Artsy Engineering Radio

Sultan, Jon, and Matt get together and talk about what they've been up to lately. The surprising CSS of form inputs? Revamping key application surfaces? Combining systems that probably should've been one system to begin with? All that, and more, in this episode!

Artsy Alumni Anna joins Matt Dole to discuss what she's been up to since leaving Artsy (spoiler: a lot of cool stuff)! What has she learned from her work at Foundation, and how has she grown in the last year? Tune in to find out!

How is Steve doing after a year in his new job? Let's find out about one of our favorite Artsy alumni friends! 

Kaja and Erik are having a well rounded conversation about wedding planing and mentoring and programming language ecosystems. Does this potpourri of topics raise a lot of questions? Find the answers in this episode. And make sure to sign up for the Ruby mentorship as either a mentor or mentee: https://firstrubyfriend.org/

On this episode of Artsy Engineering Radio,  Adam Butler joins us in our new series "Artsy Berliners" where we highlight the exciting stories of the Artsy team in Berlin. Adam shares his unique journey from being a security guard to becoming a musician, then transitioning to tech while still being a musician on the side. We'll hear about his experiences touring as a musician, and his move from the UK to the US, and finally settling in Germany. Tune in for an interesting conversation!

Pavlos, George and Kaja talk about what kind of music they listen to during work and how it helps them to get into the "tunnel". If you listen to this episode and get curious about examples of their described music, we have the links to the songs and playlists here!Kaja' playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5G2JL58Ub6RrwlBY0Zpmjt?si=98adafce1dda4397Kaja's favorite work song (Aliens): https://open.spotify.com/track/1Sk3itOeGmFFYHOosfrt6c?si=b45655df2fdf47e1George' playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5ryLnMcPum6WeCr0FSV4oQ?si=256e7b50f61144ebGeorge's favorite band for work music (hubris): https://open.spotify.com/track/6NuQIYiZEoWXnErCScAbAG?si=31c8215337c24504 Amenra: https://open.spotify.com/track/0mfo3pSczHkPwlWbawU2uX?si=a84c1f9e8e0549f5Pavlos' playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5EyGjQnVOv0ZLoaMzTX95g?si=78d59f20ac7441b1

Today we have a very special (and a little sad) episode: our beloved Pavlos is leaving Artsy, and he joined Matt to tell us who he is and what he's learned during his time here.We'll miss you, Pavlos! Come back any time!

Jon Allured, Pavlos Vinieratos and George Kartalis talk about Betterer, a tool by Craig Spence (aka phenomnomnominal), all about trying to get your codebase in a better state. We used it for a couple of week. What did we think? What did we love, and what did we had issues with? Let us guide you through our experience with betterer.PS: Jon loves green dots.Links:- https://github.com/phenomnomnominal/betterer- https://github.com/artsy/eigen/pull/8045

This week, Matt Dole & Brian take time to reflect on a recent security-focused learning group run by engineers at Artsy. Have you ever wanted to beef up your security chops and hang out with your team at the same time? Listen to learn how you, too, can become a security expert...or at least less of a security noob 😉

In this episode Erik and Kaja are talking about their experience working 4 days a week instead of 5. 

Kaja joins Matt Dole to talk about her experience at this year's EuRuKo (European Ruby Conference). What was her favorite talk? What did she learn that will change how she works? Tune in for the answers to those questions and more!https://2022.euruko.org/

Jon Allured talks to Pavlos Vinieratos about Jon's worktime tracking app. It's Forty, and it's about helping you hit that 40 hours a week, while making sure you don't do over! Work/life balance is king.We discuss how the idea came about, how the development went, how Jon uses it, and a bunch more.Join us for the first episode of Whatchu working on (on the side), on Artsy Engineering Radio. More to come!Tiny edit: Side-projects don't have to make money. Side-hustles are usually connected to making money out of them. Side-projects can be anything you want.Links:- Forty: https://www.fortyeven.com- pear tool: https://github.com/jonallured/pear- Artsy's pear-data: https://github.com/artsy/pear-data- Jon's podcast: https://puddingtime.buzzsprout.com- Pavlos' pear-with-fzf tweak: https://github.com/pvinis/chez/blob/e61286d8dd63d19befab1ffa8c219dfc8928b51d/dot_zshrc#L69-L77

Today on the podcast, Matt Dole is joined by former Artsyer Justin Bennett to talk about what he's up to these days. Turns out he's up to quite a lot! Tune in to hear about his podcast (devtools.fm), his time at Recurse Center, his current work at Oxide, and much more.Justin's Twitter: https://twitter.com/zephraph

We are getting to know a bit more about our engineering manager Pamela, how she got here and what she enjoys about her job but also her fun creative hobby and her experiences with leading teams when the leaders left. 

