What We Talk About When We Talk About Tech

Telling the stories of tech's trailblazers and laying the foundations of a more equitable future with Saron Yitbarek

June 30, 2021 Rich Gall, Jennifer Riggins, Saron Yitbarek Season 1 Episode 17
What We Talk About When We Talk About Tech
Telling the stories of tech's trailblazers and laying the foundations of a more equitable future with Saron Yitbarek
Show Notes

Jennifer Riggins (@jkriggins) and Rich Gall (@richggall) are joined by Saron Yitbarek, Founder and CEO of audio learning platform Disco and co-host of the brilliant Command Line Heroes podcast, to discuss the virtues of audio learning in age of excessive screen time and the importance of highlighting the stories of the people that have shaped the technology and software landscape today. 

Saron talks about her background and some of the challenges she faced when starting out in the software industry, explaining how they informed the work she has done since. She describes the thinking behind Disco, and how her earlier venture CodeNewbie (which has now been acquired by the team behind Dev.to), has laid the foundations for the types of work she is doing today. She also explains why she believes audio learning can be an important addition to the wide varity of formats available for people learning technology skills. 

We also discuss Command Line Heroes, with Saron talking about one of her favourite episodes, and touch on some of the parallels between that podcast and this.

Saron also explains the importance of thinking carefully about how we onboard people into the tech and industry: she points out that we need to  better support systems for people moving into the industry from any background and at any point in their career.