Everyone’s career journey, especially in software development is different. These days, you don’t necessarily need a masters, or even a 4-year degree in computer science to get into technology. As new tools emerge — seemingly a new one every few weeks or month — the most important thing is your willingness to learn and take on new challenges in this evergreen industry.

Rona Kilmer, director of engineering at Kenzan will be joining General Assembly in Denver on January 29 to moderate a panel on careers in web development. But before she does that, our People and Culture team sat down with Rona to learn about her career evolution in hopes that it will inspire many more to embark on a career in development.

RSVP for General Assembly’s “Career Conversations: Web Development”

If you’re interested in learning more about career opportunties at Kenzan, visit our Connect site.

How did you get into computer science/development?
During my senior year of high school I found out I could leave early if I took some classes at a nearby community college. I, like many at that age, was so over the whole high school thing (insert eyeroll). So I thought why not get a jump on college courses? I was really into art all through school and there was a multimedia class that grabbed my attention. In that class I learned how to use software like Adobe Premier and Macromedia Director. I saw the merging of art with technology and loved it.

That’s how I decided on my major in college, Media Arts and Design. It was a nice blend of graphic design and computer science. At the time, I didn’t know that I wanted to be a developer. My studies started with design and “dev” with GUIs like Netscape Composer and Dreamweaver. It wasn’t long before I realized the limitations of those tools and started looking behind the curtain at the code. That’s when I really started to get engaged. I loved the challenge of it.

My first job out of school was as a web designer for a small company in Arlington, Virginia. My very first project was to build out a small website for Exxon Mobil. I nearly had a heart attack when I got the assignment. I was just out of school and building a site for a huge corporation! To make it even more challenging, I had to use software I wasn’t familiar with, Adobe GoLive. It was even worse at generating HTML than Dreamweaver so I was forced to learn more and more code.

How did you get into leadership roles?
Over the years, I often found myself leading projects in both official and unofficial capacities. At one point I had to make a decision on where my career would go. At the time I was a designer, developer, and a team lead. I couldn’t take on all three roles effectively. I decided to stick with development and leadership. I was always a natural leader so I couldn’t walk away from that and I loved the challenge of development so I put the design role on a shelf. Occasionally, I get the opportunity to do design work and I always love it when I do but leading technical teams is where I belong.

At Kenzan I started as a technical architect which is a development team lead. I then moved up to the director position. Though I come from a front-end background, I now manage both front-end and back-end teams. I’m not in the code nearly as much anymore but I love seeing what our teams produce and helping them do it. As a director, I think my experience with the full spectrum of development has been invaluable. The UI/UX principles I learned as a designer still help inform the decisions I make today and my time spent as a front-end developer helps inform how we design APIs for our microservices today.

What kind of projects do you work on at Kenzan?
Large scale corporate microservices mostly. As far as technologies go, we use Kubernetes for deploying and managing our containerized services. We use Java and Node on the back-end. Front-end is typically React but we also use Angular. We work with Drupal and WordPress on a few projects but usually only in a headless fashion (we don’t use their theming engines).

What’s been your favorite project? Why?
We are currently building a tech radar and badge board as an internal project. It’s helping to drive how we make technology decisions on our projects. It is also a really cool tool for ensuring our teams are always in the know on where our technology stack is headed and how to get up to speed on the latest.

What tools and tech are you excited about right now?
There is so much happening right now to get excited about. I think everyone should be paying attention to IoT (Internet of Things), machine learning, and voice technologies (Alexa skills, etc). I find blockchain and it’s uses outside of cryptocurrency very interesting as well. Progressive web apps where you optimize your app for offline use is a biggie and I’m also seeing GraphQL pop up more and more. I haven’t used it yet but I can see it being very useful.

What qualities do you think make you a good Director of Engineering?
Ultimately, you have to get stuff done. So it’s important to be able to make decisions and keep people moving. You have to shield your teams from the political cruft that sometimes leaks into projects. You also have to be okay not knowing all the nitty gritty details about things. You have to know what questions to ask and who to ask and then you need to act on that information. Lastly and probably most importantly, you have to have empathy. You cannot effectively lead teams of humans if you don’t have it.

Follow up: How do you manage shielding people while still allowing them to see big picture?
It’s totally fine to share information about what’s going on. I certainly don’t want to paint a rosy picture if things are not rosy. But you can’t let fear creep in. It is not a good way to motivate. I want my teams to be aware of what’s going on but to know and trust that we (leadership) are dealing with it. For the most part, that’s all it takes.