Motivation is one of the driving forces for accomplishments and achievements, but it's not always easy to stay motivated. In this episode, Mounir, Matt Dole, and Sultan are talking about how to motivate yourself and stay focused. They also discuss burnout, how to avoid it, and what to do when feeling unmotivated and burnt out.

Recommending artworks to collectors is tricky but having four different ways to do it… Listen as Sarah Haq and Jon Allured talk about how they are improving the artwork recommendations at Artsy by establishing a single source of truth and more!

At Artsy, we have a concept of a "practice": engineers across different teams who meet on a regular basis to discuss cross-system plans, problems, and systems. This week on the podcast, Matt & Kaja discuss how our practices work, what we like about them, and what could make them better.

Joining Matt Dole for a "Who Are You and How Did You Get Here" episode is George, a React Native specialist at Artsy. Tune in to learn how he went from waiting tables to waiting on CI!

Pavlos Vinieratos talks with Angela Patrinou (a fellow Greek), about Angela's mobile app. It's called Buddies, and it's about finding friends around the city you just moved into!We discuss how the idea came about, how the development went, the launch, and a bunch more.Join us for the first episode of Whatchu working on (on the side), on Artsy Engineering Radio. More to come!

On this week's episode, Matt, George, and Angela get together to discuss their experience teaching coding skills in a volunteer environment. Why did they get into teaching? What have they learned from teaching others? 

Jackie Potts and Kaja Santro are both from a Ruby-backend background and working as software engineers at Artsy. In this episode they are talking about how it is to work in this area while also being dog moms and what their favorite Ruby gems are and what is so scary about frontend. They also just laugh and chuckle a lot on this episode, so prepare for some of those good vibrations coming your way!

Carlos joins Matt this week for another "Who Are You, And How Did You Get Here" episode! Tune in to learn how he went from building games with RPG Maker as a teenager in Brazil to working as a software engineer in Germany today. It's been quite a journey!

Ever wondered whether we run on Heroku or Kubernetes? How we monitor and deploy our apps? Tune in to this episode for an overview of Artsy's infrastructure choices with Senior Director of Engineering (and 10-year Artsy veteran!) Joey.

Today's episode is very special: Artsy engineer Erik is joined by 3 engineers who worked at United Airlines starting in the late 1970s (one of whom is his mom!), who share a look back at their careers and some amazing programming history. You don't want to miss this one!

Artsy hosted our 10th hackathon two weeks ago! Matt and Pavlos sit down to discuss how things went, how things changed from the last one, and talk about the projects we worked on, as well as others.

In engineering there are interesting sub paths of careers that you can grow into. One of them is the engineering management. What a great opportunity to hear from Elena, our new engineering manager! She will be talking to us about her own career but also about how to approach the switch into management if you are thinking about it.

While Artsy is originally based in NYC, the company has been making a lot of effort in the last year to hire a lot of people in Berlin in order to build up a big team in the German capital. Matt Dole and Kaja Santro talk about how that has been going for them and how they experienced the exciting process of the "Berlin Calling". 

Pavlos Vinieratos talks with Adam Butler, about Adam's mobile app that recently launched. It's called Reams, and it's a "Deeply Superficial RSS"!We discuss how the idea came about, how the development went, the launch, and a bunch more.Join us for the first episode of Whatchu working on (on the side), on Artsy Engineering Radio. More to come!https://apps.apple.com/de/app/reams/id1229027127?l=en

A bittersweet episode, as Jon Allured and Matt Dole give Steve Hicks one last chance to reflect on his learnings at Artsy before he moves on. Hop up on grandpappy Steve's lap as he reminisces on what he's taking away from his experiences. Notes* Tanya Reilly's talk on Glue work - https://noidea.dog/glue* One of Steve's dumb robot demo videos - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIxCeI1Vz4E

Steve Hicks talks with Emily Marmoy-Haynes and Saj Rasul about Artsy's secret sauce to hiring -- the reference check! They dig into how Artsy uses these calls to identify the strongest candidates without subjecting them to excruciating tests.

Anna Carey joins Sarah Haq to discuss breaking into tech, the problem with the phrase "imposter syndrome," and why asking for help is the most important skill she's developed as an engineer.

In engineering we usually have roughly two career paths to choose from:  Individual Contributor and Engineering Manager. Kaja will talk to Steve about his career choices and why he decided to go deeper into hands on coding. 

Jackie Potts joins Steve Hicks to do a project retro. They discuss the chronology, the challenges, and the joys of a recent project integrating with a third-party shipping provider. They maybe make each other cry. 

Artsy hosted our 9th annual(ish) hackathon two weeks ago! Sarah, Pavlos, and Matt sit down to discuss how it went, what we learned, and some of the cool projects that people worked on.

