The Work Item - Real Talk on Tech's Toughest Career Choices

#94 - Exploiting Your Unfair Advantages - Shirley Wu (Shirley Wu Studio)

Shirley Wu is back-to-back on The Work Item - we previously talked [/episodes/data-visualization-shirley-wu/] about her unexpected career in data visualizations, but for this episode we're switching things up a little bit and instead focus on building long-term career advantages based on Shirley's experience. This is an especially important topic in the era of AI, where folks have a lot of uncertainty about their career tracks and what it means to build durable moats [/episodes/career-moats-cedric-chin/] that can survive the industry being upended by new tools and approaches to getting things done. Shirley's experience is particularly relevant here as an independent studio owner - she's someone who has years of experience to lean on flying solo and seeing how one can establish their own reputation and image in the space. You can find Shirley on the following sites: * 🎨 Shirley Wu Studio [https://www.shirleywu.studio/] * 🦋 Bluesky [https://bsky.app/profile/shirleywu.studio] * 💼 LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/shirleyxywu/] * 📸 Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/shirleywu.studio/] The podcast was produced by Den Delimarsky [https://den.dev]. FEEDBACK If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe to the show and leave a review or a rating, wherever you are getting your podcast. I really appreciate your feedback and am working to make this podcast more useful for you, the listener, with every episode. Ratings and feedback make it so others can easily discover and enjoy the insights you listen to here!

#93 - What's It Like To Be A Data Visualization Wizard - Shirley Wu (Shirley Wu Studio)

So, get this - how many times did you have one of your tweets go viral? Now, how many times did a tweet go viral for a project that you built around something that you really enjoy? And out of those times - how many times did a tweet go viral because Lin-Manuel Miranda himself retweeted you? Can't say that I am a member of that club, but luckily I know someone who is - Shirley Wu. Shirley is, what I describe her as, a wizard of data visualizations. If you look through her work, you'll quickly realize that she's not just presenting the data, but rather paints a story around it. Whether it's for people of the pandemic [https://peopleofthepandemicgame.com/], an analysis of Hamilton lines [https://pudding.cool/2017/03/hamilton/index.html] (that's the project I alluded to earlier), or a myriad of other projects [https://sxywu.github.io/], her work is truly second to none. In this interview, I wanted to learn more about what sparked her interest in this field, whether the sudden visibility was a reward for hard work or instead added more pressure to produce more highly-visible projects, and of course - how to find your unique voice in a sea of people that do similar things (the Internet, if you didn't know, is truly vast). You can find Shirley on the following sites: * 🎨 Shirley Wu Studio [https://www.shirleywu.studio/] * 🦋 Bluesky [https://bsky.app/profile/shirleywu.studio] * 💼 LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/shirleyxywu/] * 📸 Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/shirleywu.studio/] The podcast was produced by Den Delimarsky [https://den.dev]. FEEDBACK If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe to the show and leave a review or a rating, wherever you are getting your podcast. I really appreciate your feedback and am working to make this podcast more useful for you, the listener, with every episode. Ratings and feedback make it so others can easily discover and enjoy the insights you listen to here!

#92 - You're Thinking Wrong About Your Career - Lenn Pryor (Executive Coach, Author)

We're often operating under the false illusion that the career track we have now is the career track that we somehow have to follow under any circumstances - it's easy to snap to common conventions around progression, where you work, and how you work. But what if there's more to the "choose your own adventure" track that we do not know about? To get to the bottom of this question, I sat down with Lenn Pryor, a seasoned executive who used to work at many well-known companies, but decided to carve out his own niche where he found both joy and professional satisfaction. It's a risky bet that paid off, and I was keen to learn more about how he justified it and what decision points helped him navigate the overwhelming ambiguity. What I really enjoyed about recording this episode is that the learnings are broadly applicable no matter what role you are in or are looking to jump into. You can find Lenn on the following sites: * 🌎 Personal Website [https://www.lennpryor.com/] * 💼 LinkedIn [http://www.linkedin.com/in/lennpryor] The podcast was produced by Den Delimarsky [https://den.dev]. FEEDBACK If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe to the show and leave a review or a rating, wherever you are getting your podcast. I really appreciate your feedback and am working to make this podcast more useful for you, the listener, with every episode. Ratings and feedback make it so others can easily discover and enjoy the insights you listen to here!

