Competence builds confidence with .NET Principal Engineer Safia Abdalla
Summary
Scott Hanselman interviews Safia Abdalla, a Principal Software Engineer on the .NET team at Microsoft. They reflect on their decade-long acquaintance since Safia’s time at Northwestern University and trace her evolution from a student involved in open source to a principal engineer.
The conversation centers on the core philosophy that “competence builds confidence.” Safia argues against the “fake it till you make it” mentality, advocating instead for seeking out challenging technical problems within supportive environments. Successfully navigating these challenges, especially with sponsorship, is the true path to overcoming imposter syndrome and building lasting self-assurance.
They delve into the unique anxieties facing early-career developers today, including AI disruption, intense interview processes, and the ambiguous transition from academia to industry. Safia emphasizes that the onus is on senior engineers to create psychological safety, mentor juniors, and actively “send the ladder back down.” The discussion also covers the role of AI coding tools, the undervalued skill of code review, and the cultural differences between ecosystems like Python and .NET.
Safia shares her personal journey of transitioning from Python to .NET development, the challenges of cross-platform tooling years ago, and the satisfaction of reaching the principal engineer level. She notes that the promotion brought not just recognition, but a heightened sense of responsibility—the “burden of being the person who has to know stuff and figure stuff out.”
Recommendations
Open-Source-Projects
- pandas (Python) — The Python data analysis library where Safia opened her first official open-source contribution pull request, which she describes as a ‘gateway drug’ to further contributions.
People
- Bobby Lockhart — A game designer (board and video games) Scott mentions having an upcoming episode with. He has a theory that ‘it isn’t fun unless you’re learning,’ comparing it to the satisfaction of mastering a difficult programming problem.
- Noel Berry — Indie game developer of Celeste, mentioned by Scott as an example of someone doing all their C# development on Linux, demonstrating .NET’s cross-platform maturity.
- Amanda Silver — A Corporate Vice President at Microsoft whom Scott references as the person who pointed out his own responsibility after a promotion, saying ‘you’re someone, you should do something.‘
Programs
- Write, Speak, Code — A workshop series for technical women that inspired Safia’s early involvement in open source. It emphasized demonstrating competence through writing blogs, contributing to open source, and speaking at conferences.
Tools
- Tuple — A remote pair programming app for Mac and Windows that reduces the friction of starting a pairing session with one-click calls and screen sharing.
- CodeRabbit — An AI-powered code review tool that combines static analyzers, linters, and security tools with generative AI and code graph analysis to provide in-context feedback and catch bugs early.
Topic Timeline
- 00:01:38 — Introduction and Reconnecting After a Decade — Scott introduces Safia Abdalla, a Principal Software Engineer on .NET at Microsoft. They reminisce about first meeting over a decade ago when Safia was a student at Northwestern University. The conversation begins with a lighthearted discussion about the passage of time, gray hairs, and the shock of how much has changed since then.
- 00:02:27 — The Experience of Being ‘Nerd Sniped’ — Scott asks Safia about the feeling of being deeply focused on a coding problem—‘nerd sniped’—and the difficulty of context-switching out of that flow state. They share personal anecdotes about getting lost in solving technical issues, like Scott hitting GitHub Actions limits, and the universal programmer experience of carrying unsolved problems into personal time. They agree this deep focus is a hallmark of a good programmer but requires learning when to step away.
- 00:07:10 — Competence Builds Confidence: A Career Philosophy — Safia introduces her key career philosophy: competence builds confidence. She rejects the ‘fake it till you make it’ advice, finding it inauthentic. Instead, she advocates for seeking out ‘big, scary technical challenges’ in supportive environments where you have sponsorship. Successfully navigating these challenges builds the confidence to tackle the next one, creating a virtuous cycle that helps conquer imposter syndrome through repeated accomplishment.
- 00:08:27 — Challenges for Early-Career Developers Today — Scott asks about changes in the industry and why early-career developers seem to be under more strain. Safia points to ‘compounding anxieties’: AI disruption, intense LeetCode interviews, the ambiguous shift from structured academia to unstructured work, and a lack of clear career rubrics. She discusses her mentorship role, emphasizing the need for senior engineers to provide psychological safety and be the supportive environment juniors may lack on their direct teams.
- 00:12:29 — The Senior Engineer’s Responsibility to Mentor — Safia strongly states that the onus for building trust and psychological safety on a team lies with the senior engineer, not the junior. Scott expands on this, criticizing the ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ metaphor in mentorship. They agree that growing and maintaining the team’s people is as critical as maintaining the codebase for long-term project health, even if these ‘squishy’ skills are hard to quantify.
- 00:14:38 — Discovering Open Source and Community — Scott asks how Safia got involved in open source so early. She credits the ‘Write, Speak, Code’ workshop for emphasizing writing, speaking, and open source contribution as ways to demonstrate competence. Her first PR was to the Python pandas project. She highlights the importance of connecting with people in real life at hackathons and sprints, which married the technical work with community, making it more rewarding than solo academic work.
- 00:22:24 — AI Tools, Vibe Coding, and the Skill of Code Review — The discussion turns to AI coding tools. Scott theorizes that LLMs accelerate seniors (who know the right questions) but stress juniors who are stuck in ‘vibe coding’ or autocomplete without understanding the system. Safia advises starting small with AI, never accepting the first output, and using it as an iterative learning tool. They agree that in an AI-assisted world, the critical skill shifts from writing code to reviewing it—spotting ‘code smell’—a skill not taught in school or most interviews.
- 00:28:22 — Transitioning from Python to .NET — Scott notes Safia’s shift from Python to .NET. Safia describes it as a scary but intentional career pivot, attracted by the .NET team’s reputation for technical rigor. She had to learn not just new tech (DLLs, framework versions) but also the different ecosystem culture. Python felt more academic and learning-focused, while .NET had more enterprise origins. She stubbornly developed .NET on a Mac with VS Code years ago, enduring early cross-platform pain that has since been solved.
- 00:33:24 — Becoming a Principal Engineer and the Burden of Ownership — Scott asks about the feeling of reaching the principal engineer level. Safia felt accomplished and goal-satisfied. The noticeable change wasn’t faster email replies, but the new ‘burden of being the person who has to know stuff and figure stuff out.’ She references the meme of ‘becoming important at your job.’ Scott shares a similar experience where a VP told him, ‘You’re someone. You should do something.’ The promotion brings the heavy, exciting responsibility of ownership.
