PLUG Meeting for February 9^th
*Attend the meeting by going to:
https://lufthans.bigbluemeeting.com/b/plu-yuk-7xx at 7pm MST*
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We have 2 presentations lined up for this month's meeting:
*Fatima Taj* will present: *How to Navigate the Early Days at Your First
Tech Job *and *Bob Murphy* will present:*A brief introduction to
Mastodon and the Fediverse*
This is a remote meeting. Please join by going to
https://lufthans.bigbluemeeting.com/plu-yuk-7xx at 7pm on Thursday Feb 9th
*Fatima Taj: How to Navigate the Early Days at Your First Tech Job*
*Description*:
Reflect on existing processes/documentation: Every team has its own
processes/style of documentation and this offers you a great opportunity
to make a meaningful contribution in! For example, if you feel that your
onboarding was particularly difficult because of the lack of
documentation/processes, this could be something that you could work on,
especially since you have a fresh perspective as a new hire.
Alternatively, you could also look into potential ways of improving
existing processes/documentation.
The Art of Asking Questions: As overwhelming as it can be to ask a
question, especially when starting a job as a new graduate, there is an
art to asking questions which can allow you to feel both empowered and
unintimidated. This includes doing your research before, using the
rubber duck technique before asking the question, and being respectful
of people’s time.
Deep Dive into your Projects: Even on teams with excellent
documentation, getting started on your technical projects can be a very
daunting task, since there’s multiple components involved. Overtime
though, you will understand how these things are done on your team, but
it can save you a lot of time and potential headaches to figure this out
early on, by keeping a handy list to refer to including basic project
setup, testing requirements, review and deployment processes, task
tracking and documentation.
Gaining Technical Context: Gaining a high level overview of your project
at the very beginning is invaluable because it not only allows you to
gain a deeper understanding of the work that you’ll be doing, but also
allows you to feel more connected to your team and company in general.
Establish Expectations: In order to set yourself up for long term
success, it’s imperative that you establish a clear benchmark/criteria
from the get go. If there isn’t a clear one available, work with your
manager to establish one. This allows you to be strategic with your
career growth in general and also removes any vagueness surrounding what
is expected of you and how your performance will be evaluated moving
forward. Additionally, it offers you a greater sense of clarity in terms
of what you’re doing well and what could be improved upon.
Working in Distributed Teams and Maintaining a Work-Life Balance: When
starting out your career, it’s very easy to get caught up in your work,
often leading to new employees working overtime. Initially, one might
not be cognizant of this, but overtime, this can lead to extreme burn
out and a myriad of other issues. It’s crucial to maintain a work-life
balance, even more so now when a vast majority of people work from home
and across a variety of time zones, and the separation between work and
a life outside of work gets blurred. This includes turning off
notifications, being diligent about not working on weekends, and using
your paid time off.
*About Fatima*:
Fatima is a graduate of the University of Waterloo, Canada. Post
graduation, she's worked full-time as a Software Developer at DRW, a
trading firm, and currently works at Yelp as a Software Engineer. Fatima
is passionate about supporting fellow tech enthusiasts and has spoken at
over 70 hackathons across North America in 2022. In addition, she's also
been a panelist at Harvard WeCode, presented at the Women Who Code
Connect Event, Black is Tech Conference, Tapia Conference, and Women of
Silicon Roundabout, London's biggest event for women in technology.
*Bob Murphy: A brief introduction to Mastodon and the Fediverse.*
*Description*:
The Fediverse is a collection of communities that is a bit of a
throwback to a smaller, more personal time on the internet. There are
services for short messaging, audio and video sharing, and event
organizing, among other things. Mastodon is a fully open source social
media platform, with no advertising, monetizing, or venture capital. It
is a part of the Fediverse, a social network that is truly a network, by
incorporating ideas and protocols that allow users and information to
freely spread throughout a wide diaspora of servers and services.
Explore how you might wish to join into the rich, new world that has
more of a resemblance of the internet as it was envisioned to be.
*About Bob*:
Bob is a Linux Systems Administrator who has been a user of GNU/Linux
for own personal use since the late nineties. Bob has used many
distributions over the years, starting with Slackware, up to the latest
Red Hat and Ubuntu releases.
murph.info
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**
*Meeting Location is Virtual*:
*https://lufthans.bigbluemeeting.com/b/plu-yuk-7xx* second Thursday of
the month at 7pm MST
For more information see the meeting information on our web site
<http://phxlinux.org/meetings/14-east-valley-meeting.html>
Contact PLUG:
Email: https://phxlinux.org/index.php/email-lists.html
<https://phxlinux.org/index.php/email-lists.html>
IRC: https://phxlinux.org/index.php/chat.html
<https://phxlinux.org/index.php/chat.html>
Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/Phoenix-Linux-Users-Group/
<http://www.meetup.com/Phoenix-Linux-Users-Group/>
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