Show Notes
In this special holiday episode of Coding Chats, John Crickett answers audience questions about software engineering careers, the impact of AI, programming languages, and the importance of leadership. He discusses how to rebuild an engineering career, the significance of meaningful projects, and the readiness of self-taught developers. The conversation also touches on insights gained from hosting the podcast and the evolving landscape of software development.
Chapters 00:00 Introduction to the Coding Chats Holiday Special 00:22 Rebuilding an Engineering Career in 2025 01:01 The Future of Software Engineering with AI 01:27 Learning Programming: Starting Points and Languages 02:27 Breaking the No Experience Loop for Developers 04:17 Meaningful Experience: Projects and Contributions 05:02 Self-Taught Developers: Readiness and Opportunities 06:07 Qualities of a Good Software Engineering Leader 06:52 Insights from 18 Months of Coding Chats 07:43 Architecture as a Strategic Concern in Engineering
John's Links: John's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johncrickett/ John’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@johncrickett John's Twitter: https://x.com/johncrickett John's Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/johncrickett.bsky.social
Check out John's software engineering related newsletters: Coding Challenges: https://codingchallenges.substack.com/ which shares real-world project ideas that you can use to level up your coding skills.
Developing Skills: https://read.developingskills.fyi/ covering everything from system design to soft skills, helping them progress their career from junior to staff+ or for those that want onto a management track.
Takeaways Leverage AI to find answers quicker than before. Reading and curiosity are key habits for growth. All parts of software engineering will survive AI advancements. Focus on learning computer science fundamentals first. Choose programming languages based on your interests. Building personal projects can help you get noticed. Self-taught developers can be just as capable as those with degrees. Good leadership adapts to the situation and team needs. The software development field is diverse and evolving. Architecture should be treated as a strategic concern.
More from Coding Chats
Coding Chats Episode 83 - In this episode, VB from OpenAI’s developer experience team explains why he thinks plan mode is obsolete and how coding agents have shifted from step-by-step instructions to outcome-driven, long-running work. We cover how to write a good agents.md, why tests still matter when agents write the code, spec-driven development, and why cloud agents may be the future of dev tooling.
Coding Chats Episode 82 - John talks with Dave Westgarth, head of delivery at a Databricks consultancy. Dave shares his path from a psychology degree and McDonald's into tech, and they discuss why the Scrum Master role is so misunderstood, how it differs from a delivery manager, and whether either needs to be technical.They also look at how AI is changing delivery work. Faster code just moves the bottleneck upstream, John argues there's no AI-specific skill you can't learn in a day, and engineering fundamentals are what make AI useful.
Coding Chats Episode 81 - Ben Howdle talks to John Crickett about being a first time CTO in a start-up. Ben, author of The First CTO, shares what changes when you move from building technology to leading a technical team: the pressure, the trade-offs, and the realization that writing code is only part of the job.Drawing on startup experience and lessons learned the hard way, Ben discusses how to balance quality against runway, manage people, and communicate technical decisions in terms that founders and other non-technical stakeholders can understand. He also explores why resourcefulness, resilience, and comfort with ambiguity matter so much—and why CTOs often spend more time selling ideas than they expect.Whether you’re stepping into your first CTO role or leading a technical team at an early-stage company, this conversation offers candid insights into the realities of technical leadership.
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