Boot Camps and Tech Ethics with Nyah Macklin – Techstrong Unplugged EP3

Hey everybody, and welcome back to Techstrong Unplugged. I'm your host, naan Solomon, and this is episode three of our series. Today I'm excited to announce that we're introducing a new co-host to the show.

Cassandra Chen is a young tech enthusiast with tons of experience. Most recently, she published a book that helps introduce kids to technology, and she delivered a keynote at DevNexus 2024 in Atlanta. Cassandra, welcome to the show.

Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? I'm really happy to be here. I wanna talk a little bit about how I actually got started into technology.

So when I was little, I would attend kids workshops on the weekend. These workshops would be about two to three hours, and it's run by volunteers. So in one of the workshops it was squishy circuits and we had Play-Doh and we connected wires to the Play-Doh, and there were LEDs, which lit up.

So it was a little bit of an introduction to technology. And later, like my dad was also a kids' workshop instructor and he ran these Raspberry Pie workshops. Raspberry pies are small mini computers, so they're like really small and they're green circuits.

They can run a mini operating system on them. Pretty powerful given how small they are. So eventually I became a kids workshop instructor when I was 14 years old.

I taught Raspberry Pie workshops to the kids. And the special thing about Raspberry Pie workshops is we have breadboards and wires. So we teach the kids how to do some wiring, but they also need to do some coding so kids get to learn some wiring, some coding, and nano, it's a good balance between both.

And I've taught this workshop at many international conferences. So I've actually taught it at like dev walks Morocco J Focus for kids, and CNCF Kids Day, a lot of international events. And because of all the workshops I've taught up till now, it inspired me to write a children's book called fpi AI Friend.

And I think what's important about this book is like when I teach a workshop, I only teach 20 or 30 kids at that time, but with this children's book, I can teach technology to a broader set of children. So even children I'm not interacting with, they can still learn technology and get that exposure they need. So, Awesome.

So as mentioned, Cassandra recently went to DevNexus and she sat down with a few industry experts and engaged in some awesome discussions. Um, so today we'll be taking you to the conference where Cassandra talked with Naya Macklin, who's a leader in engineering and developer relations. Uh, in this interview, Cassandra and Nila dive into tech ethics and bootcamps.

Cassandra, what were your thoughts on this interview and what should we know heading into it? Well, the first thing is Naya is such an enthusiastic person. Just listening to her voice is very exciting, and she gives us a little bit of insight about how she got started into bootcamps.

Like, you don't need a big tech degree to get into computer science. She ran through a bootcamp and power housed it really well. And she also talks a little bit about tech ethics.

There's an issue with facial recognition and darker skinned people. So she still really keeps up with these tech issues and ethical issues, and she still presents about it now. Amazing.

Well, without further ado, let's head over to DevNexus. Welcome to Textron Unplugged. On this podcast channel, we'll talk about how younger developers can navigate through this scary world of ness.

Mm. And a little bit about myself. My name is Cassandra Chin and I'll be the podcast host.

And today we're at Dev Nexus. So I gave a keynote yesterday and I'm also a book author and I've been teaching kids workshops for a while. So today we're really highlighting n Yeah, Naya.

So yeah. Can you do a short introduction? Of course.

Of course. Yes. So hi everyone.

My name is Naya, uh, Naya Macklin. Um, I am a developer evangelist for a company called Couchbase. Um, and I care a lot about, so I came to DevNexus to give a talk about data ethics, but I care a lot about privacy and ethics and ethical concerns and artificial intelligence.

Um, but I also care about making sure that younger developers and and developers who are younger in their career have access to this space. Right? So given the fact that I too was a bootcamp graduate myself, and I came into this field and I thought that, you know, this is not a field for me.

I was very scared. And so I'd love to have a conversation with the incredible Cassandra. And so we'll talk about how we can break down some of those barriers for newer folk who in the field.

I'd really love to hear about your perspective on bootcamps Mm-Hmm. Because currently I am just going through the normal college computer science route. Yeah.