On this Episode  Erik and Kaja talk about ethical questions in software engineering and how the tech world has a responsibility to build good and ethical software. They will cover some examples when things definitely crossed the line of being ethical and try to figure out how to be an ethical software engineer. Talks mentioned in that episode where "The Reasonable developer" by Joe Corcoran from the Isle of Ruby in 2018 and "So you can Sleep at Night: Ethics in IT"  Jonathan Rothwell & Steve Freeman at the GOTO Berlin 2017 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI5qEJ39KMc).

Issra Hashim and Alican Akyuz are both "second career developers". One in training, one senior. They join host Pavlos Vinieratos to talk about their transition from careers unrelated to development and coding, to exactly that. Listen to their stories here.

Jon Allured, Anna Carey, and Steve Hicks recap season 1 of Artsy Engineering Radio. What did we learn? Who listened? And which were our favorite episodes?Our favorite episodesSEO with Jenna: https://artsyengineeringradio.buzzsprout.com/1781859/8923775-28-seo-at-artsyWAYAHDYGH with Roop: https://artsyengineeringradio.buzzsprout.com/1781859/8870072-26-wayhdygh-roopScaling your impact with Ash: https://artsyengineeringradio.buzzsprout.com/1781859/8549214-4-scaling-your-impactScaling your impact with Orta: https://artsyengineeringradio.buzzsprout.com/1781859/8549218-8-scaling-your-impact-pt-2-this-time-with-ortaRefactoring with Jon, Chris, and Laura: https://artsyengineeringradio.buzzsprout.com/1781859/9247721-36-a-conversation-about-refactoringProduct Management with Guillaume: https://artsyengineeringradio.buzzsprout.com/1781859/9165963-product-management-and-engineering-with-guillaumeWomen in Engineering with Laura: https://artsyengineeringradio.buzzsprout.com/1781859/9205283-35-women-in-engineering-laura

Sarah Weir, Luis Gualberto, and Steve Hicks talk about better and more modern ways to think about people and teams. Rather than defining engineers as back-end or front-end, developer archetypes better capture the value an engineer brings to a team. And when scaling teams, Team Topologies provide a model to escape Conway's Law and build for user needs. Notes* Team Topologies book* Conway's Law

Erik, Pavlos, and Anna talk about tools for productivity such as our desktop setup and code editors, as well as tools and ideas for collaborating across different time zones.

Artsy Legend and Art Enthusiast Barry Hoggard's joins host Sarah Haq to talk about his experience as a collector. Listen to his incredible journey as a collector, from where it all started to how his partner, James Wagner, and him have filled their beautiful home with 1,000s of artworks. We would like to apologise for accidentally calling our wonderful Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Everette, Elliot in the podcast.

Emily, Adam, and Matt talk about Artsy's recent efforts to hire more engineers to grow our Berlin office. What surprises and challenges have we faced? How do we think about employee leveling and retention of new employees? Find out on this episode!

At Artsy the Data and Engineering Teams work together really closely. Listen as Abhiti Prabahar and Jon Allured chat about this collaboration and how this has evolved over time. Also find out what even is a data pipeline!

Jon Allured, Sultan Al-Maari, and Steve Hicks talk about knowing when to give up on a problem and when to keep digging. Sultan talks about how he got into software development, and how things are going at Artsy so far. Come hang out with us!

Join Laura Bhayani and Chris Pappas with host Jon Allured as they have a conversation about refactoring. What is it? How is it done? Why should we do it? When are we finished?

Artsy Engineer Laura Bhayani returns for another episode of Artsy Engineering Radio with host Sarah Haq, to share her inspirational journey into the field and the challenges she faced along the way. Laura and Sarah talk about everything from keyboards to unicorns and being a fricking badass.

Artsy's Group Product Manager Guillaume Delgutte shares his path to product management at Artsy with Artsy Engineering Radio host Anna Carey. They discuss product manager and engineer collaboration, Guillaume's experience with improv and how that's informed his work as a PM, and how to remain both humble and confident as a leader.

This week, Anson joins Matt Dole to talk about his role as a tech lead, going through the Bloomberg internal bootcamp, the importance of effective communication in software, and his new-found love for wine tasting. Take a listen.

On this episode of Artsy Engineering Radio, Anna Carey talks to Director of Engineering Sarah Weir about her path to Artsy, what it means to be a Director of Engineering at Artsy, and reflections on our team Offsite.

This week, Artsy Engineer Laura Bhayani tells Steve Hicks how she approaches making large changes in a codebase, and why she enjoys that kind of work.

Longtime Artsy engineer Oksana joins Matt Dole to talk about what it means to be a product-focused engineer, balancing the demands of a career in engineering with the demands of parenting, and much more.