S15E07 Curiosity, Courage, and the Human Side of Software with Ellyse Cedeno
===
(00:34) Charles: Hi everyone, I'm Charles Suggs, software developer at SmartLogic.

(00:38) Emma Whamond: And I'm Emma Whamond software developer at SmartLogic. And we're your host for season 15, episode seven. We're joined by Ellyse Cedeno, the founder of Heuristic Salvo, an engineer and a product leader with over 25 years of experience building everything from games to health tech systems to early internet platforms. In today's episode, we're looking at the parts that aren't being automated, curiosity, judgment, soft influence, and why the human side of engineering may be more important now than ever.

(01:15) Charles: Hi Ellyse, welcome to the podcast.

(01:17) Ellyse Cedeno: Thank you for having me, I'm excited to be here.

(01:20) Charles: Yeah, we've been looking forward to this has been around a number industries over interesting career that spanned on early search engines, Nickelodeon, medical research at Mount Sinai, multiverse, ⁓ building ⁓ role playing ⁓ so for those folks just learning about you or meeting you is there a thread that connects all those? ⁓ Or is it really as varied as it looks from the outside?

(01:54) Ellyse Cedeno: Well, you're landing the first big question, the difficult one up front. figure this out. I don't really have a great answer for this like the theme you talked about, curiosity, by the way, I'm neurodivergent, I have ADHD, I'm also autistic. So the ADHD part is like there's a certain amount of impulsivity, right? Like you wanna do what you love to And I think like when I started working, that was totally by chance. at early search engine companies building a search engine and web It was a little bit just like, okay, I'm doing this on like one of the main search engines, what does the real internet look like? What's the middle of it? What's the biggest part of it? At the time, that was Netscape. So I was I gotta go there and figure this out, like see what it's really So it was sort of just always following my nose and my passion. And you know you grow up, like I grew up playing like 8-bit games on a Commodore 64, like a lot of programmers, it's like falling in love computers, gaming was an essential part of it. So after Netscape, I knew a lot of people who were like, able to start a company and in the mindset to do so. And I was like, you know, instead of joining EA or something, Why don't I start a company? And we'll all learn how to do gaming from there. think it's really down to that curiosity and interest ⁓ that sort of led me from one thing to another. And just to spend another just a short while more on moves fast. You hear about game dev sort of burning themselves out and everything like And I think the other counterbalance for me is something to do something that's slower and super meaningful, and that's healthcare, right? That's why I worked at Icon School of Medicine at Mount research ⁓ and also like ⁓ apps for chronic So there you're moving really, really after you come out of a game company, you actually really welcome that. It's a little bit of back and forth. That's kind of like the between a lot of the companies that I'm working at.

(04:23) Charles: And then how did that link, or how did this path then lead you into the world of Elixir? How did you come to this space?

(04:32) Ellyse Cedeno: Well, programming languages is something that I just love, right? So I have moved from Evernote to and I have a list of programming languages that I'm just sort of invested in or wanna like check out, right? When I started learning ⁓ programming, I Little Lisper was one of the that I I was like, functional programming was something that I loved from the very beginning. then after that, you do a lot of imperative But honestly, it was always like, whether you're doing search or building massively multiplayer game backends, dealing with parallel concurrent distributed systems. And ⁓ in most languages, That kinda sucks. in one of the things I do when I'm like playing with a new language is to see like how I write this, you know, like maybe a game backend in this new language. And when I saw Elixir, I read Saša Jurić's book on Elixir, Elixir in and it just made so much sense with the processes and OTP and I was like, my God, this gets rid of all my deadlock problems, all the mutexes I need to handle. ⁓ And it just made it know, caveat, yes, you can have circular references in processes can have this similar situation, but it's so easier looking at a process topology compared looking at all your locking orders. Does that make sense? yeah, and I think for if you're doing that kind of work, then working with Beam is really, really awesome.

(06:26) Charles: Makes a lot of sense to me.

(06:29) Emma Whamond: So last year you gave a talk at Goatmire about overcoming a hardware phobia and getting into nerves. At a point in your career where most engineers would start specializing even harder, you picked up something brand new and gave a live breadboard demo of a theremin. So we've talked about your career, learning different things, exploring languages. What does it mean to you to take or keep that beginner's mindset thing going decades in?

