In this episode, I sit down with Chelsea Troy, a Chicago-based software engineer, to talk about giving and receiving feedback, something you have to do quite often when working on software, but which you don’t always get to do as a student. Besides talking about code reviews, the most common situation where you have to give or receive feedback, we also explore how to solicit good feedback and how to take feedback constructively. Chelsea has written extensively about this subject (and many, many others) and you can find all her writings, as well as videos of her talks, at chelseatroy.com.

Guest Bio

Chelsea writes code on projects like the Zooniverse Citizen Science Mobile App and the NASA Landsat Image Processing Pipeline. She looks for clients who are saving the planet, advancing basic scientific research, or providing resources to underserved communities. She has been known to take projects in mobile development, web development, and machine learning. She streams some programming sessions to YouTube, so you can watch her code (and narrate!) in real time. She then turns the recordings into educational materials.

Chelsea also teaches Mobile Software Development at the Master’s Program in Computer Science at the University of Chicago. She is the author of chelseatroy.com and a book called Remote Work Sucks (the title is kind of a trap). She organizes two conferences: PromptConf (Chicago area, very technical) and ORD Camp (Chicago area, not nearly as technical).

Chelsea flings barbells around for fun. She drives an electric cafe cruiser named Gigi.