GitLab GitLab Advanced Software Engineering Course, 26 Jan 2021

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From YouTube: Interview with GitLab Backend Engineer Serena Fang

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Interview with GitLab Backend Engineer, Serena Fang, shares her journey from a Economics Major with a Minor in Software Engineering from the University of Texas Austin to a Backend Engineer at GitLab.

A

Wonderful serena, thank you so much for your time and agreeing to participate in this interview with morehouse college. How are you doing today.

B

I'm doing well, how are you.

A

I am good, thank you happy friday. uh What I wanted to do with this call uh just quickly go over some questions that um hopefully, can be inspiring to some of the students who have signed up for our course. So uh the first thing I want to ask you about is just your background. Tell me where you're from tell me your name and where it is you're from.

B

um Hello, my name is serena fang. I am currently living in austin texas and I grew up in albuquerque new mexico. I graduated from the university of texas at austin this past may and yeah. I've been working at get lab full time since september.

A

Nice, nice, so tell me serena. How did you first hear about software development and what were some of your initial thoughts.

B

I think I first got into software development um through editing the html of my neopets page. When I was a kid, if you don't know neopets it's like a kids gamer, you get this fake online pet and um you can customize your profile page to look. However, you wanted just by changing the html.

B

So of course I had the super sophisticated taste of an eight-year-old, so my background, just like flashing gifs and my cursor was all covered in flames or something, but um I thought it was really cool just to be able to type some stuff and watch the page change and um in true software development fashion. The neopet stuff was mostly copy-pasting other people's code and hoping it worked, um but I got into it more seriously in college, I got a minor in software engineering and I did a couple. Software engineering, internships.

A

Nice so most important question of this whole interview. What was your pet's name.

B

Oh gosh, um something like fuzzy dice lots of you know exes and stuff. It was the early 2000s and.

A

How long did fuzzy live for.

B

uh It's still alive, in my account it's just um dying of starvation,.

A

Okay, so thank you for that. So when you got uh to texas, that's when you first started really taking a look at doing software development.

B

A

Okay, any particular reasons: was it a class or was it just something where you said like hey the industry's moving in this direction? I have interest in it.

B

uh Yeah, I think more, the latter. um I was always really interested in like computers and, like you know, math and science and stuff, and I just figured it'd, be a good career path for me.

A

Okay, okay, nice, nice, and so while, while you were in college, did you participate in any well, let's get into the internship part right? So what internships did you participate in.

B

So most recently I interned at get lab last summer as one of the first interns in the engineering internship pilot program. I was on the configure team, which deals with ops stuff like kubernetes and infrastructure as code and terraform. Before that I interned at a sas startup in austin. Doing you know, like org, chart hr, back-end software dev with ruby on rails and before that I interned at fujitsu up in dallas doing integration testing in python. So.

A

It sounds like clearly um for three summers: you had your mind focused on software development in some form or fashion right.

B

A

Well, I guess, when you were in college, you realize this is a path I want to take right, nice. So in the internship that you said it was a pilot program. So could you tell me a little bit about what you were doing here? Get lab a little bit more in depth.

B

Yeah sure um so yeah like I said it was um the pilot program. I think there were four engineering interns that we brought on um and yeah. Like I said I was on the configure team, which I felt at first a little bit out of my depth. um I never even you know, heard of a kubernetes, let alone like worked in it or anything before um so.

B

Definitely a pretty steep learning curve, but I had you know the support of just awesome teammates around me who were really willing to help and um to teach me and stuff and yeah. It went pretty well that lasted from may until the end of august.

A

Right so also, what's really interesting is the fact that you recently graduated you were recently yes, so many of our the students here are in a similar path, where they're adjusting to being in a predominantly remote world for a lot of them, whether that's uh school life, etc. Right was this your first time, or was last summer, your first time having a remote job.

B

So yes, it was my first fully remote job, but um I mentioned that a startup that I was working in in austin. That was a summer internship that transitioned into like a um a part-time, ongoing thing during the last year of school. So I was mostly working from um you know from school from my apartment and then maybe one or two days a week I would go into the office just to you know, ask any questions that I had and meet up with people.

B

So I had a little bit of experience with like hybrid remote before but yeah. This is definitely the first full remote thing that I've done.

A

So how's it been for you being remote now as a professional.

B

uh It's really fun, um I think the uh work life balance is uh pretty cool being remote. um The company doesn't really care how much like your butt is in the chair. They just care about your output. So there's like days that I want to you know, take an extra long lunch or something, and just like that's just totally fine. As long as I'm getting my work done and yeah yeah.

A

That definitely gives.

B

Me flexibility in my schedule.

A

Now, will you ever go back to being in a place where you want to be in the where you want to be in the office full time again.

B

I guess I sort of miss having like co-workers around me to like chat with me, like in person and stuff or just like. You know like roll over and tap someone on the shoulder, but I mean I pretty much get that just by like slacking people, um everyone's really like open to you know talking and answering quick questions and stuff.

A

Nice, nice- well, that's cool! So tell us about your current role at gitlab.

B

Yeah, so I started in september on the manage access team as a full-time, back-end engineer. The access team deals with you know, of course, access control, authentication.

B

You know permissions access, tokens, ssh, sso, that kind of thing and yeah. I think the access team is pretty important to how our customers think about our product.

