PLUG Meeting for February 9th
Attend the meeting by going to: https://lufthans.bigbluemeeting.com/b/plu-yuk-7xx
at 7pm MST
We have 2 presentations lined up for
this month's meeting:
Fatima Taj will present: How to Navigate
the Early Days at Your First Tech Job and Bob
Murphy will present: A brief introduction to
Mastodon and the Fediverse
This is a remote meeting. Please join by going to https://lufthans.bigbluemeeting.com/plu-yuk-7xx
at 7pm on Thursday Feb 9th
Fatima Taj: How to Navigate the Early Days at Your First
Tech Job
Description:
Reflect on existing processes/documentation: Every team has its own
processes/style of documentation and this offers you a great
opportunity to make a meaningful contribution in! For example, if
you feel that your onboarding was particularly difficult because of
the lack of documentation/processes, this could be something that
you could work on, especially since you have a fresh perspective as
a new hire. Alternatively, you could also look into potential ways
of improving existing processes/documentation.
The Art of Asking Questions: As overwhelming as it can be to ask a
question, especially when starting a job as a new graduate, there is
an art to asking questions which can allow you to feel both
empowered and unintimidated. This includes doing your research
before, using the rubber duck technique before asking the question,
and being respectful of people’s time.
Deep Dive into your Projects: Even on teams with excellent
documentation, getting started on your technical projects can be a
very daunting task, since there’s multiple components involved.
Overtime though, you will understand how these things are done on
your team, but it can save you a lot of time and potential headaches
to figure this out early on, by keeping a handy list to refer to
including basic project setup, testing requirements, review and
deployment processes, task tracking and documentation.
Gaining Technical Context: Gaining a high level overview of your
project at the very beginning is invaluable because it not only
allows you to gain a deeper understanding of the work that you’ll be
doing, but also allows you to feel more connected to your team and
company in general.
Establish Expectations: In order to set yourself up for long term
success, it’s imperative that you establish a clear
benchmark/criteria from the get go. If there isn’t a clear one
available, work with your manager to establish one. This allows you
to be strategic with your career growth in general and also removes
any vagueness surrounding what is expected of you and how your
performance will be evaluated moving forward. Additionally, it
offers you a greater sense of clarity in terms of what you’re doing
well and what could be improved upon.
Working in Distributed Teams and Maintaining a Work-Life Balance:
When starting out your career, it’s very easy to get caught up in
your work, often leading to new employees working overtime.
Initially, one might not be cognizant of this, but overtime, this
can lead to extreme burn out and a myriad of other issues. It’s
crucial to maintain a work-life balance, even more so now when a
vast majority of people work from home and across a variety of time
zones, and the separation between work and a life outside of work
gets blurred. This includes turning off notifications, being
diligent about not working on weekends, and using your paid time
off.
About Fatima:
Fatima is a graduate of the University of Waterloo, Canada. Post
graduation, she's worked full-time as a Software Developer at DRW, a
trading firm, and currently works at Yelp as a Software Engineer.
Fatima is passionate about supporting fellow tech enthusiasts and
has spoken at over 70 hackathons across North America in 2022. In
addition, she's also been a panelist at Harvard WeCode, presented at
the Women Who Code Connect Event, Black is Tech Conference, Tapia
Conference, and Women of Silicon Roundabout, London's biggest event
for women in technology.
Bob Murphy: A brief introduction to Mastodon and the
Fediverse.
Description:
The Fediverse is a collection of communities that is a bit of a
throwback to a smaller, more personal time on the internet. There
are services for short messaging, audio and video sharing, and event
organizing, among other things. Mastodon is a fully open source
social media platform, with no advertising, monetizing, or venture
capital. It is a part of the Fediverse, a social network that is
truly a network, by incorporating ideas and protocols that allow
users and information to freely spread throughout a wide diaspora of
servers and services. Explore how you might wish to join into the
rich, new world that has more of a resemblance of the internet as it
was envisioned to be.
About Bob:
Bob is a Linux Systems Administrator who has been a user of
GNU/Linux for own personal use since the late nineties. Bob has used
many distributions over the years, starting with Slackware, up to
the latest Red Hat and Ubuntu releases.
murph.info