Where did you learn your skills?
I am surrounded by incredibly smart people that I get to learn from everyday. That is definitely my number one source. I also read a lot. We have a book club at Kenzan and we just finished reading Clean Code. That is great book every developer should read. I follow very smart people on Twitter and Medium. If I want to get my hands dirty, I’ll start with a tutorial on Pluralsight (or similar) and just dive in. Conferences are also a great way to learn about the cool things people are doing with technology. I went to AWS Re:Invent this year and learned a ton.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?
Don’t be afraid of failure. Failing isn’t always a bad thing as long as you learn something from it. Push past your comfort zone. Make the leap. Try something new. You might succeed, you might not. But the one guarantee is that you’ll never know if you don’t try.

Want to work with people like Rona? We’re hiring! 

As technology continues to evolve at rapid pace, it’s more important than ever that companies play an active role in the development and education of technology professionals. After all, we’re looking at 1 million technology jobs by 2020 and not enough skilled workers to fill those roles.  

Internships are a tried and true approach to engage students, recent graduates and new-to-the-market job seekers as they begin their careers. Three times a year, Kenzan hosts interns at our Denver and Rhode Island offices for 10 weeks. These internships provide hands-on experience with new technologies, an opportunity to collaborate with development teams, and to learn from industry veterans.

Before he ended his summer internship, we were excited to hear from Jacob Brauchler, a recent graduate from the University of Colorado. During his internship, Jacob worked with the Platform teams in our Denver office. Kenzan’s training and development manager, Kate Pisano, asked Jacob a few questions about his summer at Kenzan.

We’ll be accepting applications for spring interns in October. For those ready for the next step, check out our job opportunities here.

You’ve spent 10 weeks with us at Kenzan, can you  tell us about the project you worked on: A big project that I worked on was an evaluation of monitoring tools for Kubernetes. I tested the ease of setup along with confirmation that the metrics provided by the system match, at a minimum, the metrics provided by Heapster with InfluxDB and Grafana. I performed this evaluation on five different monitoring tools — Prometheus, Netsil, SignalFx, DataDog and Sysdig. At the end of my project, I wrote a white paper that included all my findings and provided rankings of the different tools based on setup, pricing, metrics and features provided by the tools.

What was your favorite part of the internship experience?
My favorite part of the internship experience has been learning and working with cutting edge web development frameworks. It’s been really awesome looking at the capabilities of new technologies that successful companies are using, and all with a very knowledgeable team to provide support in the growth and understanding of technologies.

What was a challenge you had to work through?
Trying to setup Sysdig to test against the other monitoring tools I was evaluating was a real challenge. I attempted the follow the instructions provided by Sysdig, but along the way I encountered a number of errors. The first issue I found is that Sysdig can only be run on a Linux machine, and therefore I first tested on VirtualBox which does not support nested virtualization and would not work with Minikube. My next plan was to test on a dual booted machine which also ended in failure due to the fact that Sysdig had not been tested with Minikube and did not work due to the inability to update the Linux-Headers on the vm. At this point due to the fact that the other tools were successful and I had many struggles with Sysdig it was determined that Sysdig was not a tool we would recommend using.

What was the most important skill you learned during the internship?
Honestly, I would say the most important skill I gained during the internship would be the ability to share the process in which I completed a task; it helped me develop my technical teaching and sharing skills. As an extension to that I would say my ability to research and find solutions and to learn new things grew.

What surprised you about working at Kenzan?
The thing that surprised me about working at Kenzan most is how involved they keep their interns. In my past internship, they kind of just said, “hey go do this” and I was on my own. Here, it was a great experience where I was a part of a team doing work that is helpful to the company and pushed me to grow as a developer.

Favorite snack in the office?
My favorite snacks in the office were probably the different desserts in the office, such as cookies, ice cream and ice cream sandwiches.   

What was your favorite timesheet giphy Kate sent?
My favorite timesheet giphy Kate sent, was the guess what day it is gif. I choose this gif because it provided a fun time to joke around with other interns, as well as Kate.

What piece of advice do you have other folks looking at internship opportunities?
One piece of advice I have for other folks looking at internship opportunities is to find an internship that wants you to be involved with the team, and wants to help you grow as a developer. If you find a company that wants to do this and wants to prepare you for a future in this industry you will get a lot more out of your time.