(07:02) Ellyse Cedeno: Beginner's mindset is really interesting and it's nothing that I actively work on. ⁓ I think really all of us are curious by default, And what I've seen, I've managed a lot of people, ⁓ is that when you're in it for your job day in, day out, and you're using the same technology day in, day you can get burnt out on it, right? And I think it's important to like... try something different every so often because it reinvigorates you to explore something. can mean a lot of discomfort because sometimes that means leaving your job or finding another position in your company and it may not even. Honestly, sometimes the people who stick with get their payday and they do really well. So there's something to be just sticking it out. But I think when you look at your internal happiness and you're like, okay, is this meaningful for me? Am I every day that I'm spending on this exploring is really So I think it's more about not letting yourself get stuck on doing the same thing because everyone I know wants to try things, wants to do So talk I gave at Goatmire on Nerves, of my hobbies is singing, choir, music, all of And to meld like, let me finally try to do something with, I call it wires, you know, because I'm like really a programmer, programmer. So like, actually like getting wires and plugging it into a breadboard and using like chips and That was a little scary for me. It all worked. But I tied it to my passion of music. The original talk, I was gonna actually sing with the as all things happen, you run out of time. So ⁓ I got to demonstrate the theremin, but I did not get to sing remember I was like, she's my ex now, long story, but I was showing her and like, we're both. both singing singers and like I was like I'm gonna learn how to sing with this we just it just didn't happen in time

(09:31) Emma Whamond: That's very cool.

(09:32) Charles: Yeah. Yeah.

(09:32) Ellyse Cedeno: And nothing is like that hard. There's this thing that we're taught that's like, if I try, this is a whole other topic. People go to school for this thing or whatever, like really, when you go to something like today, I'm in Berlin, I went to xHain, which a hacker space, and people are there clothing, they're jamming on synthesizers and like doing all this like, stuff all the time I'm sure most of them did not go to school for this. You just go do it, you learn from other people, you learn by it's amazing how fast you can pick up on I think some of it is also like not letting the perfectionist sort of like mindset and like this is the orthodox way of doing something because you can always learn something. When I joined Mount Sinai Icahn School of Medicine, I joined Sciences, Genetics and Genomic Sciences I did not know anything there and I just had to learn it. It was a little bit like, yeah, was a little bit like baptism under fire.

(10:52) Emma Whamond: It takes a lot of courage to be a beginner. think it takes a lot of confidence to be able to go back and say, I'm going to be OK being bad at something again.

(11:03) Charles: He he he.

(11:04) Ellyse Cedeno: That's, that's, I'm so glad because when I said perfectionism, I didn't really know how to tie it into what I was saying, but I knew it was there, then you did it for me, which is like, you can be afraid to try something because you're going to be bad at I said, I sing, but I'm not that good at it. It's not like my natural My natural talent is what I'm doing now, which is just, can blab. I can speak. You know, I can go to a conference and speak in front of a group and I don't feel nervous about that. That's what I can do by But the stuff that I try to learn, I'm actually unfortunately not that great at it. But you don't have to be great at What matters is you have fun with it halfway decent, you can actually end up making something.

(11:56) Charles: sounds like you maybe place some importance in spending time with passion projects or experimenting ⁓ as part of just growing as an engineer, but also just staying happy and ⁓ interested in work with technology.

(12:15) Ellyse Cedeno: Yeah, and I think passion projects is kind of like, a couple of ways to look at this, like just to reframe what you just like you place importance in doing something that you enjoy, that you don't hate doing. And yes, I think that's important. And I think like when we sometimes we're told like work has to suck or what you spend most of your time has to suck. And that's just not, I don't believe that, So whether that means finding a different job, whether it means finding ways to split your time, whether it means living an unconventional life in a way, like right now I'm doing kind of strange sort of like set of sort of I think you can find that mix and passion projects It's a funny thing because in tech, the world changes so fast, changes so fast that if you just assume that you went to school or you read a book and you know how to do something, that's not gonna work for you forever. You need to kind of like keep with the times or what's actually used changes all the how we do things change all the So most people don't only learn that at work. It means like going out of your way and trying to learn some of that So I think that's where like, you know, the passion sort of matters with working inside of tech.

(14:00) Charles: Do you think the passion makes it easier to make the time for For me, at least, feels like it can be hard to make time for side projects. ⁓ After working full-time job, and I have other things that I do too, it can be hard to then also make time for that and to consistently keep with it for weeks and weeks. How do you make that work?

(14:25) Ellyse Cedeno: This is a really great question and they're very difficult. This is going to be a sort of a hot take.

(14:32) Charles: I love it.

(14:34) Ellyse Cedeno: I think that a lot of us prioritize a lot of things that make our lives very difficult and very, very full of things we have to take care of. We put pressures on ourselves and whether that means all the mortgages, debts, whatever it is, whatever you're feeling, you know, you're thinking about, like, there's this tendency to be like, I think I can add that one more thing in my life, But you add these things, the next thing you know, you have no free time to explore, to sort of like have that time to yourself. And I think just like, you know, people say block out your calendar at work or like we have to block out and protect time for ourselves. Whether that means it's a passion project or whether that just decompressing at home, spending I've spent my time living, I grew up in New York and then I moved over to the Bay I did a lot of startups there, right? The common denominator is people work a lot and on the company, it's like there's a certain like pride in working more. And when you do that, it means you have no time for your life and I've lived in France for nine years now. It's a very different culture, right? It's a very different culture where it's like, even though there's startups that give you unlimited time off in the US, people in France, it's like no one has to, if you say I'm taking three weeks off, there's no question unless.