Episode Info
- Podcast: Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman
- Author: Scott Hanselman
- Category: Technology Science Education How To
- Published: 2025-10-09T16:00:00Z
- Duration: 00:36:00
References
- URL PocketCasts: https://pocketcasts.com/podcast/b9630eb0-30de-0132-be16-5f4c86fd3263/episode/015f344a-25e0-410a-99af-9083c77403d0/
- Episode UUID: 015f344a-25e0-410a-99af-9083c77403d0
Podcast Info
- Name: Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman
- Type: episodic
- Site: https://www.hanselminutes.com
- UUID: b9630eb0-30de-0132-be16-5f4c86fd3263
Transcript
[00:00:00] Hey, friends, it’s Scott.
[00:00:01] I’m going to take a moment to thank our sponsors, Tuple.
[00:00:04] They make pair programming joyful.
[00:00:06] I’m chatting with Johnny Marler.
[00:00:08] Johnny, how has pair programming made your life as a dev,
[00:00:11] you know, a little less frustrating?
[00:00:13] Yeah, I’ve been a developer for 15 years,
[00:00:16] and I’ll say one of the most frustrating things I’ve come across
[00:00:19] is when you work on something for a few days,
[00:00:22] you submit that pull request,
[00:00:24] and then you find out that you were working on the wrong thing.
[00:00:27] And it’s even worse when you get that pull request from somebody else
[00:00:31] and, you know, you have to be the bearer of bad news
[00:00:33] and let them know, hey, I think we’ve got to redo all this.
[00:00:36] Nobody’s happy in that situation.
[00:00:39] So, yeah, with pairing, this sort of prevents all that from happening.
[00:00:44] And the other problem that can be frustrating is
[00:00:47] even though pairing’s really nice,
[00:00:50] it’s really hard to get into that pairing session.
[00:00:53] You know, like you have to sometimes set up a meeting
[00:00:55] or message somebody on Slack,
[00:00:56] and, you know,
[00:00:57] just that social friction to get started
[00:00:59] sometimes just prevents people from doing it at all.
[00:01:01] So, you know, that’s why I love Tuple so much.
[00:01:04] You pull up your UI,
[00:01:07] it’s one click to call somebody,
[00:01:08] and then just another click to start sharing your screen,
[00:01:11] you’re immediately in the flow with somebody else.
[00:01:14] Very cool.
[00:01:15] Folks can check it out at tuple.app.
[00:01:18] That’s T-U-P-L-E dot app.
[00:01:20] It’s the best remote pair programming app
[00:01:21] on both Mac and Windows.
[00:01:27] Hi, I’m Scott Hanselman.
[00:01:38] This is another episode of Hansel Minutes.
[00:01:40] Today, I’m chatting with Safiya Abdullah.
[00:01:42] She is a principal software engineer on .NET at Microsoft.
[00:01:45] And I met you when you were at Northwestern.
[00:01:49] Is that right?
[00:01:50] Yes.
[00:01:51] That’s where I went to college.
[00:01:53] Was that like over a decade ago?
[00:01:54] How long ago was that?
[00:01:55] Oh, my gosh.
[00:01:56] Don’t make me seem old.
[00:01:57] But yeah, it was over a decade ago.
[00:01:58] Was that a tenth of a century ago?
[00:02:00] It was a while.
[00:02:02] It is long enough that I am shocked by the passage of time
[00:02:06] and how much has happened since we first met.
[00:02:10] Yeah, you’re like a whole grown person now.
[00:02:12] Right?
[00:02:13] There’s wisdom.
[00:02:14] There’s maturity.
[00:02:15] There’s progress.
[00:02:16] Always growing.
[00:02:18] I have some gray hairs now.
[00:02:19] You do?
[00:02:20] You do have like three gray hairs?
[00:02:21] Yeah.
[00:02:22] I am going to put you on the spot
[00:02:23] because I thought it was funny when we got ready to record.
[00:02:25] I could tell.
[00:02:27] You were focused on something else
[00:02:28] and I think you nerd sniped yourself.
[00:02:31] Talk about what that feels like
[00:02:32] because I’ve had that problem happen yesterday.
[00:02:35] Oh, gosh.
[00:02:36] You know, so I was sharing,
[00:02:38] I’ve been prototyping and iterating on something
[00:02:40] and I feel like sometimes you have to rewrite a solution
[00:02:44] to a problem multiple times before you like get that nirvana.
[00:02:48] And so I was really close to my third rewrite
[00:02:52] of this thing that I’m working on
[00:02:54] and I thought I was close to like getting,
[00:02:56] I’m a little bit closer to nirvana
[00:02:58] and I was like, oh crap,
[00:03:00] I got to go jump into a meeting with Scott.
[00:03:03] And so you have to like reorient yourself
[00:03:05] out of like the deep like work zone,
[00:03:07] which I get into,
[00:03:09] especially on a Wednesday morning
[00:03:10] where you don’t like have that many meetings.
[00:03:12] It’s Wednesday today.
[00:03:13] And so you could just kind of sit and code,
[00:03:15] catch a vibe, so to speak.
[00:03:20] My entire afternoon from,
[00:03:21] you’re my last meeting until five.
[00:03:24] So I have four hours of coding ahead of me.
[00:03:26] I’m so happy for you.
[00:03:27] And like yesterday I was,
[00:03:30] I mentioned this on Blue Sky
[00:03:32] that I hit the limit of free on GitHub Actions
[00:03:37] because apparently there’s a limit
[00:03:38] of like how many hours you can use
[00:03:40] and then how many artifacts you can use,
[00:03:41] but there’s no way to see the artifacts.
[00:03:44] So I’m like, I’ve never hit this limit before.
[00:03:46] What’s going on?
[00:03:47] So I coded this GitHub artifacts analyzer
[00:03:50] and I got it all so I could go and find out.
[00:03:53] It turns out that one of my things was running too often
[00:03:54] and it was dropping 200 megs every time.
[00:03:56] And I, I hit the two gig limit.
[00:03:58] So I made a cleanup, you know,
[00:04:00] check disc for GitHub artifacts and I was right.
[00:04:03] And then I left.
[00:04:05] And cause my wife said, we’re going to dinner.
[00:04:07] And then while I’m at dinner,
[00:04:08] people are like, you didn’t put it in the NPM registry.
[00:04:10] You forgot to publish the tool.
[00:04:12] I don’t want to clone it.
[00:04:13] You know?
[00:04:14] And I was just like,
[00:04:14] and I really wanted to concentrate on dinner with my wife.
[00:04:18] Yes.
[00:04:18] But you know, cause it’s like two things can be true.
[00:04:21] Like I love my wife,
[00:04:22] but I did not publish this tool to the NPM registry.
[00:04:25] Yeah.
[00:04:26] And do you get a look on your face when,
[00:04:29] when that happens when you’re still like nerd sniped?
[00:04:31] And my husband can always tell, he’s like,
[00:04:33] I can tell you’re thinking about something and you’re,
[00:04:36] you’re not totally focused on this meal or this coffee or whatever.
[00:04:39] And it’s like,
[00:04:39] everyone wants to give that a label and say that that’s like,
[00:04:43] you know, a tism or a personality.