What new tools or tech were you exposed to or got to work with?
The tools and technology I was exposed to were Kubernetes (an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.), Prometheus, SignalFx, DataDog, Netsil (The past 4 are monitoring tools), Jenkins, React, and Webstorm. I got exposure to a wide variety of tools and tech during my time at Kenzan, some on the development side of things and some on the DevOps side of things.

How did the experience guide your career goals?
This experience guided my career goals in that I started out with a focus on just being a fullstack developer but after my time as an intern I would like to have the opportunity to dive into DevOps further in the future.

After completing his 10-week internship, Jacob was hired as a full-time employee.

As the tech skills gap grows and more IT roles remain unfilled, the search for top tech talent has never been more competitive. Companies are upping the ante with perks like yoga classes, nap pods, free meals, unlimited vacation days and more in order to attract and retain employees. But according to Stack Overflow’s annual developer survey, there is one factor that potential employees in the tech sector value more than anything — even more than pay and compensation — and that’s opportunities for professional development and continued learning.

The response from more than 22,000 developers that Stack Overflow asked shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has ever worked with developers and programmers. With 90% of the survey’s respondents also stating that they are at least partially self-taught, it’s clear that the industry is a community of learners. Many of our leaders have been self taught and driven by pure passion for technology — Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg all famously left prestigious universities in their pursuit of technological innovations.

Investing in continued learning and education isn’t just a good way to attract new talent, but can also be used as a tool to keep current employees engaged, productive and feeling empowered — making them less likely to take their skills elsewhere. The impact of disengaged employees can be staggering, affecting everything from staff retention to morale to a company’s bottom line. Gallup estimates that a disengaged employee costs an organization about 34% of their salary per year, but re-engaging these employees offers an opportunity to improve performance, profitability and customer experience.

At Kenzan, continued development and learning is not only a big part of our culture, but part of our business. As a software engineering and digital consulting firm that is tasked with helping clients make the most out of technology, it’s crucial that our teams stay current on the tools and tech that are leading the industry.

We are continuously improving how we enable our employees to skill up. Here’s a few things that we’ve learned that help ensure a well-supported learning community within an organization:

Develop a continuous feedback loop of learning.
Managers who recognize progress, tangible goals, and teach-back opportunities will have stronger relationships with their reports and a clear roadmap for their team.

Provide a structure for training requests.
A clear process allows all staff to understand what is considered a reasonable request and that requesting training is not considered self-serving. Providing structure opens the door for new or shy team members to take opportunities because they know it’s appropriate and valued.

Share a clear strategic vision with your team.
Most employees want to make sure their training aligns with the organization’s future. Setting the goal posts gives employees the agency to plan their path forward.

Implement a way to track skills and progress.
Tracking progress means you value the effort that your team is putting in. Unless the team prioritizes training the way you approach other tasks, it will always be at the bottom of the list. At Kenzan, we’re developing a Badge Board to assess team members’ skills and growth based on the organization’s goals and technical vision.

Encourage developers to manage up.
Managers have a lot on their plate, and in the tech world, are usually more than just managers. It’s often up to the developer to make sure that their learning needs are part of the regular conversation. For employees who aren’t quite comfortable approaching their manager about training opportunities, we’ve got some tricks for them too:

Set up a clear need that keeps the core of your request in focus. Make sure you have an answer to questions like: “What is your learning goal? How will growing in this area make you a better employee?”

Respect your supervisor’s time. Follow set procedures and follow up with your needs. Even the most thoughtful, learning-minded supervisor is going to forget about the registration deadline. It doesn’t mean they don’t want you to go, but just that they probably had a few fires to fight this week.

Be Flexible. Sometimes your request will be denied, perhaps due to timing or cost. If this is the case, there is likely another resource that offers growth in this skill, but is less expensive or time bound. If the no is because your supervisor doesn’t see a connection to your learning goals or a value to the organization, make sure you’re continuing the conversation to align your goals with your company’s strategic vision.

Whether your goals are in recruiting, employee retention or tied directly into business drivers, the value that learning and development brings to an organization is clear. Far too often professional development is overlooked, and far too many talented employees leave a company because their success is stymied by lack of support.

Kate Pisano is the Training and Development Manager at Kenzan, based out of our Rhode Island office. She is responsible for managing Kenzan’s internship program and supporting Kenzanites through continued learning opportunities. With a background in AmeriCorps and program development, Kate’s always excited to help team members grow and advance.