But I think we should highlight how you can get into the technical world by just joining a bootcamp. Yes. I think that's an excellent route.

Oh, thank you. See, you're the best. She got me.

She got my back. So, um, yes, I, I love bootcamps. However, I will say that sometimes there are some bootcamps that you, that you might wanna be weary of.

So a lot of people, they tell you to do your research about bootcamps often, um, and see what other pe other, uh, bootcamp graduates perspectives have been with those bootcamps. So I personally graduated from a bootcamp, it was called Resilient Coders. And it was a bootcamp that took lower income folk of color from the Boston area, and it taught them the skills to become software engineers and be competitive with computer science graduates like yourself in the job sector.

Um, and so I loved them because they paid you to learn how to code, which is very rare in bootcamps. Usually I go to college and they make me pay so much just to get a degree. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

It is very, very hard. And I, I completely understand. So I got a degree as well.

Um, but my degree was not in computer science, it was in Afro and African-American Studies, which some of you might think, like, how does that relate to, to, to tech? And why are you in tech? How did you pivot as well?

And, and so for me, um, I had, I had been working in politics for about four years, and there were a couple different women who came to the, the House of Representatives. I worked at the House of Representatives, and they had come to speak about, um, putting a stop to the use of facial recognition technology by law enforcement. Um, because that particular technology was, was, um, uh, was misidentifying darker skinned people.

And so they were saying, no, no, no, law enforcement, you should not use this because it will, it might lead to some wrongful arrests in the community. So that's when I said, oh my goodness. Like this is such a cool topic.

Artificial intelligence is very, very important right now. Um, and thinking about how do we mitigate bias, et cetera. So that's, that's what spurred me into the field and, and, and wanting to become a software engineer myself.

I definitely see that bias because mm-Hmm. Another strong bias is tech is more of a dude thing. Yes.

That is so, such a, such a, such a issue. Yeah. People don't even think that women and girls and non-binary folk can have access to, to tech or should be technologists, but we're you and me.

Right. So yeah, it's, uh, it's definitely a bias as well. Yeah.

But, um, but yeah, we were talking about boot camps and, and, um, making sure that folk are successful in those boot camps too. And I, I definitely am someone who says, if you are able to get a college degree in computer science, do it. Definitely do it.

But if, um, if, uh, the degree is prohibitive to you, maybe you don't have the funding or, or you don't have, you can't take out student loans for it, then I definitely think, take a look at bootcamps. You mentioned you have some friends who are successful in bootcamp too. Oh, Excellent point, Cassandra.

Excellent point. So, yeah, so I have a couple friends. They had done a couple different bootcamps and a, a thing that they were dealing with when they were coming out of those bootcamps was that they were very afraid that they didn't know enough in order to come into this field.

Um, they, they thought that, oh, I'm a software engineer, but, um, you know, I, I've only done this for a couple, you know, maybe, uh, 30 weeks, maybe six months, maybe even three months. And they thought, Hey, I'm, I don't know enough, so I should not apply for any jobs or any internships or anything like that. And I, I wanted to, I wanna push back on that so much, right?

I wanna tell all junior developers, you are ready and you are capable of being successful in this field. I definitely wanna make sure that you feel supported in this field as well. If no other senior engineers are supporting you and telling you that you can do this, please let me be the first right to tell you that you are capable of this.

And I think sometimes you might learn more from bootcamps. Mm-Hmm. Because in my four year college program, the first year is just dawn common core topics.

Yes. Introductory, right. Intro to Java.

Intro to Java script. Not even that. It's like history, English, math.

Oh, right. Gen The gen gen ed requirements. General Education.

Yeah. General education. Yep.

Yep, yep. And that makes you a more well-rounded developer, I would say In some way. Not really.

I don't really need it. True. That is true.

Yeah. I'm more well rounded just by visiting conferences. Hey, That's an excellent point.

Shout out to Deb Nexus. But yeah, so, um, I'm definitely a huge, a huge plus to doing bootcamps if you could do them. Um, and I think that, um, like being able to, to do a computer science degree as well is really, really powerful.