(16:00) Charles: ⁓ Yeah

(16:22) Ellyse Cedeno: there's literally like some kind of incompatibility in the schedule. You know, it really is, it has to be a big deal for them to deny you. And there's no shame turning your phone off. But when I work and consult for U.S. companies, always I'm going away for three days, but I'll have my phone. You can reach me. How much do you think you're decompressing and able to enjoy yourself and explore your interests when you're in that mindset? Right? So, you know, I'm not giving you an easy answer. It's something that I think people have to give themselves so that they don't end up filling their life with stress. And this has nothing to do with technology, right? It just has to do with how you manage your life. So ⁓ there's that. Second part is work can be your passion project. Right? You can really enjoy your work and work can give you, depending on where you are and how you work with your managers and whatever, you can find time to explore and do things that you love.

(17:32) Emma Whamond: I love that. ⁓ I think that allows you to, at least to your first point, allows you to have space for curiosity again, right, in order to decompress. Then you can take it back to that second point you get to reset and go, what can I do to make my work part of my passion project? Or how do I give it back to work so that I'm curious and passionate again?

(18:01) Ellyse Cedeno: If you're happy, you'll do better. like at, when I was at Netscape, I learned how to fly a plane. But what I just did is I would just duck out and go to the airport in Palo Alto. Netscape was in Mountain

(18:04) Charles: Yeah.

(18:16) Ellyse Cedeno: I would just be gone for two hours every so often. I didn't really ask anyone or tell anyone. I just did it. And every now and then I'd come back and there would be a fire. But if you're good at your job, they're not gonna fire you.

(18:18) Charles: You

(18:31) Ellyse Cedeno: Right? So like, sometimes you have to stop being a people pleaser and just do it. Just do what you need to do.

(18:43) Charles: Yeah, just make the time for what you need. Prioritize what you need.

(18:47) Ellyse Cedeno: Make the time and don't feel guilty about it because when this is over, you're not going to be thinking, I wish I spent those two extra hours in meetings.

(18:57) Charles: Mm-hmm

(19:01) Emma Whamond: That is so true. ⁓ Outside of flying planes and singing and playing the theremin, do you have any other or engineering hobbies that you'd like to mention?

(19:16) Ellyse Cedeno: ⁓ I have a lot of hobbies. I have a list, you know, the autism thing. I have a list of hobbies that I'd love to do or that I do enjoy Language is one of I moved to France because I wanted to learn French. I saw like ⁓ my mother would have like these cosmetic things and they all be like, you know, French names. As you probably know, a lot of cosmetics and skincare that come from France. And I was like, look at these like little marks on these letters what could this um yeah it stayed with me and then I came to France to learn languages to learn i really love languages and the choir i sing in is a japanese working on understanding that but i sing in japanese i understand very little of what i i hope to change that so yeah and prior to that i love dance like ballet and jazz and modern The curse of this is that you only have so many hours in your day, And I'm trying to do the thing that I said earlier, which is like give myself time. So I can't just do back to back everything.

(20:27) Emma Whamond: and there's seasons, right? And come back to it and...

(20:30) Ellyse Cedeno: Yeah, you remember it, right? Like, it sticks with you.

(20:37) Charles: Mm-hmm.

(20:38) Ellyse Cedeno: Unless it's a, okay, here's the embarrassing thing. I don't know how many programmers admit to this, but I forget syntax all the time. I get so stressed because like you ever do pair programming, someone's looking at your screen, right? And so like I'm writing some code and then I'm like, wait, do I put a do here? Wait, was, and then you just blank out on some basic, basic syntax

(20:52) Charles: That's the worst.

(21:06) Ellyse Cedeno: and you're like, my god, my coworker must think I'm a freaking idiot. But, you know, I mean, these days a lot of people use like cursor or something, it just writes it all for you, right? But I mean, still, you want people to think you actually know basic I forget it all the time.

(21:28) Charles: It gets worse for me too when I'm hopping between languages, especially if they're different paradigms like functional and something else like going from Elixir to JavaScript to Clojure to, you know.

(21:31) Ellyse Cedeno: Exactly! Yeah, for me it's actually harder when it's within the same realm. Like if you go from Haskell to Elixir and Erlang, something like that, like there's similarities in like how you do comprehensions or how you just like do lists or whatever, but there's little changes like, this one used brackets, this one uses whatever. like the tuples here are in parentheses, here it's in braces. like,

(21:50) Charles: Mm. Sure.

(22:06) Ellyse Cedeno: yeah.

(22:06) Charles: Yeah.

(22:07) Ellyse Cedeno: But I bet the people who just write Java every day for the last 30 years, they don't forget. So there's something to be said for doing that. I hate to rag on Java, but I'm glad I'm not programming Java every day.

(22:21) Charles: same.

(22:22) Ellyse Cedeno: I hear JVM is great. I was just talking to a friend of mine Clojure. One day I'll check it out. ⁓

(22:29) Charles: Hmm? Yeah. Clojure's fun. I like it. Yeah. Yeah. I prefer Elixir, but I like Clojure.