[00:04:46] I think it’s just programmers.
[00:04:47] It’s just like, that’s just how we operate.
[00:04:49] I could not disconnect.
[00:04:51] And when I got back,
[00:04:52] it took like six minutes to publish the thing,
[00:04:54] but I needed to get it out of my brain.
[00:04:56] Yeah.
[00:04:56] I think that’s what makes it good.
[00:04:57] That’s what makes a good programmer.
[00:04:59] Yeah.
[00:04:59] I think you also have to know when to stop it though.
[00:05:02] Cause I’ve definitely had those moments where I was holding on to a
[00:05:06] problem really hard and it was like 1130 PM at night and I really should
[00:05:11] have gone to bed.
[00:05:12] Cause you know,
[00:05:12] eventually I do in the next morning I wake up and the solution that I
[00:05:17] couldn’t see the night before is like super obvious in front of me.
[00:05:20] So yeah.
[00:05:21] Figuring out when you pull yourself out from the zone and when you like
[00:05:25] keep it in and all that,
[00:05:26] I think it evolves and it depends on the context too,
[00:05:30] but it’s like,
[00:05:31] it is a thing that programmers go through.
[00:05:33] Have you always been wired that way?
[00:05:36] I think so.
[00:05:38] I think so.
[00:05:39] I,
[00:05:39] people have different terms for it.
[00:05:41] Right.
[00:05:41] I’ve heard people say flow state a lot,
[00:05:45] but I kind of like that experience of when you are trying to unravel a
[00:05:50] problem,
[00:05:50] it’s like a big ball of yarn and you want to get to that like
[00:05:53] satisfaction.
[00:05:56] It at the end.
[00:05:58] I’ve always been like that.
[00:05:59] And I think that’s what maybe also drew me to programming and kind of made
[00:06:03] it a natural fit is I had that like inclination to start.
[00:06:07] And so I discovered this thing that happened to be a really good fit for
[00:06:11] that inclination.
[00:06:12] There’s probably maybe other careers I could have had,
[00:06:15] but programming is the one that satisfies that the most.
[00:06:19] An episode I’ve got coming up soon is with a gentleman named Bobby Lockhart,
[00:06:23] who’s a game designer and not just video,
[00:06:26] video games,
[00:06:26] but any game board games.
[00:06:28] And he had this theory that it isn’t fun unless you’re learning.
[00:06:33] And that feeling that you have when you beat a boss or you do something in
[00:06:37] Elden ring where it’s like you attack the boss,
[00:06:39] like a dark souls boss and you get destroyed and you like have a feeling of
[00:06:44] fear.
[00:06:45] And then in two weeks,
[00:06:46] your brain literally changes.
[00:06:48] It swells the neurons.
[00:06:49] And then you’re like,
[00:06:50] Oh,
[00:06:50] I can solo this guy with my eyes closed.
[00:06:53] I think the same thing happens when you’re about to attack the big ball.
[00:06:56] Of yarn programming problem.
[00:06:57] And then it’s like,
[00:06:58] Oh no,
[00:06:58] I’ve done that.
[00:06:59] That’s simple.
[00:06:59] Why was I even afraid of that?
[00:07:01] Yeah.
[00:07:02] You know,
[00:07:03] it’s interesting.
[00:07:03] Cause it reminds me of a perspective shift that I had since we first met
[00:07:10] over a decade ago,
[00:07:11] which a lot of the wisdom that I got when I was a wee little
[00:07:16] programmer and first entering the industry was like the fake until you make
[00:07:19] it type of stuff,
[00:07:20] you know?
[00:07:21] And that never,
[00:07:22] never saddled with me.
[00:07:24] Cause it,
[00:07:25] I don’t know.
[00:07:25] It felt,
[00:07:26] it felt inauthentic a little bit.
[00:07:28] I think what I learned having gone through experiences is that
[00:07:32] competence is the best way to build confidence.
[00:07:36] And what you need to do is find yourself in situations where you can take
[00:07:41] on those like big,
[00:07:42] scary challenges,
[00:07:43] technical challenges where people will support and sponsor you.
[00:07:47] If you need help getting through it,
[00:07:49] or if you fail at it,
[00:07:51] but they will give you those opportunities so that you can succeed at the
[00:07:55] challenge.
[00:07:55] And then,
[00:07:56] you know,
[00:07:56] you gain that not only satisfaction and solving the problem,
[00:07:59] but sense of confidence that you could do it.
[00:08:01] And then you get the next big challenge.
[00:08:04] And so my thinking about like what it means to,
[00:08:08] you know,
[00:08:09] not get over your imposter syndrome,
[00:08:10] but maybe conquer it a little bit is you just kind of have to do hard
[00:08:14] things in supportive environments and strengthen your self-confidence
[00:08:20] through the repetition of that behavior.
[00:08:23] That’s always kind of connecting those two things.
[00:08:25] What do you think has changed in the industry though,
[00:08:27] in the last five or 10 years?
[00:08:28] Because in the last 10 years you did not quit.
[00:08:31] You did not leave the industry.
[00:08:33] You did not get chased out.
[00:08:35] You didn’t give up and now you can bring the next gen in,
[00:08:38] but it feels like there’s a certain kind of early in career person right now
[00:08:41] that’s getting kind of chewed up.
[00:08:44] Is it because the capitalism of us all is not giving us time to like let
[00:08:49] them cook?
[00:08:51] Yeah,
[00:08:52] this is so interesting because I,
[00:08:53] I do a lot of mentorship now that I have,
[00:08:55] wisdom to share since I’ve gotten so old.
[00:08:59] And a lot of my mentees are early in career individuals.
[00:09:02] And I think some of the people cropping up in the industry now haven’t
[00:09:07] come out of university or what have you.
[00:09:11] A lot of it is like compounding anxieties.
[00:09:15] I think of all these different things you get hit with,
[00:09:17] there’s this like AI thing going on.
[00:09:20] There’s the supposed intensity of like how hard these lead codes that you
[00:09:24] have to do to get a job.
[00:09:25] How bad are there’s the kind of mental shift of,
[00:09:29] you know,
[00:09:30] you spend your entire life through school kind of being graded on a
[00:09:37] standard.
[00:09:37] And then you go work at a company.
[00:09:39] It’s like,
[00:09:39] what the hell do I do?
[00:09:41] I’m supposed to be progressing in my career or doing things,
[00:09:44] but you don’t really have a,
[00:09:45] like a structure.
[00:09:46] There’s no like rubric for how you’re supposed to succeed in your
[00:09:50] career.
[00:09:50] So I think it’s those like compounding anxieties from a lot of the
[00:09:53] ambiguity with what’s going on right now.