So I think my friends would, would recommend doing bootcamps and a computer science degree, whatever way that, that it takes for you to get into this field. If you're interested in this field, do it. Some people do self-taught, some people do community taught.

Those are all different ways to get into this field, and we want you in it as well. How do you feel about, like, we're at Dev DevNexus today Mm-Hmm. And there's a lot of high technical content.

Yes. Is it easy to just walk into a conference room and understand what they're saying? Oh My goodness, no.

So that's a great question, Cassandra. I think it's so hard. It is so hard because a lot of these concepts, it's, uh, it's jargon.

So they, they're dealing with a lot of technical jargon. And what I like to do, both as a developer evangelist slash developer relations professional, is I like to teach to the center. Right?

So that term means teaching to, you know, we'll have the more senior people in the field, and we'll also have the more, uh, junior people in the field. You wanna make sure that you are, um, uh, uh, you wanna make sure that your more junior people are not feeling left behind when you're talking about a particular technical topic. So just for my talk that I had just gave on data ethics, I made sure to define my terms as much as possible, right.

To make sure that when I'm talking to more junior people in the field or folk who just don't know about the topic, that they're not feeling left out. I think it's not just junior people. Mm-Hmm.

Even seniors. Thank you. Thank you, thank you.

See, that's why I love Cassandra. So that's correct. There are people who had, who had been software engineers for a number of different years, and they did not know anything about data ethics.

So it's seniors as well. It's, you could be the principal engineer, and I think the best senior developers, the best developers period, are people who are able to be honest about the fact that they don't know a particular concept. And to try and learn as much as possible, even when that information is coming from the junior dev or, or an intern or whoever.

They just wanna learn. And that's the kind of environment we want to cultivate in any engineering team. I think that's really cool.

Yeah. Are there any points in your talk which you think you can, which are relevant Mm-Hmm. You can kind of bring down to us today?

Yeah, absolutely. So, um, my talk again was about data ethics and how to cultivate, um, having conversations around ethics in your engineering teams as much as possible. So we were, uh, we're on the agile track, so if folk don't know the agile track, it just means being able to, uh, do lots of things asynchronously.

So, uh, so doing things at the same time, lots of different Things. Okay. So while you're on it Yeah.

What is Agile? Yeah, exactly. Okay.

So, agile itself, it's an interesting concept. So there are two different concepts. Usually.

There's, um, when you're talking about software development, there's agile development and then there's waterfall development. And so for those who might not know agile development, I'll, I'll start off with waterfall development. Waterfall development pretty much follows a particular sequence of steps, right?

To start doing something. And then you follow a particular sequence until the code is complete or the project is launched. Agile development allows you to be more flexible with your development process.

So you might do some, um, uh, uh, a drawing of what the application looks like, and then you code out that piece of the application or that feature of the application, and then you can go back to the drawing board as well. If the client or the, or whoever you're building the app for, if they don't like it, you can always come back to the drawing board and redo it fast. Versus for waterfall development, it's like straight down.

That's why they call it waterfall. 'cause it's like one way we're gonna do everything in, in each step at one time, and then we can't ever go back. So, so if I wanted to write my own application, yes.

Maybe just me and a friend. Yep. Which methodology do you recommend?

Ooh. So if you just, you and your friend, I would recommend doing Agile development. It allows you to just be flexible on, for example, if during the later stages of the, of the process of creating the application, you, you could talk to some potential users of the application, or you could just think of something you're like, ah, we should have added this.

Then you can just add it at that point. And that's a perfect space for that. I Love the loop of user feedback.

That's right. That's right. Exactly.

Always get that user feedback. In your development process, Do you know where you actually find user feedback? How do you connect to them?

Hmm, good point. So user feedback can be found anywhere, really. So it depends on who your particular, uh, users are for the application or your potential users are for the application.

Um, so if you, it could be, it could even be your, your mom or your dad or your cousin or whoever, whoever is your target audience for your application that you're building. You wanna go to them and ask them questions about the application process. How does this feel to you as a, as as you're using my application.

