#87 - Learning to Program With Exercism and Building Employee Culture With Kaido - Jeremy Walker

“You don’t know what you don’t know. So when you’re learning something, it’s very hard to identify your own knowledge gaps, especially if you’re a programmer and you’re moving from one language to another." Jeremy Walker is the co-founder of Exercism and Kaido. In this episode, Jeremy first shared about Exercism, a not-for-profit online platform for learning different programming languages. He explained the importance of programming in the idiomatic way, the role of mentorship when learning new languages, and shared his experiences running Exercism as one of the largest open source program, such as how to get consensus and how to run remote distributed teams. Later, Jeremy then talked about Kaido, an employee culture platform for building happier, healthier, and better connected teams. He shared how companies could strive to do more to build company culture before then shared some practical tips on how we can improve our personal wellbeing. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:05:08] Exercism - [00:08:24] Programming in Idiomatic Way - [00:11:34] Mentorship When Learning Languages - [00:13:52] Inclusiveness & Equality - [00:17:04] Running Large Open Source - [00:21:19] Getting Consensus - [00:27:11] Running Remote Distributed Teams - [00:30:42] Kaido for Wellbeing and Culture - [00:37:00] Tips on Personal Wellbeing - [00:43:40] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:49:13] _____ Jeremy Walker’s Bio Jeremy Walker is the co-founder of Exercism and Kaido. He is a software developer and entrepreneur who has been building tech businesses and not-for-profits for over 15 years. He is passionate about building great places to work and creating opportunity through education. In his space time he boulders and gets geeky about coffee. Follow Jeremy: Exercism – https://exercism.org/ Kaido – https://kaido.org/ Twitter – @iHiD LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/ihidjeremywalker/ GitHub – https://github.com/ihid Our Sponsor Today’s episode is proudly sponsored by Skills Matter, the global community and events platform for software professionals. Skills Matter is an easier way for technologists to grow their careers by connecting you and your peers with the best-in-class tech industry experts and communities. You get on-demand access to their latest content, thought leadership insights as well as the exciting schedule of tech events running across all time zones. Head on over to skillsmatter.com to become part of the tech community that matters most to you - it’s free to join and easy to keep up with the latest tech trends. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/87.