I'm the glitch.com community engineer at fog creek, as well as an artist, writer and troublemaker in jersey city.
My most popular side project is make8bitart.com, which is a free in-browser open web application I built so I could draw pixel art, along with anyone else. Over 1000 visitors daily use it and it's open source!
I'm also an organizer of jerseyscript, co-organizer of brooklyn js. I love community organizing and helping people learn and continue to solve problems with code.
Ask me anything!
Top comments (70)
You tweet/write/speak a lot about the terrible forms of harassment that you've had to face as a consequence of being outspoken and visible in the tech community. Honestly, how do you deal with this happening all the time? How do you let it not take an emotional or mental toll on you? Particularly when you have folks approach you face to face, like after a conference talk?
It's really hard but I honestly thing that my growing up in a very abusive household taught me survival in home and social settings. Like, it still bums me out but the rewards I get for being in the industry - meeting awesome people, solving problems, getting paid to meet awesome people and solve problems - makes it worth it. I feel like I am in a place in my career where I can be loud and obnoxious about the cultural issues in our industry, so it's my responsibility to do that!
Thank you for your answer, and for always speaking out! We're all really grateful to have your (loud) voice 🙂
<3 and i am really grateful to be told that
You do great work
+1 Also THANK YOU for speaking out on it!
Can you describe the position of community engineer? And what roles did you have before you got to where you are now?
i wrote a lot about this on my blog but the gist of it is that i'm an engineer whose main stakeholder is the community of glitch.com users. we call glitch the friendly community where you can build the app of your dreams and i'm trying to keep it that way by building tools for users to remix, doing outreach and also listening to what the users needs are so we build the best product for everyone!
ooof I've done a lot! before i came to fog creek i was a consultant building javascript and php apps for all sorts of clients, and before that i was a senior front-end engineer at the NBA working mostly on stats.nba.com. before i entered the industry with that gig I was a department administrator in the computer science department at a state university. i advised students, taught java and web development and intro to technology, recruited, and did curriculum design.
Thanks, I wasn't sure if that was a common title or something you rolled yourself. It makes a lot of sense as a key responsibility at a place like Glitch.
i rolled it myself for my role, but there are others who have already been going by that title i've learned. there are also some who have changed their title to community engineer after they read my blog post. i'm sure it's not helping the confusion around what dev rel/evangelism/experience/advocacy is but it works for me :)
How do you write and practice your conference talks?
ok so this may seem bad but it totally works for me so...i write my conference talks in my head for like weeks in advance and will sometimes take notes in a personal slack i use. i don't really make slides until a few days before and leading up to the talk (slides are my least favorite part of giving talks) and i do not practice. sometimes conference organizers insist on me doing a run-through but i vehemently protest. it just feels unnatural to me on stage if i've done it before.
wow, ok. that's pretty amazing. do you ever recycle talks?
i've never done the same talk more than once, no - although i'll recycle ideas if they are impactful enough for the group i'm speaking in front of. it's a lot of work and tbqh i know a lot of speakers don't agree with me but life is a highway!
my role is under the realm of dev rel, so i can be working all sorts of weird hours and have spent quite a bit of time on airplanes to events, so "typical day" is usually anything but! my role is also very extroverted so there's a lot of communication and email and meetings - I like to start my morning responding to critical emails, looking at what glitch apps folks have been making and talking online about, and reading the glitch support forum. some days i have either podcasts, meetups, or conference talks to either attend to or plan/write, other days i'll be building apps on glitch to provide starter apps for users to remix or just to try some cool APIs i think users would find interesting.
Do you think dev advocates need to be extroverts to be successful?
i think the definition of success in such a role is not entirely defined by the person in that role - so in that case, yes, there is an expectation of being "out there" in the field and online. i imagine that there are products where you can be entirely online and not go to events or be on video, but dev rel doesn't work when you're in a vacuum. i, myself, am constantly being pushed out of my comfort zone and a big part of my defining my success is trying to make sure that push out of my comfort zone is on my own terms.
a cool fun fact is that by traditional definitions of introvert/extroverts, i'm actually quite an introvert. i am definitely the wallflower at a party until someone i know arrives or someone approaches me to chat.