[00:09:55] And it’s kind of hard to coach some of my mentees through all of that
[00:10:01] in a way that’s like empathetic,
[00:10:05] but some things are like outside of your control and you kind of have
[00:10:08] to make peace or kind of react to it.
[00:10:12] One of the things that I’m trying to do is think about where I am and
[00:10:17] who I am and why I know these things so that I can help them with,
[00:10:21] with an,
[00:10:23] with a,
[00:10:23] with an awareness of where I’m at,
[00:10:25] because I don’t want to just be like,
[00:10:26] why do you not know this?
[00:10:28] Like,
[00:10:28] are you,
[00:10:28] how do you not know this?
[00:10:30] And it’s like,
[00:10:30] well,
[00:10:30] I know this because I’ve been here a long time and they can’t know that
[00:10:35] because they haven’t been here a long time.
[00:10:37] So is it simply waiting?
[00:10:39] So when I think about stuff like I would,
[00:10:41] you know,
[00:10:42] I could meet a senior engineer and then I realized that I don’t think this
[00:10:45] person understands how HTTP works and it’s not a,
[00:10:48] it’s not a judgment call.
[00:10:50] It’s not a,
[00:10:50] this is not a smart person.
[00:10:51] It’s just that they never really got into the weeds.
[00:10:54] Yeah.
[00:10:55] And sat in Fiddler or Wireshark.
[00:10:58] So it’s like,
[00:10:59] if they never had that opportunity,
[00:11:00] they never would get it.
[00:11:02] So if somebody comes out of,
[00:11:03] as an example,
[00:11:04] Northwestern and they’re suddenly they’re,
[00:11:05] they’re 22,
[00:11:06] how could they know that there wasn’t a,
[00:11:09] it’s always DNS class at Northwestern.
[00:11:13] Yeah.
[00:11:14] There was a very interesting networking class.
[00:11:17] But again,
[00:11:18] there’s the leap you have to take from like theoretical stuff that you
[00:11:23] learn in school to like the,
[00:11:24] in practice stuff that you learn at work.
[00:11:26] And I think it goes back to the thing I was describing about building
[00:11:30] confidence through competence in supportive environments.
[00:11:32] It’s like the supportive environments is the big thing.
[00:11:35] So a lot of what I do for people who are early in career is being that
[00:11:40] person who maybe the other,
[00:11:43] you know,
[00:11:44] principal I see is on their direct team.
[00:11:46] They don’t feel comfortable showing them their code or they haven’t kind
[00:11:49] of established that camaraderie or vibe or trust,
[00:11:52] which,
[00:11:53] you know,
[00:11:54] is a,
[00:11:54] you know,
[00:11:54] way street.
[00:11:55] And I put the onus mostly on the more senior engineer to figure out how do
[00:11:59] you build a good relationship with your junior engineers on your team?
[00:12:03] So when that relationship is,
[00:12:05] is lacking for them,
[00:12:06] I’m kind of the person they can go to and like run their PR past before
[00:12:09] they open it up for review by their team,
[00:12:13] or if they have a question about code and they’re not sure how to formulate
[00:12:16] it or how to structure it to,
[00:12:19] you know,
[00:12:19] somebody on their direct team,
[00:12:21] they might be nervous about speaking with being kind of that,
[00:12:24] supportive environment for somebody when it’s not there directly on their team.
[00:12:29] I find helps.
[00:12:30] You just said that you put the onus on the senior,
[00:12:33] which I think is important because I feel like there’s so many internship programs and mentorship programs and apprenticeship programs.
[00:12:40] And this is something I’m kicking around.
[00:12:43] And Mark and I are,
[00:12:44] I’ve written a paper on this that I think if you call it an internship or an apprenticeship,
[00:12:49] it puts inordinate pressure on the early in career person to pull,
[00:12:54] themselves up when it should literally be my job and your job as the senior people to send the ladder back down and,
[00:13:01] and pull them up.
[00:13:03] So like the whole pull yourself up by your own bootstraps is a fun thing to say,
[00:13:06] but from a physics perspective,
[00:13:07] it literally doesn’t work.
[00:13:08] Like you can’t physically pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
[00:13:12] That resonates with me.
[00:13:13] And this is something I say when,
[00:13:15] you know,
[00:13:16] I’m speaking with mentees and they’re maybe expressing frustration or like insecurity at somebody that is more senior on their team that they’re working with.
[00:13:23] It’s like,
[00:13:23] it’s not your fault to have to do the work to kind of build the sense of like psychological safety and trust on your team.
[00:13:34] It’s the person who’s been there for 10 years,
[00:13:36] 15 years,
[00:13:37] five years,
[00:13:37] however long it may be.
[00:13:40] And I think another aspect to it,
[00:13:43] it’s important for senior engineers to think about it is like,
[00:13:45] if you want to maintain a code base that is healthy or like a service that,
[00:13:50] you know,
[00:13:50] has high uptime or an open source project that is,
[00:13:53] um,
[00:13:53] you know,
[00:13:54] going to have longevity,
[00:13:56] you have to think about how you maintain and grow the people as much as you maintain and grow the code.
[00:14:03] Like that’s kind of like part and parcel of the job,
[00:14:06] but some of those squishy things are hard to like communicate sometimes their value,
[00:14:12] you know?
[00:14:13] Yeah.
[00:14:13] When I,
[00:14:14] when I met you,
[00:14:15] when you were in school,
[00:14:16] you stood out because you were doing open source and running communities already.
[00:14:22] And,
[00:14:23] and I feel like somewhere like April of senior year,
[00:14:26] I see a lot of people go,
[00:14:28] I should probably get involved.
[00:14:30] And I’m like,
[00:14:31] it’s a little late,
[00:14:32] like it’s not a little late,
[00:14:33] little late.
[00:14:33] It’s not literally a little late,
[00:14:34] but it’s like,
[00:14:34] gosh,
[00:14:35] like April of senior year is probably not when you want to join the community.
[00:14:38] How did you discover open source?
[00:14:40] And at that time you were doing Python and notebooks and interact.
[00:14:44] Yes.
[00:14:45] I started contributing to open source in earnest the summer of 2015.
[00:14:52] So it’s been going on,
[00:14:53] like a straight decade of different things in open source.
[00:14:56] And I’ve,
[00:14:57] you know,
[00:14:57] had periods where I wasn’t contributing to things,
[00:14:59] but let’s call it a decade.
[00:15:01] And I kind of found it through my interest in Python,
[00:15:05] my early interest in like data science and the scientific Python stack.
[00:15:11] And I was,
[00:15:12] I was using a lot of the open source tools just for class or side projects for my own independent learning.
[00:15:19] Where I made the jump to like starting to contribute was,
[00:15:22] was a couple of things.
[00:15:24] One of them,
[00:15:25] we might have talked about this before was a program called write,
[00:15:30] speak code.
