Austin Fraser Blog From getting down with the kids to moving up the pay scale read about the last three talks from the latest Djugl get-together

In our two previous blogs, we gave you a rundown of the first seven Lightning talks at our recent Djugl event. Now we’re onto the final three – and like those that went before, they were diverse and fascinating. Our speakers hailed from Amazon, Beamly and our lovely hosts, Potato. Here’s what these very different speakers had to say… Working less and getting paid more This talk certainly had the audience paying attention: David Smith, of Amazon Web Services, explained what Coders need to do to break through the salary ceiling. In his opinion, great technical skills are all very well. But when it comes to moving up to higher salary brackets, soft skills are essential. Using a typical unsuccessful project as an example (and some very amusing gifs), David illustrated how lack of communication leads to a rushed product – and an unhappy customer. It’s at this point technical folk need to step up and make things better by talking to the other teams including Sales and Creative. David says this is how Developers increase their impact and access more senior roles. We saw a lot of the audience taking VERY detailed notes… Getting involved with work experience Michael Strutt left us with a warm and fuzzy feeling, as he explained how Potato has been giving back to communities by providing work experience. Surprisingly, not all schools now include work experience as part of the curriculum. For those that do, it’s increasingly difficult to find organisations prepared to participate. Michael talked us through Potato’s experience, sharing the two-week programme the business created and the impact it made. Feedback from the children showed that it was a formative – and in some cases, future-defining – experience for them. Michael also showed the audience how their businesses could follow Potato’s example, with a simple guide to running work experience. Mind the gap… The last talk of the night was Transitioning from Web Development to Data Engineering, with Beamly’s Dami Onajole. Having worked in both arenas, he was well equipped to compare and contrast the two different professions. Dami described the parallels between NVC and ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) before going on to highlight two key tools he’s been using as a Data Engineer. The first was Airflow, which allows you to schedule tasks and manage dependencies between tasks. The second was Pandas, a Python library, which according to Dami, is to Data Engineering, what Django is to Web Development.   If you enjoyed reading about our Lightning talks and would like to come to the next event, follow Austin Fraser – we’ll be posting details online.   The post From getting down with the kids to moving up the pay scale read about the last three talks from the latest Djugl get-together appeared first on Austin Fraser.