Prodigy Developers – Jacob Good

The second Prodigy Developers interview (first interview here) is with Jacob Good (Lead API Developer at Drop.io) I recorded our call and broke out some of the more interesting questions / answers. Easier for him to explain it verses me to interpret it. At some point I may just turn these interviews into a podcast, but for now the post will be organized into bite sized questions/answers.  I apologize for some of the audio quality. This was recorded on Skype and my mic was way up.  You may want to turn down your speakers a bit.

 

I met Jake back in 2004 at a .NET user group meeting held at the local Microsoft office. I think it was a XAML presentation.  Anyway I was impressed. Jake is passionate, opinionated, technically talented, inquisitive, and confident. All great traits. He prolific on twitter and his blog Thoughts to Blog. BTW – Jake didn’t pose for this posting. He is always in deep thought. 

 

 

Jake was kind enough to spend over an hour with me. Here are some of the questions we covered.

1. Interact with the Community – Put yourself out there…Tell people who you are…Keep it up, keep up the connections…Get your code out there…Help your career advance.

2. Swallow your pride / Ego – Check your Ego at the door…No Rock Stars in a Team…Balance your confidence

3. Passion – Don’t make excuses…Get out there and make things happen

4. Connecting with a Mentor. – Look for Mentors that aren't afraid to give constructive criticism…Allow them to push you

5. Side Projects – Ruby – What side projects…The software chose him…How it effects his career…Build something…Bleeding edge

6. Communication with Business Managers – Having a story with value…Don’t get into too much detail early on…Ask why…

7. Big Picture – Make it (show) valuable…Mount Rushmore, break it down…Don’t get into the small stuff in the beginning...Look at it through the users perspective…Keep your eye on the big picture for everything you do.

8. Where are we going and what excites you? – More Integration…Focus on Platforms not Products…Data Analytics…Collective Intelligence…More Cloud

9. What’s new at Drop.io? – Simple Private Sharing…Empower Developers…Richer API…Real-time solutions…Making things easer for users (simple)

 

Again this Prodigy Developers interview series is about getting in the heads of younger developers that have made good career choices and are seeing success. My hope is that you can pick up a few good tips here and there. As these interviews continue I bet we will notice some of the answers have a similar threads.