What do you think goes wrong when it comes to developer communities and the lack of inclusivity? Is it a matter of being too homogeneous for too long and not being comfortable with change? Are there basic things existing communities can do to better foster change? Why are they all concerned about about who's a "real developer"?
i think the problem is that the people with the most privilege have benefited for so long that it's hard to let go. no one likes being uncomfortable, and admitting that there are underrepresented groups of people who don't have the option of feeling comfortable is an uncomfortable thing to own. but we need to own it if we are going to break down those systemic barriers. the opposite of that ownership is claiming that things will just work out if we "just care about the code" and i totally agree - but we clearly don't "just care about the code" right now, and people claiming we do are the problem.
At what age did you notice you’re into tech? What cues were there, and what was your first personal project?
i didn't have a computer at home until my sophomore or junior year of high school (so like 2002ish) and my lack of access to tech stifled my interested for some time. i did take computer science my senior year and i was full speed ahead since then.
my first personal project was a weezer fan site i made in geocities. it ended up on the fan page list on weezer.com and forum users called it "pretty good for a geocities site"
you can probably wayback machine it, my yahoo/geocities username was jennlikesweezer :D
For the curious :)
web.archive.org/web/20021129105734...
Niiiiice @jennschiffer . Sadly my first Geocities site is nowhere to be found.
Glad you did that course! Thanks Jenn for all your dedication. It helps make the tech world a funnier and a bit less toxic place ❤
What are your thoughts on programming as a more creative process versus problem solving process? I personally have found that it's really both, but would love to hear what you think.
i totally agree - problem solving in itself is a creative process! much like with anything in the world, problems solved with code have many different possible solutions and the creativity is in how you get to those solutions and then how you choose them.
How do you find time for it all? You seem busy!
i am v busy and i honestly have no idea how i do it, but i literally wouldn't be where i am if it were not for my calendar updating and note-taking skills! also the pomodoro technique helps!
Any quick advice for someone who struggles with calendar updating and note-taking?
My duties are not totally unlike yours, but these are probably my two greatest weaknesses and it holds me back sometimes.
oh for sure, same! I sometimes need to set calendar alerts to do a calendar audit. it's all about forming good habits and breaking bad ones so i found that the more i put in my calendar (like 5 minutes for responding to a specific email) the better.
as for notes, i have a personal slack channel which i wrote about once where i have notes on anything like work ideas, art events, gym progress, etc. it gives me a central "private" location to return to if i forget a thing. i even have a channel where i take photos of open/close hours of places i frequent like the launderette.
Thanks for the tips 🙏
What's your fav conference to attend vs. what has been your fav conference to speak at?
i rarely get to attend conferences where i'm not speaking or emceeing BUT my favorite so far has got to be web rebels which is in oslo. the conf and city rules.
my favorite conference to speak at was jsconf colombia. the attendees were so nice and respectful, they raised a really low bar pretty high. also medellín is a beautiful city.
cool. at this point, do you still send out CFPs or are you mostly asked to speak?
i'm mostly asked to speak but next year i really want to do fewer speaking engagements but those few need to be highly impactful, so i'll probably be sending out CFPs
I'm currently building a react/redux/firebase app as an MVP. I'm essentially going the opposite route to this and going serverless, using Firebase Cloud Functions for server processes, Firebase Auth for authentication and Firebase hosting for CDN hosting of static files. I'm still a few months off starting on the ServiceWorker and PWA enhancements like code splitting etc. Do you think the CDN/serverless approach has potential limitations with PWA's? I've never done code splitting so not sure I can properly pre-fetch without a server. To counteract the server rendered app shell, I'm simply hardcoding HTML with inline CSS to act as an app shell until react mounts to #app.