#91 - The Future Of Software Engineering - Simon Guest (CTO, Code.org)

Every year, millions of students try coding for the first time through Hour of Code [https://hourofcode.com/us]. But most people don't know that the technology powering those experiences is ran by someone who didn't really have a plan to become a CTO. In the fourth episode of this season of The Work Item, I am talking with Simon Guest, CTO at Code.org [https://code.org/]. Simon walks me through how he actually became a CTO (not the LinkedIn version we commonly see), and what skills helped him succeed despite the fact that there was no pre-charted path he could follow. You'll be surprised to learn just how much serendipity and having the skills in the right place at the right time play a role in strapping one's career to a rocketship. We also talk about the future of coding, whether AI is truly going to make engineers obsolete, and what we can do to build a good career moat that sets us up for long-term success. And of course, if you've ever wondered what it takes to move into technology leadership, this conversation will give you a very realistic picture of what that path looks like. You can find Simon on the following sites: * 💼 LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonguest] The podcast was produced by Den Delimarsky [https://den.dev]. FEEDBACK If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe to the show and leave a review or a rating, wherever you are getting your podcast. I really appreciate your feedback and am working to make this podcast more useful for you, the listener, with every episode. Ratings and feedback make it so others can easily discover and enjoy the insights you listen to here!

#90 - The Death Of SaaS Has Been Greatly Exaggerated - Lianna Patch & Colleen Schnettler (Co-Founders, SaaS Marketing Gym)

In this week's episode, I sat down not with one, but two brilliant guests - the duo behind the brand-new venture known as SaaS Marketing Gym, Lianna Patch and Colleen Schnettler. As coaches and community leads for SaaS founders, they offer a refreshing counterpoint to the doom-and-gloom narratives trending on YouTube and other social channels about AI rendering software businesses obsolete. Through Lianna's conversion-focused (and delightfully humor-filled) copywriting expertise and Colleen's technical background, they're equipping SaaS founders with marketing strategies that prove software businesses aren't just surviving the AI revolution—they're positioned to thrive alongside it. What made our conversation so compelling was their evidence-backed optimism (a rare treat, I know) about the future of SaaS. While tech pundits predict AI will replace traditional software services, Lianna and Colleen articulate exactly why human-designed software solutions remain vital and how founders can use AI as an enhancement to what they're building rather than a replacement. Our discussion covers both the challenges of the current landscape and the surprising opportunities AI creates for SaaS companies that want to ride the wave. We talk about their origin stories and how they continuously evolve their skills to stay ahead of the curve. I guarantee you that you'll walk away with immediately actionable tactics and insights regardless of your company stage, and perhaps most valuably, a renewed confidence that SaaS remains a business model with staying power. You can find Lianna and Colleen on the following sites: * 🌐 SaaS Marketing Gym [https://saasmarketinggym.com] * 🦋 Lianna on Bluesky [https://bsky.app/profile/punchlinecopy.com] * 🦋 Colleen on Bluesky [https://bsky.app/profile/leenyburger.bsky.social] * 🐦 Lianna on Twitter [https://twitter.com/punchlinecopy] * 🐦 Colleen on Twitter [https://twitter.com/leenyburger] * 💼 Lianna on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/liannapatch/] * 💼 Colleen on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/colleen-schnettler] The podcast was produced by Den Delimarsky [https://den.dev]. FEEDBACK If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe to the show and leave a review or a rating, wherever you are getting your podcast. I really appreciate your feedback and am working to make this podcast more useful for you, the listener, with every episode. Ratings and feedback make it so others can easily discover and enjoy the insights you listen to here!