(22:35) Ellyse Cedeno: Really? There's lot of hype behind it. I did a startup in Scheme. Here's the funny thing, I did a startup in Scheme. It was like a microblogging startup. And Scheme is known to be one of the simplest languages out there, right? And this was in the Bay Area, we were in And one of the biggest problems we had, we had VC money, so we're trying to do the normal thing of hiring like 50 engineers really I could not get engineers who would program in Scheme. and the people we did hire, they had a hard grasping I think it's parentheses that people don't like. I have no idea. I really just don't this was when like you know developers sort of like ruled everything and they could like dictate everything. So perhaps they were just like, you know, I'm not doing schemes, so no.

(23:30) Charles: we could command a little bit more.

(23:32) Ellyse Cedeno: Yeah, now it's just like, where's the AI interviewer? No, I haven't had to face that, but I see the

(23:41) Charles: In this season, our conversations are exploring how the role of the developer is changing. It's becoming more cross-disciplinary, but that's maybe been kind of a long-running change. And I think a lot of us kind of become more cross-disciplinary to a degree as we spend more time with the craft. But it's also becoming more AI-assisted. ⁓ have to exercise more judgment than just like writing nowadays. ⁓ How do you think engineers today are expected to bring more than just technical execution to the job? ⁓ Maybe it's not just judgment. Maybe there's other skills too. you see there?

(24:22) Ellyse Cedeno: I think when you say like there's what they're expected to bring that's I would sort of like push back on like is that what's the best thing also what's happening you know I see a very interesting difference between like because I live in France now I'm in Berlin but like Europe and then I also lived in Dublin Ireland for a while and also the Bay Area where I still do lot of consulting with clients. And a lot of the trends start out in the US and ⁓ they're very different. Like if I ask my friends, a lot of developers here, they're barely using any AI whatsoever, right? ⁓ And when they do, using like an internal model that's quite like old compared to live on Claude or something else, right? Expectations that I see is that like developers are expected to really use AI agents and like flows to do a lot. In fact, like one startup I was I was doing some pair programming and I wrote the code. And ⁓ one of the executives were like, what are you doing? Why are you writing And I was like, what do you mean? This is what developers do, And they're like, you should never write code. only look at PRs from the And there's a certain like, group of companies that have fully embraced this mentality, in which case their developers are basically push, I hate to say this, lines of code out into the system. I thought we kind of moved away from lines of code, hear it so often, like with AI, I can do 20,000, 100,000 lines of code a day or whatever. And I think like managing AI is something that a lot of companies are expecting people to do. And that's a skill set, right? what the business needs and then being able to work with ⁓ LLMs to produce that kind of Now that's the expectation side of things that I think we see and that hasn't reached like depending on where you the listener are, Like you may not see any of this yet and maybe you never will, but that's sort of I've been seeing, especially in smaller VC funded Now, expected, I mean expected, what's actually useful in terms of soft developers working within a I think that's actually different. It's always been different when you as a developer only thinking about, know, can I actually execute this technically? a whole side of like, how do communicate and work with the rest of the company? How well do I the business goals, right? And how well can I influence and like, you know, actually be a part of the decision making here? And that's what's going to help your career and help your position within a And here's another hot take. Companies never tell you what's important for set KPIs. They set like their goals that they use in But you don't always just work for the company. You're working for your working for whoever else on And they all have their own goals and their own fears. And you know, like the higher you are up in a working more and more on how you're managing to the rest of the and how much you're afraid to fuck up. right? So one of the key things I think is when you talk to, you know, when you look at your position in a company and is to understand what are the things that the company, my managers and everyone, trying to do and what's the stuff they're not telling me? What are their fears? What's keeping them from sleeping well at night? And if you can solve those problems even show that you understand those problems. Then all of sudden they're like, oh my god, there's a weight lifted off of me. I can trust this person. This person is a partner for solving these because it's not always a meritocracy. It's not always you do better work and it's seen. This is why we hear so did the work, someone took credit and they get the promotion and didn't, what the hell just You know, there's a lot of that too. So those are some skills or things to think about when you're working within a group.

(29:57) Emma Whamond: you give us an example of a way someone could express or like how they could express that they understand those goals or those

