Suggestions
Ryan Hayes
Vice President of Partnerships at Mulberry
Ryan Hayes is a nine-time Microsoft MVP award winner, business owner, and community leader known for building award-winning web apps with millions of daily users.
With extensive experience in various industries such as healthcare, education, publishing, nutrition, science, and research, Ryan excels in transforming distributed remote teams and accelerating product delivery through effective communication and continuous integration and delivery.
He is committed to sharing his industry insights and fostering a culture of knowledge sharing, actively participating in community events like the TriDev software development meetup and delivering talks at various user groups.
Ryan holds a Master's degree in Software Engineering from George Mason University, a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the University of Virginia, and has an educational background from Wise County Christian School.
His professional journey includes roles such as Senior Software Engineer at Heartland Payment Systems, Lead C#/JavaScript Engineer at TwentyEighty, Owner of Sonata Cove Software, LLC, Senior Software Engineer at Aerus Electrolux, Senior Consultant at Red Hat, and Programmer at the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals, and Energy.
Highlights
There's important insight from Steven Sinofsky here.
Your ability to ship and get things to users is equally as important as your ability to innovate.
There is a tension between them, but the ability to ship is arguably more important.
The rabbit R1 vs the same AI on an iPhone is a great example.
Further, the more frequently and fast you are able to ship and distribute to users and get feedback, the better your innovation will be.
This is a primary reason I've loved working on "startups inside of Fortune 500s" (which is just code for "innovation-focused teams"). Large orgs generally already have built-in distribution pipelines for innovation - quick to make impact.
Final thought: Even with distribution pipelines available, you still have to ship it or the innovation doesn't count.
If you're a mid-level dev (or any level, really), remember, it's ok to say "yea, I've never done that before".
Devs' jobs are to learn constantly, and it's ok to not know. It's faster to just say "I don't know" so others on the team can help teach and level you up.
Healthy teams do that!
A great way to actually be an incredible developer is to learn as much as you can, but also know that you can't be an expert in everything.
I tell people all the time in TriDev, the developer community I run with Jeff Rainey, Jacob Windle, and really, so many others (thanks, y'all, you're the best) - that when someone hires any one of us, they sort of hire ALL of us. Teams and communities that are diverse in perspective, expertise, and background are incredibly powerful.
Lean on your team and network, support them and let them support you.
Don't aim to be an overly-confident 10X developer. Healthy 10X TEAMS are where the real magic is if you want to go far in your collective impact.