[00:15:30] And it was a like day long workshop series that they would run in different cities.
[00:15:35] And it was aimed at technical women in their career.
[00:15:39] And they would talk about how it was important for you to demonstrate your competence by,
[00:15:43] you know,
[00:15:44] writing blogs,
[00:15:45] contributing to open source and speaking at conferences.
[00:15:48] And those were like,
[00:15:49] when we met almost a decade ago,
[00:15:51] those were all,
[00:15:52] all things that I was doing.
[00:15:53] And that was primarily because it like clicked for me.
[00:15:55] It’s like,
[00:15:55] okay,
[00:15:55] you have to kind of go and share your wisdom and writing,
[00:15:59] speaking and contributing to open source or how you do that.
[00:16:02] So that’s what kind of got me thinking about like,
[00:16:04] okay,
[00:16:04] I’m using these tools.
[00:16:06] I’m learning all about them.
[00:16:07] How can I start to share that?
[00:16:09] And so that was what started me contributing.
[00:16:12] I opened my first PR on the pandas project,
[00:16:15] the Python pandas project.
[00:16:17] It’s like my first official open source contribution.
[00:16:20] And then it’s like a gateway drug.
[00:16:22] You just like once you get in and you start,
[00:16:25] you figure out like the process,
[00:16:27] you can apply it to so many things.
[00:16:30] And I think the other key thing is I was able to connect with people in real
[00:16:35] life who wanted to encourage me to contribute.
[00:16:38] There’s like tons of spaces where people will do like open source hackathons,
[00:16:41] or if you go to a conference,
[00:16:42] there’ll be like sprints.
[00:16:44] Like I know Python does this a ton or they’ll be coding sprints and you can
[00:16:48] kind of find physical spaces to contribute.
[00:16:50] So that was another thing.
[00:16:52] That motivated me and kept me going is you figure out the technical part and
[00:16:56] then you get connected with the people and then like the two get married and
[00:17:00] it’s like kind of Nirvana.
[00:17:02] You work with smart people on interesting things and it’s way funner than
[00:17:06] doing your like college CS homework.
[00:17:09] Yeah.
[00:17:10] It’s interesting though,
[00:17:10] that there are like all these different flavors and personalities of people
[00:17:14] involved in tech.
[00:17:15] And there are those that like hide out in their room,
[00:17:18] they do their thing and they code.
[00:17:20] And then there it’s a one person team.
[00:17:21] And then there’s kind of social coders.
[00:17:25] Yeah.
[00:17:25] And I think you’re a good mix of both because you will disappear for days,
[00:17:28] but then you also pair program and you will sit in front of a whiteboard with
[00:17:33] the best of them.
[00:17:34] Is that two sides of the same personality that you’ve got?
[00:17:38] Well,
[00:17:38] I think it depends on what part of the nerd sniping you find me in.
[00:17:43] There’s definitely a part of me that,
[00:17:45] you know,
[00:17:45] I need to think deeply and synthesize a bunch of things and just like dig
[00:17:50] into something before I’m like,
[00:17:51] I’m ready to kind of understand what people are saying.
[00:17:55] Okay.
[00:17:55] It’s interesting.
[00:17:56] We were talking about early in career and I think I’m drawing a connection to
[00:18:01] an experience that early in career people might have.
[00:18:03] And that I still have when I’m in a new space or working on something new,
[00:18:07] it’s like,
[00:18:08] there’s a bunch of people in the room talking about something and you have no
[00:18:11] idea what they’re saying.
[00:18:12] And so moments like those,
[00:18:14] I feel like I have to kind of go hole up and figure it out myself.
[00:18:18] And then once I’ve reached a certain amount of,
[00:18:20] of competence and confidence in an area,
[00:18:24] it’s like,
[00:18:24] okay,
[00:18:24] now I feel like I can start to engage because I understand what people are
[00:18:28] saying and how I I’ve mapped their opinions into my own understanding of
[00:18:34] the thing.
[00:18:35] And so,
[00:18:36] yeah,
[00:18:36] I kind of jump between the two depending on how well I feel I can navigate a
[00:18:42] technical conversation,
[00:18:44] which is like a skill.
[00:18:45] I feel,
[00:18:46] I feel 70% of the time I do.
[00:18:49] Okay.
[00:18:49] But then I’ll be in a room with a percent.
[00:18:50] Of itch or,
[00:18:51] you know,
[00:18:52] someone,
[00:18:52] and then they’ll mention some paper,
[00:18:54] some PhD paper that apparently they were reading on the weekend while I was
[00:18:59] watching Dexter.
[00:19:00] And I’m just like,
[00:19:02] uh,
[00:19:02] Hey,
[00:19:02] did you read that paper that came out about like the way new way of
[00:19:04] thinking about word vectors?
[00:19:05] And I’m like,
[00:19:06] uh,
[00:19:06] no,
[00:19:07] you know,
[00:19:07] or like,
[00:19:08] you know,
[00:19:08] they’ve got a PhD and I didn’t do a graduate degree.
[00:19:11] So then I’m like,
[00:19:12] I don’t know if I have the math to understand this thing.
[00:19:16] I think another skill you mentioned that is when you find yourselves in
[00:19:20] those moments and you can’t just like go hide out and like try and
[00:19:23] figure it out yourself.
[00:19:24] It’s like,
[00:19:24] how do you engage people in a discussion?
[00:19:27] Um,
[00:19:28] and this is something that back to the early career thing,
[00:19:31] it’s like,
[00:19:32] okay,
[00:19:32] you don’t know something.
[00:19:33] People are throwing words at you.
[00:19:35] You’re having trouble understanding the big picture.
[00:19:38] How do you ask the question to like get people to talk or explain
[00:19:41] things in a way that makes sense to you?
[00:19:43] And I think also another thing I’ve been speaking with mentees about is
[00:19:48] like how to use,
[00:19:49] um,
[00:19:50] LLMs and all of these different tools that we have to kind of develop your
[00:19:54] understanding of something.
[00:19:56] So,
[00:19:56] you know,
[00:19:56] as you’re sitting in a team’s meeting and people are throwing around,
[00:20:00] um,
[00:20:00] words and you’re trying to develop your understanding,
[00:20:02] you could do that on the side and like contribute to the conversation.
[00:20:05] So I think,
[00:20:06] um,
[00:20:08] knowing how to take ownership of those moments where you don’t know what
[00:20:11] the heck somebody is talking about and like turn it into a learning
[00:20:14] opportunity for yourself and others.
[00:20:16] Um,
[00:20:17] another thing I’ve learned to do over the past 10,
[00:20:20] 10 years.
[00:20:22] Hey friends,
[00:20:22] this is Scott.
[00:20:23] I want to take a moment to thank our sponsor CodeRabbit.
