Fable Tales, Staff Engineer at Stripe

In this conversation, Fable and Ben dig deep on building a technical career that balances programming and company leadership. Fable shares their experience working at Stripe and the different roles they have held, including being a technical advisor to the CTO. They also discuss Fable's career move from being a hands-on programmer to role where less hands-on coding is required, Fable's take on "code crimes", and how to find enjoyment and fulfillment in solving complex problems.

Links
Tuple.app - The best app for pair programming
Stripe - The company Fable works at
Ruby Kaigi - An annual conference dedicated to the Ruby programming language.
Sidekiq - A simple, efficient background processing library for Ruby
Sorbet - A fast, powerful type checker designed for Ruby.
YubiKey - A hardware device designed for high-security two-factor authentication.

Key Takeaways
  • Making connections and friendships at conferences can be valuable in the programming community.
  • Debugging and problem-solving skills are crucial for software engineers.
  • Being willing to learn and work with different programming languages can enhance your skills.
  • Prototyping and spiking can be effective ways to test and develop new ideas.
Chapters
  • (00:00) - Introduction and Conference Interaction
  • (00:38) - Making Friends at Conferences
  • (04:13) - Work at Stripe
  • (06:17) - Becoming a Staff Engineer
  • (06:53) - Getting Good at Programming
  • (08:46) - Debugging and Problem Solving
  • (11:22) - Working with C and C++
  • (13:13) - Debugging with Print Statements and Debuggers
  • (17:06) - Prototyping and Spiking
  • (24:11) - Technical Advisor to the CTO
  • (27:26) - Coding Hill to Die On
  • (29:52) - Workflow Optimization
  • (36:53) - Coding vs Non-Coding Time
  • (39:08) - Transition to Leadership
  • (41:07) - Motivation and Impact
  • (42:13) - Love for Programming
  • (44:14) - Coding Style: Short Methods and Small Classes
  • (48:48) - Personal Style and Code Crimes
  • (52:18) - Commercial Open Source
  • (56:08) - Getting Involved in Open Source
  • (01:04:52) - Wrap-up
Fable Tales, Staff Engineer at Stripe
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