(30:07) Ellyse Cedeno: Every company has different ways of working together. I'm a strong believer in one-on-ones with your manager. And if you're in a company where they don't do that, usually I find that you can request it. You can be like, hey, Mr. Miss Manager friend of mine, do you think we can meet every so Once a week, once every two weeks. And for you, it might seem like Damn, another meeting that I this is the chance for you to have undivided attention and one, understand what's going on, and two, show them that you understand, and three, that you make progress towards So ⁓ I think that's really important. Don't even be afraid of requesting the same to your boss's boss if you're in a large company. Don't be afraid. Be afraid to ask that of the CEO, Just see what we put all these ideas in our then when you have that chance, it doesn't have to be every just when you have that chance, you can first like feel it out with them, right? hey, you know, like what are some of the things that you're noticing that we're having a hard time getting done or what could we do better or whatever? And then you can talk about it with them. And that's when they can recognize that you're actually listening, you care, and that you understand. So I don't think it has to be that difficult. And then always try to find ways to like, once you feel more comfortable, to disseminate that information to others. If they see you actively trying to like, you know, address it and make sure other people know it, there was one guy I know who would always write like, product documents or like summaries of something and put his name on it. Even if it was like my meeting, he would put his name on And I asked him, why do you do that? What are you doing? He goes I don't remember exactly what he said, but he who controls the document puts their name on it, gets credit for it. And I'm like, damn. And you know, he became a really big person in Amazon and is doing big things now like.

(32:16) Charles: Ha!

(32:24) Ellyse Cedeno: I think he had something there.

(32:27) Charles: feel like there's a little bit of a common thread through a lot of this of curiosity, of staying curious about technology and new things, staying curious about what are the motivating factors behind what we're doing here? What are we really trying to achieve? What are the goals that we really have? ⁓ How can I do this better? What's a different way? ⁓ And I feel like that kind of connects into some of what you've talked about with soft influence and ⁓ how you can maybe shift things in a direction that you would like to see them to go without like banging it over people's heads or dragging them along but perhaps maybe getting people to buy in and be open or into that as well. ⁓ You gave a talk recently called Softly Surely, bringing Elixir to work. It's a great talk. Maybe you can dive a little bit more into kind of that core idea of soft influence in engineering culture and. how that is beneficial. Yeah, go ahead.

(33:35) Ellyse Cedeno: When I started this gaming company, we started growing. So the CEO, I was CEO was like, hey, we should bring a VP of engineering. So my role would be more like technology direction and speaking to outside people. VP of engineering would sort of manage engineering. But like we were a team that really had a lot of fun. We played D &D together, you know? Like it you play D &D together, you're a tight group, But like when we hired him, one of the first things he said to me was like, I need these people to report to me. And I asked him why. And he said, because like, how else am I gonna get them to do anything unless I can fire them? Right? I mean, and this isn't something that's like, that was back then. No, this is today. Like there's still people, there's maybe most people, I don't know. This is not something rare. But like when you look at soft influence, I think it's almost better for you to say like, I'm happy that I have no hard power over people because if we can manage to do something together when I can't force your hand. then I know we're actually doing it together, you know? And they don't feel that pressure. Like, if you're managing people, try hanging out with them after work. It's not always easy. It's like, oh, you're my boss! It's a little bit hard, but actually beneficial often, I think, to just sort of like... be able to work with people because now they see you as a partner, as a colleague, as a peer. So, ⁓ yeah, I've always enjoyed that kind of situation. So when start with that assumption that like, okay, well, they're asking me to get this project through the door or whatever, shipped, but I have no real control over how do I get this done? It probably means talking to people, probably means figuring out how they feel, then it probably means like, When you see issues, bring it up to people that can help fix it. Now, if you are a developer, that doesn't mean you can't also do some of these things. I've done roles where I was purely technical, purely leading technology, project management, product management, marketing, analytics, lead, whatever. But like in all of these things, like I've always just said, okay, that's my role. But like the end of the day, we want to get this done. And so if every team member sort of has this approach, especially you, then I think that's very, very I don't know if I've given any strategy to do that, but I think part of it is starting with that mindset don't have to fire them. You don't have to threaten to fire them. That's not how you work with your partner, right? I hope not. You know, it's like, ⁓ if you don't get those groceries tonight, you're fired. And you only get one chance. It's your soft skills, hopefully, get that to work. And if you're yelling at them too much, that only works for so long.

(36:58) Charles: And I think in the situation where you're working with people through more soft influence, more carrots versus stick, more ⁓ as a team, as opposed to kind of this top down fear stick kind of motivator, people will be more trusting and more willing to dive in and work with you and maybe put up with some other things that are unpleasant because, well, I've got more of a partner in this this person as opposed to someone I need to to fear.

(37:30) Ellyse Cedeno: Yeah, and like, let's be honest, like, not all companies are well suited for this. Right? Like, if you're working at a company where the goals are changing every week, that the teams are getting like from up high, like, here's your new product, we've changed everything, what can I say? Right? Like, not going to be able to keep people happy in that environment. No one can. Right? And that's when you have to be realistic and think like, is this somewhere that I want to be? Because you can probably stick it out. But at some point, when you look around and everyone's demoralized,

(37:57) Charles: Mm-hmm.

(38:14) Ellyse Cedeno: only so much you can at that point, you could try to convince upper management that this is a problem and let's try this approach for a little while, out why they're afraid to change the approach or something like that. But at that point, you have nothing to lose because you know what's going to happen after a certain amount of time. It's just not going to work. And unfortunately, a lot of times, this is pretty common. And then you see people cycle in and out of the company. So that's just some straight talk there.