[00:20:26] You know,
[00:20:26] I was chatting with Aravind from CodeRabbit about bugs that slip into
[00:20:29] production.
[00:20:30] The whole point of a code review is to not have bugs ship into
[00:20:35] production.
[00:20:36] How is CodeRabbit going to help me catch those bugs early?
[00:20:39] Uh,
[00:20:39] absolutely.
[00:20:40] Scott,
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[00:20:44] popular static analyzers,
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[00:20:51] in combination with the generative AI reasoning models.
[00:20:54] Uh,
[00:20:55] we also add a specific,
[00:20:57] uh,
[00:20:58] technique called code graph analysis or use a better at two for a
[00:21:02] better understanding.
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[00:21:43] This,
[00:21:43] uh,
[00:21:43] this paper I mentioned that Mark and I are working on where it puts a
[00:21:46] little bit more honest on the senior.
[00:21:48] Also,
[00:21:49] we believe,
[00:21:49] we believe that LLMs are allowing senior engineers to get even better,
[00:21:54] which is stressing juniors out because the juniors are still at the kind
[00:22:00] of auto-complete part of the LLM or they’re at the vibe coding part where
[00:22:04] they vibe it and then they vibe a whole app and it’s too much.
[00:22:08] It’s like,
[00:22:08] no,
[00:22:09] they just did all my work.
[00:22:10] So the junior experiences,
[00:22:12] I don’t,
[00:22:13] this is a theory.
[00:22:14] I don’t know what this just auto-completed.
[00:22:16] I guess I’ll go with it or the vibe,
[00:22:18] the whole thing.
[00:22:19] I don’t really understand the system.
[00:22:20] So they don’t even know what question to ask.
[00:22:24] Well,
[00:22:25] I’m feeling accelerated,
[00:22:26] probably 25 to 50% once I know the right question.
[00:22:31] Yeah.
[00:22:32] That’s like an interesting chicken and egg problem where you have this tool
[00:22:37] that really accelerates your ability to build things,
[00:22:39] but you have to like know a lot to know how to use the tool.
[00:22:43] Exactly.
[00:22:43] And I think one of the interesting things you mentioned is,
[00:22:46] um,
[00:22:47] and I,
[00:22:49] I bring it up cause I think this is a skill that I have seen more senior
[00:22:53] engineers tend to have by virtue of having more experience compared to juniors
[00:22:57] is knowing when you toggle away from vibe coding and take more ownership of
[00:23:03] the process.
[00:23:03] Like when is the right place for the human to get interjected into the thing
[00:23:07] and requires a little bit of like confidence and understanding of what’s
[00:23:12] going on.
[00:23:13] I think one of the pieces of advice that I give to some of my mentees who’ve,
[00:23:18] um,
[00:23:19] express similar things of like,
[00:23:20] we’re being told to use these tools,
[00:23:22] but I don’t know what I’m doing.
[00:23:23] I’m using autocomplete.
[00:23:24] Is that enough?
[00:23:25] What’s agent mode?
[00:23:25] All of these things is,
[00:23:27] um,
[00:23:28] start with the smallest increment and that practice of be comfortable throwing
[00:23:34] away everything the agent gives you and reprompting,
[00:23:37] like never accept the first thing and see,
[00:23:40] okay,
[00:23:40] wait a minute.
[00:23:40] The first time I called it,
[00:23:42] it generated this class structure.
[00:23:43] And the second time I called it,
[00:23:44] it looked like this.
[00:23:45] And so start to kind of develop your understanding of the different,
[00:23:49] different patterns,
[00:23:49] um,
[00:23:51] and use it as an iterative learning tool where you’re not like leaning at it
[00:23:56] as a crutch to just,
[00:23:57] you know,
[00:23:57] write a bunch of code that you open a PR,
[00:23:59] but kind of understand the different ways you might do something and,
[00:24:05] and iterate on it.
[00:24:06] A lot of it’s being a good code tester too.
[00:24:08] Yeah.
[00:24:09] And also having,
[00:24:09] I always talked about the sense of code smell that one develops where I
[00:24:14] don’t need to understand rust perfectly or TypeScript perfectly,
[00:24:17] but I can know that doesn’t smell right.
[00:24:19] Yeah.
[00:24:19] That thing doesn’t feel good.
[00:24:20] And just be,
[00:24:21] and just because I don’t know what I’m doing doesn’t mean that the LLM
[00:24:25] does right.
[00:24:26] Like I’m coding with this pair programmer.
[00:24:29] That’s really just a smart parrot and it’s going to generate weird stuff
[00:24:34] every time.
[00:24:35] And I don’t have to take any of those suggestions.
[00:24:38] Yep.
[00:24:39] I’m rolling the dice each time.
[00:24:41] Yeah.
[00:24:42] Um,
[00:24:42] and this is an interesting thing too,
[00:24:44] for the industry.
[00:24:44] Cause I feel like a lot of our,
[00:24:47] um,
[00:24:48] you know,
[00:24:48] interview techniques,
[00:24:50] a lot of what we do in school academically is focused on producing code.
[00:24:55] There’s not a ton out there that’s focused on reviewing code.
[00:24:59] And that’s like the more important skill.
[00:25:01] If you start to do more things with AI.
[00:25:04] And so I’m,
[00:25:04] it’ll be interesting to see how the like hiring pipeline and how education
[00:25:09] changes in reaction to that.
[00:25:10] Like,
[00:25:11] is there not going to be like a code review class at a university?
[00:25:14] Is that going to be,
[00:25:15] it’s something that you’ll see kind of in an interview,
[00:25:18] a loop where you get a bunch of code from an LLM and you got to spot the code
[00:25:22] spells.
[00:25:24] Feels like that is a competency that like we want to start like training and
[00:25:29] testing people for,
[00:25:31] you know,
[00:25:31] I’ve always disliked leet coding stuff where it’s,
[00:25:34] I think it,
[00:25:35] you get a,
[00:25:36] just a certain kind of personality.
[00:25:37] You’re just asking for a certain human.
[00:25:39] If you’re like,
[00:25:40] come here and grind out these leet codes and then we’ll hire you.
[00:25:44] You’re going to get the same,
[00:25:45] you know,
[00:25:45] guy or gal every time.
[00:25:47] But,
[00:25:47] but I’ll,
[00:25:48] I’ll take a less competent programmer who’s a collaborative code reviewer who will sit
[00:25:53] down and like be positive and let’s get through this together.
[00:25:56] And if they have a good sense of code smell,
[00:25:57] that can be super valuable on a team.
[00:26:00] Yeah.
[00:26:01] Especially with all the tools that are available.
[00:26:03] I also agree with you.
[00:26:04] Leet code stresses me out so much.
[00:26:07] I much prefer the experiences where people actually build something like real and grounded
[00:26:14] in something that you might actually do at your job.