Is it easy to use? Is it hard to use? Do you understand it?

You wanna ask them all of those questions and then come back and pivot and, and, uh, and maneuver with your application from there. Do you have any experiences writing applications? Writing applications?

We're Just working on it. Of course, Of course. So yes, I've been a software engineer for a number of years, and of course, the developer evangelist slash developer relations professional.

Um, but I have built a number of different applications, um, and, uh, applications. I used to be a backend developer as well, so I used to write coding Go and Python. Um, and then I was a front end developer for a number of years too.

So I wrote code in JavaScript, H-M-L-C-S-S, et cetera, et cetera. But those are just programming languages for those who don't know as well. I think that's really great.

Thank You so much. You have so much experience in different fields. I'm trying, I'm trying my best.

Right. No one's perfect. But I, like I had mentioned before as a more senior person and just as a developer, uh, in general, you wanna always be learning and always welcome learning as well in your process.

So like, once you get out of a developer bootcamp Yeah. What do you recommend are the next steps? Ooh.

Okay. So here's, here's something that might be controversial to people, but I would say for, if you're coming right out of a bootcamp, you might never feel ready, right? Especially when I came out of my bootcamp, I did not feel ready to enter the workforce at all.

But I would say some people say, right, you lose every shot that you don't take. People are constantly learning on the job, right? A lot of your learning is gonna happen on the job as well.

You're not gonna prepare, uh, many people aren't able to prepare for the languages and the frameworks that you're going to use on the software development team. Um, you learn a lot of that because you learn a lot of that process on the job and as well, because it's, um, uh, sometimes it's closed source, which means that you're, you can't really find documentation for it on Google or anything like that. You can only do that by reading your team's documentation or asking engineers on your team.

So, um, that's why I think that the first step should be definitely get yourself out there. Know that you are ready and you are capable. You have spent the last couple months applying for, sorry, not applying.

You spent the last couple months learning a particular language or framework and know that you are capable of doing this. So go on and apply anyway. You can do it.

So in my college curriculum, yeah, we mostly learn Java c plus plus. Mm-Hmm. So when you limit yourself to only the languages you learned, No, not at all.

Not at all. So when I had gone through the bootcamp, I had learned, um, we had learned front end development and of course node as well for the backend. But, um, we had done, uh, H-T-M-L-C-S-S and JavaScript.

And then, um, uh, the first job that I got, the first software engineering job was writing code in Pearl, which is an old programming language. Um, not many people use it. It's, it's very well known though.

Um, but I had never written a line of line of pearl in my life before I started that job. So I would definitely say do not only, um, uh, limit yourself to only Java or c plus plus or, or C sharp applications, definitely reach out because they wanna engineer who's gonna learn on the job, be flexible and be malleable as well. So that's the best, I think technology is always moving forward.

That Part. That part. Exactly.

It's always moving forward and it's always changing. What's popular now is not gonna be what's popular in 20 years. Right.

Pearl was very popular back in the day. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's a great programming language, but it is not as popular now. So definitely you wanna make sure that you are flexible as an engineer.

So just apply Regardless. Do you still find yourself very flexible today? I Do.

I do. And I think you have to be right, because even right now you're seeing a lot of AI applications being built, large language models being built, which means that, uh, programming language like Python are really important, right? For building out those things versus, um, uh, uh, you, you're seeing lots of different changes in the field and what's popular and, and, uh, being able to be flexible allows you to be adaptable to whatever the company needs, whatever the team needs.

And, and you are yourself as an engineer, you're adding another, um, skillset onto your resume. And that is an excellent thing. I think we covered a lot of important points today.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

I agree. So we, there's a barrier Yeah. Of going to college.

Yep. But we just broke that. You That's right.

You Can go to a bootcamp and get started with technology anytime. Mm-Hmm, anytime. Anytime.

And both Cassandra and I will always be here to support you as well through that process. We're rooting for you. Thank you for joining us with Textron Unplugged today.

Thank you Everyone. See you later.