(38:51) Emma Whamond: So true. Hopefully you get to the point where it's about respect, then fear. You respect this person, you respect the team, you're excited about the team.

(39:03) Ellyse Cedeno: Right.

(39:04) Emma Whamond: what's the saying that you don't quit a company, you quit the manager. ⁓

(39:08) Ellyse Cedeno: Exactly, exactly.

(39:12) Emma Whamond: So in a talk of yours, you described a story of a company that almost didn't hire you because you seemed too FP, too functional programming, and you snuck a Discord import server into production in Elixir anyways. Could you walk us through what was going through your when you typed get push and you clicked

(39:17) Ellyse Cedeno: Yeah

(39:31) Emma Whamond: Or just in general, that story?

(39:34) Ellyse Cedeno: I actually remember pressing the button there. was at the end of the day. Right, so let's set some context here, right? So this is a TypeScript and they love their types, right? Like so much, so much type loving. back of the day when you had C++ and people use multiple inheritance and you just couldn't figure out where anything was, it was like that, but with But anyway, so ⁓ yeah, was very, and they were like, ⁓ you know, maybe you're too functional program my interview, I was talking about Elixir, I was talking about Haskell, and they're like, my God, you we know where this is coming Anyway, so ⁓ what I did was there was a pretty much like separate project where we needed to get Discord information into the database and like have it interact and all this kind of and I I've been using nostrum on ⁓ which is an elixir package That you know that basically is a discord bot framework and So I just decided to write that up because it seemed like it wouldn't contaminate the code base or anything like that it would be a separate and ⁓ when I pushed it, I remember thinking, I wonder if they're going to yell at me in the morning. Right? And then not only did I do it for Discord, I then did it again for a debugging ⁓ we just couldn't get enough information about the runtime, like because it was almost like a runtime operating And so I wrote it in Elixir also. I also use Gleam because like it interacts with ⁓ JavaScript pretty well and there know, all this TypeScript stuff. So there was a whole story behind But both like, oh, you wrote this thing. This looks really cool. Whatever. and then there'd be a moment where like, oh, it's in elixir. I'd be like, yeah. They're like, okay. So, so I was like, okay, look, I didn't get fired, right? I'm still alive. And Usually you don't go from like being fine to getting fired. It's not unless you do something really So that's the approach I take. There was a video game that I used to love playing. I don't know what it was. It was like World of Warcraft I would play it safe all the time. I didn't want to die. I didn't want to But my friend would die all the time. I'd be like, dude, you're dying all the time. What's going on? He you don't die every so often, it means you're not being efficient. And you think about it, it's I'm playing it safe. That means I'm never, I'm like, you know, it's like when you do a negotiation and you're all right, I'll sell it you for a hundred bucks. And they're like, sure, done. You're like, shit, you know, you should have asked for 200. It's like that. So like, unless sometimes they're actually saying, hey, you know, you really shouldn't have done that. It kind of means you're not dying enough. You're not being efficient enough. You're not getting enough of what you need, what you want. So that's something, you know, something I kind of took to heart.

(42:52) Charles: curious once those Elixir tools were put into use and put into production at shop and they were in use for a little bit of time, was there any secondary like, hey this is working really well we don't have to spend much time maintaining it or this is actually kind of problematic for us to maintain in our larger system? how, what was, was there a longer story to that or just kind of was a nothing after it was once it was in service.

(43:19) Ellyse Cedeno: I don't think that there was either like, ⁓ this opened the door for like a whole bunch of different languages to be nor did it say like, this was a huge mistake. It was something that like, this worked for what it needed to be. I think that it means that if there was other occasions to actually build something that people can think about using the best tool for the job. and I think that it did open up a lot of the possibilities of using Gleam Forward because it's a really nice way to either to actually compile to the JavaScript or to the Beam And there's pros and cons for both, I think it was very interesting for them.

(44:13) Emma Whamond: Would you still categorize that as soft influence?

(44:19) Ellyse Cedeno: This is a really good question. I don't know, I don't even know like, you know, soft influence. It's kind of like did anyone give me the hard authority to say you're deciding what technology stack we're using, right? And the answer is And you want to like move to a certain direction. You think it'll be good. And in this case, it was also for my self edification. I enjoy doing it. I said you're writing Java code for 30 years or whatever. I didn't want to be writing TypeScript every day. And I remember when I started writing in Gleam and Elixir, was like, oh, this feels so much better. Sorry, TypeScript people. Oh, god, it just felt so much better. Yeah, I guess I would still say it's something different from hard authority, right? And exercise it as often as you can.

(45:24) Emma Whamond: what is soft influence look like when it fails? that just a? No, we're not willing to Go that direction is is that it have you noticed have you had experiences?