[00:26:16] And I think that also connects more with,
[00:26:18] you know,
[00:26:20] we were talking about early in career and new hires and things like that.
[00:26:23] It’s like making the jump from doing a bunch of leet code studying and maybe some dev work
[00:26:28] in your internship to like,
[00:26:29] this is actual software and the messiness of it.
[00:26:32] It’s like,
[00:26:33] we need something in the interview process and the way we train that gets people at that
[00:26:38] earlier.
[00:26:39] Well,
[00:26:39] even though like this podcast site and my blog and the websites like Azure Friday are
[00:26:44] toys,
[00:26:46] they’re still up 24 seven.
[00:26:48] They have DNS,
[00:26:48] they have SSL issues,
[00:26:50] they have CDNs,
[00:26:51] they have routing,
[00:26:53] they have multiple,
[00:26:54] like they are not just a Raspberry Pi serving a website.
[00:26:58] You know what I mean?
[00:26:58] Like there’s a global sophistication there.
[00:27:00] So I use them as demos because they’re good demos.
[00:27:04] Like I,
[00:27:04] we aspire a fight the podcast last week,
[00:27:07] like live and deployed it just because we wanted to see it.
[00:27:11] So it’s shocking to me how many people will get all the way through even a graduate degree
[00:27:17] and have never put,
[00:27:18] hello world up on the web.
[00:27:21] So there’s something to be said for shipping an app,
[00:27:23] putting a thing in an app store or like my example of like,
[00:27:27] I made this little utility,
[00:27:28] but then I had to relearn how to publish it to NPN NPM rather.
[00:27:33] By the way,
[00:27:34] I was looking at a small segue.
[00:27:36] You were on Hansel minutes,
[00:27:37] episode 554.
[00:27:40] Wow.
[00:27:41] And this is,
[00:27:42] this is episode 1018.
[00:27:46] I saw that I was on it.
[00:27:48] The episode went out November,
[00:27:50] 2016.
[00:27:51] Yeah.
[00:27:52] Which I kind of want to travel back in time.
[00:27:54] And yeah,
[00:27:56] that was,
[00:27:57] that was crazy.
[00:27:57] And I found pictures of us in like Philadelphia at conferences.
[00:28:01] There was one that you were actually keynoting while you were still,
[00:28:04] I want to say a sophomore or junior in school.
[00:28:06] Depends on the year,
[00:28:08] but sounds about right.
[00:28:09] Yeah.
[00:28:10] That,
[00:28:11] that,
[00:28:11] but you,
[00:28:13] you had experience then.
[00:28:14] I don’t know.
[00:28:14] It was like,
[00:28:15] it was a couple of years.
[00:28:15] You were doing Python and interact.
[00:28:18] Yeah.
[00:28:19] And then you transfer,
[00:28:20] you’ve kind of transferred into.net.
[00:28:22] Yes.
[00:28:23] Did,
[00:28:23] does that,
[00:28:24] did that feel weird?
[00:28:25] Like,
[00:28:25] or was it just,
[00:28:26] Hey,
[00:28:26] computer science is computer science.
[00:28:27] No big deal.
[00:28:28] It’s all a for loop.
[00:28:28] No talk about whiplash.
[00:28:31] So when I joined Microsoft,
[00:28:33] I was still doing mostly Python and JavaScript.
[00:28:35] And then eventually I made a transition to the.net team.
[00:28:39] What was attractive to me about the.net team was I think internally.
[00:28:44] My impression of it has a reputation for being a very like technically
[00:28:47] rigorous,
[00:28:48] team that’s full of super smart people.
[00:28:50] So I was like,
[00:28:51] okay,
[00:28:52] those sound like the kind of people I want to work with,
[00:28:54] but it was a scary transition.
[00:28:56] Like I always talk about it as it was like kind of this critical point in my
[00:29:02] career,
[00:29:02] because I jumped into something new that I had no experience with.
[00:29:06] I did not know what a DLL was.
[00:29:08] I was equally as confused about the framework and core and the,
[00:29:13] what is two one and what is five and what is 4.7 and all of the,
[00:29:17] all of the,
[00:29:18] all of the things that somebody new to.net you know,
[00:29:22] would,
[00:29:22] would be confused by that,
[00:29:23] you know,
[00:29:24] now I’m comfortable and like informed about,
[00:29:26] but no,
[00:29:28] it wasn’t just computer sciences.
[00:29:30] Like you have to learn a bunch of stuff.
[00:29:32] You also have to learn some stuff that’s kind of like intangible around like
[00:29:37] the culture of an ecosystem,
[00:29:39] like Python and.net devs think very differently and have different
[00:29:44] priorities.
[00:29:45] You know,
[00:29:45] I think Python has a very strong,
[00:29:48] academic and scientific background in my opinion.
[00:29:53] Particularly given that most of the work I was doing was in like the
[00:29:56] scientific Python stuff.
[00:29:58] And so I think that that bleeds into the ecosystem.
[00:30:03] I think Python is a little bit more focused on learning.
[00:30:09] It’s got less of that enterprisey reputation that.net might have.
[00:30:13] And then,
[00:30:13] you know,
[00:30:14] .net comes from like a totally different origin story.
[00:30:16] And so the,
[00:30:17] the kind of backgrounds of the languages end up influencing the culture of
[00:30:24] the ecosystem.
[00:30:24] And then the way people prioritize how different things should be built or
[00:30:28] like what they lean towards the tool for.
[00:30:30] So that was a big leap to make.
[00:30:32] You did come in though,
[00:30:33] at a moment as an,
[00:30:34] at an inflection point where.net was going cross platform and working on
[00:30:38] Mac and working on Linux.
[00:30:39] And for me,
[00:30:41] like when.net could be run happily in a container,
[00:30:44] like,
[00:30:44] I feel like,
[00:30:45] look,
[00:30:45] mama,
[00:30:45] we made it.
[00:30:46] Like that was the moment.
[00:30:47] Like I feel like that.
[00:30:49] So I think that you entering the.net community in a windows only framework,
[00:30:54] only time might’ve been a very different experience versus this,
[00:30:58] like choose your own adventure place that we’re at now.
[00:31:00] I bet.
[00:31:00] You know,
[00:31:01] it’s so funny.
[00:31:01] The meme,
[00:31:02] when I first joined the team about five years ago,
[00:31:04] I was using VS code because I was,
[00:31:06] you know,
[00:31:06] working with Python and JavaScript.
[00:31:08] And so I developed primarily on Mac.
[00:31:11] So that was the ecosystem that I was comfortable with.
[00:31:13] And when I joined the team,
[00:31:15] my work laptop was a Mac book.
[00:31:17] And so I was trying to do.net development on VS code and Mac five years ago.
