Heroku Podcasts

Lenora Porter is a Front-End Engineer at Heroku, and she's joined by Sejal Parikh, who is a Product Manager for developer-focused content at Salesforce. Sejal started her technical career in QA, before transitioning into freelance (then full-time) technical writing. When she started her tech writing career, she really had no idea that the field existed, much less what it entailed. She grew to love the role, and the way it called upon her skills of writing and technical knowledge.

Technical writers can be grouped into writing for three categories of users: end users, who need help with user interfaces; administrators, who configure what features are available for an organization's...

Rick Newman, a Director of Engineering at Salesforce/Heroku, is interviewing Yotam Hadass, the VP of Engineering for Electric, about team productivity. Agile development has been a popular way for teams to plan and execute on strategies, but it's come under criticism lately for being too dogmatic and rigid. Yotam and his team advocated for a different approach: operational agility. A core tenant of operational agility is embracing the idea of iteration. The goal is simple: make a plan, come up with some metrics for what a successful execution of that plan looks like, and when you're done, to review what you've accomplished and where you can improve. This "build, measure,...

Charlie Gleason, Jennifer Hooper, David Routen, Satoshi Nagano, and Chris Castle talk about their various roles in the production of Code[ish], whether that's serving as a host, mixing the audio, or handling the design. The idea for Code[ish] started many years before the first episode was ever recorded. The name came about from the desire to produce a show that was "sort of" about code. From the get go, it was important for Jennifer and the rest of the team to identify several categories which episodes could be placed into: Dev Life (about people and activities), Tips and Tools (about physical and technical tools), Deeply Technical (deep dives into technology), and Heroku...

Chris Castle is a developer advocate at Heroku, and he's interviewing Jonathan Lister Parsons, the CTO from PensionBee. PensionBee operates in the fintech sector, and focuses on bringing a stellar experience for workers managing their retirement funds. PensionBee deals with an industry that is very reliant on paper and ink, and has sought to bring fund management in the UK out of the 19th century and into the 21st.

PensionBee's efforts to change an outdated model isn't just limited to their external business. They also find ways to use technology to improve their company culture. Jonathan believes that technology is at the core of any attempt to reach one's goals. He...

Esau Sanchez-Diaz is a Customer Success Director at Salesforce, and he is interviewing Amelia Winger-Bearskin, a developer evangelist at Contentful. Amelia Winger-Bearskin is a member of the Seneca-Cayuga Nation of Oklahoma Deer Clan. She has been making art with computers for decades, starting with a Commodore 64 her father brought home one day. Amelia's work often examines the relationship between tech and her native roots. One such example is in her tribe's use of Wampum, which is a sort of contract recording all the activity between two nations. A wampum is comprised of beads of different colors which signal when and between whom an event. As a wampum can span many decades,...