(45:39) Ellyse Cedeno: I love this question. like, I don't know if I'm answering exactly that, but like, you ever have like a project manager who's like, you can tell they have no idea what they're talking about. just okay, I heard you. like, this project sounds like it's going to be late. And you just told them like, the database is ruined. There's no way in hell this is ever going to go can we do some brainstorming and like figure out like, You're just like, have you not heard a single word of what I just said? This is DOA. There's no way we're gonna succeed here. So I feel like soft influence fails when you just have the soft and you have none of, why would anyone follow you if you look like or sound like you have no idea what you're talking about, right? Let's use Elixir. Why? Because I heard there's like this process thing and like there's some kind of supervisors that like, I don't know, self-healing and offensive programming. It's super cool. Like, no, that's not gonna work, right? Like, learn your stuff, make sure you can talk about be lazy about Like, someone sending you an email say, what's your thoughts on this?

(47:00) Charles: Hmm.

(47:05) Ellyse Cedeno: I hate those emails because it means they didn't think about it at all. So soft skills work when you can back yourself up with some actual knowledge and actual talent. So don't go in there thinking I'm a dev and I love all of this soft skill stuff. I'll go for it all the way. Let's try to meet our KPIs. No, know what you're talking about so that you can actually do it.

(47:27) Charles: You ⁓

(47:34) Ellyse Cedeno: Yeah, so there's the extreme example, someone who does it all on their own. They don't work with a team, but they're super competent, right? There's the other example, they can't do anything on their own and they need the whole team, but they don't know what's going on. Like, you need both. Try to be somewhere where you actually have, you know, some competencies on both sides. So that's where I think soft skills make you look stupid, you're cringe, stop doing it.

(47:34) Charles: Mm-hmm. What I feel like that's a good segue to this this question we have about ⁓ What does it look what no honesty is great honesty is great ⁓

(48:06) Ellyse Cedeno: Yes. Sorry, I'm giving you honest answers.

(48:17) Charles: a place that I worked at they there was a project manager from a different firm that we were collaborating with and a co-worker was blocked in a number of tickets and the project manager comes in and says ⁓ I can unblock you and just changes the status of the tickets to in progress like there you're unblocked

(48:37) Ellyse Cedeno: Voila! How awesome. Thank you so much for unblocking me. I just didn't know how to use whatever Jira or something. That was all that it took. Don't be that person.

(48:48) Charles: Yeah, yeah, it was Jira.

(48:57) Ellyse Cedeno: I've been thinking, I really wish I could like help people, know, as when you manage people, you try to mentor them to succeed in their careers. It's really hard, and I've, you know, talked to other people who tried to do, it's really hard to help someone like have that, I don't know, business empathy to just sit there and understand with the other side is, know, when they said this, means that they were, they're concerned it's gonna fail. When they said this, it means they don't wanna do it. Like, there's so many conditions to all of it. It's really hard to just say, here's the flow chart or something like that. But you do have to know when you're running into a hard wall that you can't get around. that you're using up your credits in a sense, and that you should just stop, it's not gonna work. Or like, okay, I can sense the hesitancy, I can sense that they're half open to doing it, but there's some concerns One book that I really, really love is by William Ury, U R Y, I think it's like a Harvard it's called Getting Past No. And it's a negotiation book. I am not a negotiator. I don't believe in use car salesmen. is a different approach where about long-term, durable agreements and understanding why people have I think they talk a lot about trying to understand the other side, understanding what their concerns are, making sure that They see that you understand and all of these steps to getting past a no. But I think you can tell after a while whether or not they are like, you know, there's no there's no way to get past it. And then you have to like cut your losses. Isn't there a song like a country song, know when to hold them, when to fold them? Sometimes you have to give it up.

(51:09) Charles: yeah, yep.

(51:12) Ellyse Cedeno: does it look like? I don't know that it looks like anything in particular. it's just like when your code fails, it doesn't compile, right? You don't go like, ⁓ damn it, like it's over. You can try again. But once they're like looking pissed at you, it's time to stop.

(51:29) Charles: Yeah, that's a good sign. Maybe stop slightly before they're pissed at you. If you can notice, you know, that little twitch is starting, whatever their tell is. Okay, time's

(51:33) Ellyse Cedeno: haha Yeah, or it's a great opportunity because you can be like, ⁓ it looks like you're upset about something. Can you tell me like why? Like what's what's what's frustrating? Well, it's just because you keep saying this. It's like, OK, but why is that a problem? Like what do you think might happen? And then you might open a whole door, right? Sometimes it takes to the very end before you get a breakthrough. So there's no there's no. Like single answer for this, and as you keep doing it, you build an intuition for it. I really wish there was a better answer for this. Ask your friends, ask your mentors, sometimes ask your manager. They can help you. Don't do it always all alone.

(52:25) Emma Whamond: That's great advice. I feel like a lot more people need to hear that than maybe than they realize. So for developers listening who feel boxed into a narrow career path or disconnected the reasons got into programming in the first do you have any advice for them? And what's something that they could do, something that they could start practicing their own?