[00:31:24] And I was running into all of the pain points that we have since solved.
[00:31:29] Like I,
[00:31:30] when I used to have to debug my tests,
[00:31:32] there was no test Explorer or like integrated debugging experience.
[00:31:36] So I would literally put,
[00:31:37] you know,
[00:31:38] a while loop with a weight for the debugger to attach just to be able to
[00:31:44] kind of like debug through my tests.
[00:31:45] So it’s come a long way since,
[00:31:47] but I’m super stubborn and I’m really particular about the tools I use.
[00:31:51] So I was like,
[00:31:51] I’m going to use VS code and my,
[00:31:54] my Unix terminal.
[00:31:55] And I’m going to deal with the pain until it gets better.
[00:31:58] I had,
[00:31:59] um,
[00:32:00] Noel Berry on a couple of episodes ago,
[00:32:01] who is the developer,
[00:32:03] the developer on the game Celeste.
[00:32:05] And,
[00:32:06] uh,
[00:32:06] he is,
[00:32:07] uh,
[00:32:07] been a very famous indie game developer does almost all of his work in C sharp
[00:32:12] only on Linux.
[00:32:14] Like there’s not a windows machine to be found.
[00:32:17] And,
[00:32:17] and he’s doing cross platform runs on a switch runs on a PlayStation runs on
[00:32:21] an Xbox runs on windows,
[00:32:22] but it all starts in Linux.
[00:32:24] And I,
[00:32:25] he didn’t even think about.net.
[00:32:27] He just codes.
[00:32:29] And I thought that was really,
[00:32:30] that’s kind of a testament.
[00:32:31] Like when people like that exist,
[00:32:33] I’m like,
[00:32:33] Oh,
[00:32:33] I think we made it.
[00:32:34] We’ve evolved.
[00:32:35] Yeah.
[00:32:35] We made a good thing.
[00:32:36] It’s a tough and impressive transition to make.
[00:32:39] Um,
[00:32:40] so it’s super cool that we’ve gotten to the point where,
[00:32:42] you know,
[00:32:43] almost anyone can walk in and write C sharp code and run it.
[00:32:47] Anywhere,
[00:32:49] um,
[00:32:49] develop and deploy it anywhere.
[00:32:51] It’s pretty neat.
[00:32:53] The last question I wanted to ask you,
[00:32:54] uh,
[00:32:55] in the,
[00:32:55] within the context of competence builds confidence,
[00:32:58] which I love that line.
[00:32:58] You need to get that on a t-shirt like that.
[00:33:00] Right.
[00:33:01] Safia branded t-shirt is,
[00:33:03] um,
[00:33:03] you got principal engineer a year or so ago or a couple of years ago.
[00:33:07] So you went from graduate of school to principal engineer in a decade.
[00:33:14] Um,
[00:33:14] did that feel different?
[00:33:16] Did people start like emailing,
[00:33:17] emailing you back faster when they see your title?
[00:33:19] Do people spell check email when they see your title?
[00:33:22] What did that feel like?
[00:33:24] Um,
[00:33:25] I felt very accomplished.
[00:33:27] I think I’m the kind of person who I am very goal oriented.
[00:33:31] So I always want to like keep developing my confidence and confidence,
[00:33:35] competence and confidence.
[00:33:37] Um,
[00:33:38] and so when I hit that milestone,
[00:33:40] it was kind of a big one for me.
[00:33:41] It was,
[00:33:41] um,
[00:33:42] it was really satisfying to hit.
[00:33:44] Did people treat me different?
[00:33:45] To be honest,
[00:33:47] I don’t know that I was looking out for any of the like quote unquote positive markers of a promotion.
[00:33:53] Like people are responding to me faster,
[00:33:55] things like that.
[00:33:56] Maybe there was a little bit of that from people more junior to me,
[00:34:00] but what I actually noticed is the,
[00:34:03] um,
[00:34:03] the newly acquired burden of being the person who has to know stuff and figure stuff out.
[00:34:09] So suddenly you became important at your job.
[00:34:11] Like,
[00:34:11] you know,
[00:34:12] those memes on Instagram where it’s like,
[00:34:13] no,
[00:34:14] I’ve just become important at my job.
[00:34:15] I have to know things.
[00:34:17] So then people look at you in the meeting and they’re like,
[00:34:19] so what are we doing?
[00:34:20] Yeah.
[00:34:20] So figure it out.
[00:34:21] I’m like,
[00:34:21] Oh gosh,
[00:34:22] it’s me now.
[00:34:23] I’m the one who’s important.
[00:34:25] It’s got to figure it out.
[00:34:26] That is the thing that I have kind of,
[00:34:28] it’s exciting.
[00:34:29] Cause this is kind of like the challenge I wanted.
[00:34:31] I want to be the person that people,
[00:34:32] you know,
[00:34:33] seek wisdom from do emails get responded to faster and teams messages maybe,
[00:34:39] but it’s mostly that feeling of like,
[00:34:41] ah,
[00:34:42] crap.
[00:34:42] I got to figure out what to do here.
[00:34:44] That’s so funny.
[00:34:45] When I got promoted,
[00:34:45] um,
[00:34:46] I would go to like Amanda silver,
[00:34:48] uh,
[00:34:49] who’s like our corporate vice president.
[00:34:50] And I was like,
[00:34:51] I’d be like raging.
[00:34:52] Someone should do something.
[00:34:53] And then she would say,
[00:34:55] you’re someone you should do something.
[00:34:59] That’s literally what your title is.
[00:35:01] The person that does things.
[00:35:03] So they go and do that.
[00:35:04] So I realized I could not rant anymore about how someone should,
[00:35:07] someone with power should do something.
[00:35:09] Oh no,
[00:35:10] it’s me.
[00:35:10] It’s me.
[00:35:11] I should do that.
[00:35:12] Heavy burden of ownership.
[00:35:14] And thus the compounding anxiety.
[00:35:15] Of competence and confidence.
[00:35:18] Cool.
[00:35:19] We do appreciate them.
[00:35:20] Well,
[00:35:21] uh,
[00:35:21] it has been a joy.
[00:35:22] Uh,
[00:35:22] we’ll have you on in another 500 episodes.
[00:35:25] Yes.
[00:35:25] I’ll see you in 10 years.
[00:35:27] See you in 10 years.
[00:35:28] Thanks so much for hanging out with me today.
[00:35:30] Thanks Scott.
[00:35:31] We have been talking with principal engineer,
[00:35:34] Safia Abdella on the.net team.
[00:35:36] And this has been another episode of pencil minutes and we’ll see you again
[00:35:39] next week.
[00:35:45] Bye.
[00:36:01] Bye.
[00:36:02] Bye.
[00:36:02] Bye.
[00:36:02] Bye.
[00:36:02] Bye.