B

If we're doing our job correctly, a company should be able to get a new user like onboarded into gitlab with you know the right permissions at the right time and to all the right resources- and you know it should be a good user experience for the new user and the administrator, your administrator doing the configuration- and you know, of course it doesn't stop at onboarding managing permissions and is like a constant security requirement and we provide a lot of must-have value to our customers. I think okay.

A

Nice and you've been on that team since september, you said.

B

Yeah, so only a couple months: okay,.

A

How does it differ from the internship that you did.

B

um I think I'm given like more freedom, there's a little bit less like guidance and stuff, which is cool and also a little bit scary, because I don't really know what I'm doing yet. But um I guess the like the work itself is maybe a little bit more familiar to me. It's pretty much completely in ruby, uh whereas the internship, I was learning you know like terraform and docker and stuff, which were totally new to me.

A

Okay, so tell me a little bit about your day-to-day, like the actual activities themselves. What type of projects do you get to work on.

B

um I'm focusing a lot on project access tokens right now. So, basically, just uh you know, working out kinks in there solving bugs and stuff um most of my day is spent coding, with only like a little bit of time spent in synchronous meetings, or you know answering um you know, emails stuff like that. So mostly I get to you, know head down and focus all day which I really enjoy.

A

Okay, so for some of the newbies who are going to be listening to this, can we talk about what project access tokens actually are and how that relates to what customers have to do?.

B

Yeah, so um basically there's just a token that you can put it's sort of like a password almost um so you can use that token to um manage things in your project, whether that's like you know, members or turning on and off like feature flags and stuff.

A

Nice and your end, customers, who do it? Are they basically the administrators of git lab? Yes,.

B

A

Gotcha, so it wouldn't be the everyday person who logs in and uses gitlab, it might be that person's director or supervisor who then determines who gets access to gitlab.

B

Yeah, I think so.

A

Okay, nice, nice and, let me see so since you were both an intern and now transitioned into sort of a full-time employee. um What do you think are some of the skills that you developed, um that made you attractive to gitlab and then what have you developed since you've been at get lab? That makes you an even more attractive employee.

B

um Yeah, so definitely um I had some technical experience. I had about a year's worth of ruby on rails industry experience from my you know, previous startup internship, as well as a little bit of experience in react. Js, we don't use react, but we use vue, which is similar-ish more soft skills. Like I mentioned, I was working part-time and remotely for that sas company, so um I think already being comfortable with remote work made me pretty attractive to gitlab.

B

um Let's see where have I gotten stronger, definitely technical skills. um I feel like I've learned so so much and there's still so much left to learn. um I think my communication skills have excuse me ironic. um My communication skills have gotten a little bit stronger since we're all remote. A lot of communication has to be done asynchronously, so I've had to learn how to deliver important information more clearly and efficiently.

B

Also, you know I've definitely been working on my work, life balance and my time management skills. um Like I mentioned earlier since we're all remote, it can be tempting to slack off some days and then you know. On the other hand, I've definitely had days where I start working in the morning and then suddenly it's like 9 p.m, and I've only gotten up like once, just because I'm so focused, but um yeah luckily um get lab, encourages to take time off and if you're getting all of your work done, then you know.

B

That's all that really matters.

A

All right right, so thank you for that. So, as a recent grad, how do you see the job market for people who might be juniors and seniors now and what advice would you give to them as they think about entering the job market and specifically software development.

B

Job market in this economy, um no I'm kidding luckily I'd say that um software development didn't get hit too hard by the pandemic. I think actually, since everything is all remote now, a lot of companies are realizing the importance of, like you know their online presence and of the importance of good quality software, which means more software jobs. um So I think there's plenty of opportunities out there.

B

If um you just kind of go for it, I guess advice um definitely like be confident apply for jobs that, like you, don't 100 qualify for take the interview, even if you know it's going to be hard, um basically communicate companies mostly just care about like communication, whether that's you know communicating due dates or blockers to your team or you know your plans and approaches to solving a problem. They also care about.

B

You know experience from internships and stuff, so um you know everything else like gpa, cracking the coding interview whatever that's just you know, sprinkles on top, so be confident in what you have and what you already know. um Getting a job is kind of just a numbers game so uh send out your resume everywhere, apply everywhere. Take every interview and you're bound to get something.

A

Right right, and how do you see the industry transforming in the next few years, given that you've had access to security, kubernetes microservices? What do you think is? What do you think is going to take shape in the next three to five years?.

B

I don't know if I've been in the industry long enough to know exactly how it's going to change, but one thing that I do think is important. For you know, college new college, grads and stuff to focus on is to seek opportunities outside of regular classroom. Curriculum classes definitely lay down. You know a lot of important foundation, but you learn a lot from doing industry work on like a real software team. Internships are awesome.

B

I probably learned more in four months at gitlab than four years at ut, um take online classes and anything that seems interesting, particularly like devsecops school, really teaches you how to develop, but doesn't really touch like the security or operations part. So um I think more and more companies are seeing the value in adopting a devops model so becoming familiar with stuff. Like you know, docker or system administration, um aws that'll give you an edge and um this class that y'all are in right now. This kind of thing is like so important.

B

um I've read the syllabus. I wish I had a class like this in college um agile. You know ci cd, get version control, of course, developing real features and like a real development cycle, with the support from real engineers that is so awesome and so important and yeah. I hope you'll really take advantage of this class and that you're having a good time.

A

Wonderful well serena! Thank you so much for your time. This has been awesome. um Anything else you want to quickly say to the students.

B

um No not so much just have fun. I hope you're having a good time in class.

A

All right, thank you. That's going to end this interview for now. Thank you so.

B