Episode 370 | John Wright - Getting Involved

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John Wright talks with Dave Rael about remote work, working at Stack Overflow, speaking at conferences, and making an impact

John M. Wright has been a professional software developer for about 18 years, gaining experience ranging from “shrink-wrapped” software to large, distributed networks using multiple platforms and technologies. His experience spans the entire software lifecycle, from customer-facing requirements gathering, through development and release, and continued maintenance. Though he has experience in a management role, his passion lives in writing high-quality, clean code while providing leadership through technical direction and mentorship. He enjoys sharing his experiences with automated testing, mocking frameworks, and static analysis tools, or guiding other developers through the darker crevices of the .NET framework, while also learning from his peers’ experiences -- helping everyone "level up" as a team. He has a pragmatic approach to and a heavy interest in continuous improvement of people, process, and product. He's currently applying that experience as a Full-Stack Web Developer at Stack Overflow on the Internal Development team.

Chapters: 0:32 - Dave introduces the show and John Wright5:03 - John on getting involved in being a conference speaker11:08 - Expectations for being a speaker vs reality12:56 - John working at Stack Overflow20:01 - The broader Stack Exchange network22:06 - Stack Overflow and .NET Core28:03 - John's story of failure - exposing a bug that gave away free service35:44 - John's book recommendations42:44 - John's top 3 tips for delivering more value46:27 - Keeping up with John

Resources: John's Blog THAT Conference Steven Hicks on Developer On Fire David Neal on Developer On Fire KCDC - Kansas City Developer Conference Jay Harris on Developer On Fire Christina Aldan Chad Green Joel Spolsky The Joel Test Nick Craver Marc Gravell The Story of Thomas Watson mistakes, firing, and education Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software - Erich Gamma Rob Conery on Developer On Fire

John's book recommendation: John's Full List of Book Recommendations Design Patterns For Dummies - Steve Holzner The Art of Unit Testing: with examples in C# - Roy Osherove The Imposter’s Handbook - Rob Conery The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich - Timothy Ferriss

John's top 3 tips for delivering more value: It's OK to fail Be aware of burnout - don't suffer in silence Understand the business and how people are using your software