What The Next 20 Million Devs Want w/ Tiff in Tech & Stereotype Breakers' Masha Zvereva

**Conor Bronsdon** (0:00)
Hi, I'm Conor Bronsdon, the host of this episode of Dev Interrupted. The world is shortly going to need another 20 million developers, and with over 1,000 engineering leaders from across the world joining us for Interact on April 7th, there's no better time to talk to two people who have captured the minds of millions of developers and will be featured at Interact, Tiffany Janzen and Masha Zvereva. In addition to their own tech careers, both women have become prominent voices in the dev community. Tiffany is most well known for her Tiff in Tech YouTube channel and Masha for her company Stereotype Breakers.
Tiff and Masha spend their time connecting, communicating and inspiring the next generation of devs. They're the ideal experts to dive deep on how Gen Z devs think and what they want.
That's why we were so happy they took time out before Interact to give us some incredible insights on what it's gonna take to recruit, hire and be respected by the millions of new developers who are joining the workforce.
If you want to join Tiffany, Masha and I at Interact on April 7th, it is easy. Just register at devinterrupted.com/interact. I hope to see you there.
Now on with the show.
This episode is broken into two parts. The first half is my interview with Tiffany. The second half is my interview with Masha. Tiff, thanks so much for joining me today on Dev Interrupted. Really excited to have this conversation with you. And I think the fact that you are delivering so much information to an audience of 200,000-plus developers on Instagram, 150,000-plus on YouTube. You're going to make such an interesting and unique perspective to both this pod and Interrupted. So really stoked to just kind of go through that conversation. For folks who don't know who you are, do you want to maybe just tell us who you are, what you do, and then we'll dive into our topics?

**Tiffany Janzen** (1:45)
Hi Conor, thanks. I'm really excited to be here. A little bit of background on me. So as you kind of mentioned, I have a social media platform called Tiff in Tech, where I share different tech news, tech updates, tech tips, all things kind of tech related. And it really stemmed from my own journey into tech. I didn't initially start in tech. And when I made that transition, just feeling kind of overwhelmed and alone in the process. And the reason I started this platform was so others don't have to feel that way, to provide support and mentorship in this community online.
And yeah, outside of that, I am a software developer at IBM.

**Conor Bronsdon** (2:23)
I love that you got into it because you saw this gap in your own transition. What were you doing before you became a developer?

**Tiffany Janzen** (2:30)
Before I was a developer, I started out in the fashion industry. So I was after high school, I went to school for fashion, then ended up living in Hong Kong for modeling, came back to Canada, went to university. It was more for the graphic design side of things.
And in my last year of university, it was required to take a very basic coding course, which kind of opened up the floodgates to me. I found coding so amazing and just went head on for it.

**Conor Bronsdon** (2:59)
That's awesome. I think that that kind of transition story is going to become more and more common. I know so many folks who went to coding dojo or realized late in their career or maybe partway through school that they wanted to make this transition because we know that there are more developers coming.
Software is eating the world, as they say. Any business that wants to be successful is becoming a tech business. Because of that, we have more developers today than ever before. We're expecting even more. Developers are also getting more information and expectations about the industry in ways that were unrecognizable even five years ago. Five years ago, we didn't have a million developer YouTube channels that were pushing out this incredible information. Just like you said, when you started, this didn't really exist.
I'm curious from your perspective, besides yourself, who are the most beloved personalities for this next generation of developers?

**Tiffany Janzen** (3:49)
Oh, that's a good question.
For me, who I gravitate towards anyways, are people who are very transparent and candid. So they're sharing their journey no matter what path they've come from.
But I just really value, when I'm following others anyways, their transparency or candidness, not just necessarily a highlight reel, but also sharing the low days or low moments. So I think that will continue to be the next generation that will get noticed. More so will just be ones that are very transparent and candid. And I think that develops a really strong relationship with your audience because we all go through it. It's whether you're willing to share those lows or not.