(52:48) Ellyse Cedeno: There's a funny thing, I do a bunch of streaming too, not recently, but I have, and when I do programming streaming, one of the top questions is like, how do I enjoy coding? And these are beginner coders, right? And I'm like, you shouldn't be asking this If you're learning to code and you hate it, then you're not enjoying it, then there's a problem right up front. Oh yeah, like so I just started dating this person and we're always like fighting. How do we stop fighting? like, God, you're three dates in and you're fighting every day? This is a problem, know? Find someone else. And I think we saw a lot of it because programming was viewed as like a great way to have like make money and everything like that, And so there's... That answer for people who are early on, like, find something you want to do because you actually enjoy it. If you hate it from the very beginning, took a biology class, I hate it, but how do I succeed in getting my PhD in biology? Well, no. But if you are programming for a long time and you used to love it and you find that you no longer love it, then I think it's just like, Alright, this is... ⁓ God, this is gonna be controversial. is, you know, like when you have a child, you often go into parent mode and it takes up your whole life, right? It's everything. And after a while, like you kind of forget some people, forget like what they love. And once they start having free time, there has to be a moment of rediscovery of like, what am I about? What do like to do? And there's a couple of things here. One, just like with, and this happens with work. That's the analogy. Like work becomes all consuming until the point where you're just working for work and you forget like that at some point before you had other things going on. So ⁓ I think there's two things. One is if you're starting to notice it before it fully happened, then you carve out that time like we talked about before and don't do programming, do other things. It'll help you actually enjoy programming. know, it's kind of like ironic, but like do something else. ⁓ But like when you do finally find the time to do it, do something that you actually enjoy doing at the moment. Don't think about the end result. So many people think about the end result and say, I'm learning this language just to do X and Y. If you don't enjoy actually learning it and playing with it, then it's gonna be really hard because you're always gonna be measuring yourself to that perfect goal that you're trying to achieve. And that goes back to Emma, what you said about perfectionism. So ⁓ really, that's the thing that kills the curiosity and passion. There's a great Ted Talk, I forget whose name it on how the educational system kills curiosity and a lot of that has to do with perfectionism. So go look at that TED talk.

(56:32) Emma Whamond: Gosh, I wish I could talk to you for the next like 10 hours. I think you're so interesting. Maybe a little bit. I think you have enough to fill it

(56:37) Ellyse Cedeno: Well, 10 hours is a bit long.

(56:45) Emma Whamond: I think we're at time. Is there anything you want to mention that our listeners can follow your work where they can keep up with what you're building? Any last or final plugs for the audience?

(56:57) Ellyse Cedeno: My latest passion thing has been building that MMORPG game server in Elixir. I just did a talk on recently at ElixirConf EU and it was really fun. I ran out of time. I had a talk that was supposed to be like, what, 40 And like when I noticed that like I was a quarter of the way through and it was like almost over and I was like, God. Damn it! This is what! But the problem is, I don't rehearse, I just kinda just start talking, just like this, right? And, ⁓ and yeah, I can just keep talking. So anyway, ⁓ I'm doing that, and the game server is, ⁓ I put it all on

(57:29) Charles: You

(57:42) Ellyse Cedeno: is at 0.9s now, so go use Codeberg. Or whatever, you know, something else. ⁓ And, ⁓ yeah, I'll be talking about it more, but you can search...

(57:45) Charles: Yeah. Yeah.

(57:53) Ellyse Cedeno: I'm really easy to find. If you type my name see ⁓ my link to Codeberg, my LinkedIn, And really, if you're listening or watching, connect with me. I approve pretty much all all requests. So let's talk.

(58:10) Charles: I tried to find your talk on that. I don't think they've published a video of it yet. ⁓

(58:16) Ellyse Cedeno: They haven't published it, but if you went to the conference in, what's it called, SwapCards? The conference can actually find the talk, but they will eventually publish And I ⁓ think it's gonna be soon. They're not intending to keep it know, paywalled or whatever for very long.

(58:41) Charles: Yeah, yeah. That would be my assumption too.

(58:45) Ellyse Cedeno: and there's the GoatMire, I'm on the program committee for

(58:47) Charles: Yes.

(58:49) Ellyse Cedeno: which is coming So check that out. It's gonna be an awesome conference I will be there and I'm not talking there. I'm just gonna sit back and enjoy everyone else. really looking forward to that.

(59:02) Charles: Definitely had some FOMO from the last, missing the last one.

(59:05) Ellyse Cedeno: Yeah, yeah, it was so awesome. You talk to most people, they're like, oh my god, it was like an experience.

(59:09) Charles: Yeah. Cool. Well, Ellyse, I would love to keep this conversation going longer as well. Unfortunately, we do have to wrap. So thank you so much for joining us. It's been a wonderful conversation. ⁓ Look forward to seeing you in person at some point at one of these conferences somewhere. And ⁓ very good. Folks, our guest has been Ellyse Cedeno. You can find her at all the places that Ellyse just mentioned. We'll have number of things in the show notes. So thanks for listening.

(59:29) Ellyse Cedeno: Yeah, let's meet up. Thank you.