book, Linux for Software Engineers 03:00 Why we wrote the book 06:10 Office Space Movie 09:00 Apple and the AI movement 12:00 How Companies change 14:14 Slow down to speed up 16:00 Slowing down - testing a hobby project 18:20 Promo from Staff Engineer to Staff Engineer 21:05 Day to day as a staff engineer 22:30 Resources for learning to be a staff engineer 23:50 Jr vs Sr Engineer Troubleshooting techniques 33:45 Observability Engineering (book) 39:57 Designing Data-Intensive Applications (book) 48:00 Cloud vs. on-prem infrastructure 49:25 Cloud vs on-demand metal 55:00 Cloud sizing pain 1:00:00 Engineering large systems 1:06:00 Cloud, web scale, and big data Matthew Sanabria joins me again to talk about the hobby, industry, and career sides of "tech." I had covid when we filmed this, so I look and sound awful. Hope you enjoy!

A conversation with fellow Dev/DevOps/SRE/tech person Matthew Sanabria, where we discuss the process of getting a software development job in the 2023-2024 job market. We also discuss using chat GPT and other LLMs as a software developer, and what it's like to start learning Elixir. Check out my upcoming book on the Linux Command line for developers: https://www.amazon.com/Software-Developers-Guide-Linux-no-nonsense-ebook/dp/B0BG2NV7FS

A quick solo episode where I cover the changes to infrastructure and architecture I've seen while working in the tech industry. I specifically focus on what my day-to-day work looked like at each phase, and which problems we faced that led to the next evolutionary step.

In this episode, I talk with Matthew and Justin about tech salaries and what makes great engineers (including more Junior people). 0:00 Intro 1:15 Tech Salaries 2:30 Information Asymmetry 4:05 Dave's Salaries 11:40 Matthew's Salaries 16:00 Job-hopping and salary bumps 17:45 Negotiation Tips 24:00 Dave's worst mistake 27:45 Is job-hopping bad? 30:00 How much should you make? 32:25 Intangible value 35:20 Job switching risk 39:30 Discussion - What do Seniors want from Junior Engineers? 58:18 Review - how to be an amazing engineer 58:55 High-impact skills 1:03:00 Moving to Senior engineer I'm writing a book! Pre-ordering helps me out in a very direct way. The Software Developer's Guide to Linux: A practical, no-nonsense guide to using the Linux command line and utilities as a software developer: https://www.amazon.com/Software-Developers-Guide-Linux-no-nonsense-ebook/dp/B0BG2NV7FS Some of Matthew's (awesome) YouTube videos: Troubleshooting TLS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-4TVHQK2b4 A Practical Terraform Intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0EQR3LGRz0 My New Packer Course: https://www.udemy.com/course/practical-packer-learn-hashicorp-packer-with-a-real-project/?referralCode=8C43A58B4A102EED5785 My OG Linux Project Course: https://www.udemy.com/course/hands-on-linux-self-hosted-wordpress-for-linux-beginners/?referralCode=19C0A7DEE2FD53C9C09D

Switching from VSCode to neovim: how it's going. Also, I'm learning Elixir, and I'll tell you why. 0:00 Introduction 2:00 Editor Wars 5:35 Kickstart.nvim and my nvim setup 10:40 Should you learn vim? 13:30 Elixir: What makes a language good? 17:15 My impression of Elixir (so far) 19:00 Erlang is cool 26:41 How I learn a new programming language 30:30 Learning Projects

An interview with Matthew Sanabria about his path through (and continued life in) the tech industry. Matthew and I met working at Hashicorp when it was a much smaller company than it is today. In this episode, we spend a lot of time discussing things we've learned and things we wish someone had told us when we got started in System Administration and Software Development. Timestamps: 0:00 Introduction 3:00 Switching from Infrastructure to Development 5:00 Linux skills that many Developers are missing 8:00 shoring up your weaknesses 11:00 Agility 14:00 Memorization and Learning 16:30 Dave admits his mistakes 23:15 Steve Yegge callout 26:00 From IT to CS 28:00 Engineering 31:30 ...and overengineering (middle out) 36:00 Teams, Skill Gradients, Companies 39:00 How to grow senior engineers 42:00 How to grow junior engineers 44:45 Agile 49:00 Agile operations teams 51:30 we're taking questions 52:13 Final words from Matthew Links: The tutorialinux YouTube channel I'm writing a book! Pre-ordering helps me out in a very direct way. The Software Developer's Guide to Linux: A practical, no-nonsense guide to using the Linux command line and utilities as a software developer. My New Packer Course⁠ My OG Linux Project Course⁠ Some of Matthew's (awesome) YouTube videos: Troubleshooting TLS A Practical Terraform Intro