DEV Community: Jarod Reyes 👨🏻‍💻

NVIDIA GTC: Hallway Track - Craig Dennis

Jarod Reyes 👨🏻‍💻 — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 17:53:12 +0000

Hello fellow developers,

I wanted to share an insightful conversation from NVIDIA's GTC 2025 featuring me, Jarod Reyes, Head of Developer Community at SignalFire, and Craig Dennis, Developer Educator at Cloudflare. We delve into:

Building applications using AI tools like Claude Code.
Creating user interfaces with AI assistance.
Strategies for initiating projects from scratch.

Whether you're an experienced developer or just starting your AI journey, this discussion offers valuable perspectives on integrating AI into your development workflow.

Would love to hear your thoughts and experiences on using AI in app development! Especially if it involves coding while driving a car.

Why engineers make great angel investors

Jarod Reyes 👨🏻‍💻 — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 18:24:11 +0000

Many engineers think about angel investing but don’t know where to start. How do you evaluate a startup? What role should you play beyond writing a check? And how do you actually find great deals?

In my latest post for SignalFire VC, I break down the fundamentals of angel investing for engineers—from sourcing deals to assessing technical risk to adding value as an operator. Whether you’re looking to invest in founders you believe in or just curious about the landscape, this guide will help you get started.

🔗 Read the full post here: actually good vc post

Would love to hear from other engineers who’ve taken the leap into investing—what’s been your biggest lesson? Drop your thoughts in the comments! 🚀

Skip college, learn to code

Jarod Reyes 👨🏻‍💻 — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 16:21:58 +0000

Sorry for the clickbait title, but I released a new Engineering Career report today based on the career trajectory of every engineer in the US over the last 10 years (130+ Million job transitions) and here is the rub on college pedigree:

There are only small differences between folks with top-tier degrees and no degrees

I compared the top 20 university engineering programs to engineers who graduated from other schools and engineers who never completed a degree. The reality is that there is only a small difference over time. While top-university graduates ascend to leadership at higher rates, over time the difference in percentages remains small.

Faster promotions for top-tier graduates: Of the engineers who reach senior roles, those who graduated from top-tier programs tend to get there about 2-3 years quicker than others. Considering college could be an added 4 years to your timeline, it may be faster to just start building on day one. On the whole, you're likely to beat your Stanford counterparts to the job.

Of course there are other reasons to go to college, like making connections and learning how to eat 24 del taco tacos in one sitting... but it's worth a discussion.

Please checkout the full report if you found this interesting, it's completely free and it was a labor of love. https://www.signalfire.com/blog/engineering-career-trends-pt1

Engineering Happy Hour in NYC - AI at Work

Jarod Reyes 👨🏻‍💻 — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 18:48:07 +0000

Join us for an Engineering Happy Hour event hosted by SignalFire. At this event, we will be joined by engineering leaders from Cloudflare, Snowflake, and others to discuss how to leverage AI to be a better engineer. Plus we'll have tasty food and beverage and plenty of time for networking.

Link to register: https://lu.ma/signalfire_dev02

Monday, November 18
6:30 PM - 8:30 PM EST
SignalFire Bat Cave in NYC

We will discuss:

- How engineers are using AI beyond Copilot: Exploring innovative ways to integrate AI into workflows, from automation to advanced data analysis.

Challenges facing AI adoption in engineering: Addressing technical, ethical, and practical hurdles in implementing AI solutions across teams.

- Future trends in AI and engineering: What to expect and how to prepare for emerging AI technologies that will shape the engineering landscape.

This event aims to provide valuable insights and strategies for engineers at various stages of their careers who are looking to advance their professional growth and explore new opportunities. It’s also a great chance to network, learn from industry experts, and gain a deeper understanding of how AI can enhance your engineering skills.

Engineering Career Happy Hour w/ Alan from ngrok

Jarod Reyes 👨🏻‍💻 — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 18:31:52 +0000

🚀 Join us at the Developer Career Happy Hour! 🚀

On October 23rd, SignalFire is hosting a Developer Career Happy Hour at our San Francisco HQ. This event is all about helping developers navigate their career paths by hearing from industry leaders and networking with experts. We’re excited to welcome Alan Shreve, Founder & CEO of ngrok, who will be sharing his career journey and providing valuable insights for developers at any stage of their career.

🎤 Keynote by Alan Shreve
Alan will take us through the twists and turns of his career, sharing what he’s learned from building @ngrok into a developer-first platform loved by engineers worldwide.

💡 What’s in it for you? This event is designed to help you answer some of the big questions you may have about your career:

How do I grow in a constantly evolving tech landscape?
What skills should I focus on to future-proof my career, especially in AI/ML?
How do you make the leap from a technical role to founder or leadership position?
What do VCs look for in engineering talent and founders?

You’ll also have the chance to meet and network with SignalFire's portfolio companies and members of our team. These are the kinds of connections that could shape your career in unexpected ways.

💡 Why meet with members of a VC?
Engaging with a VC like SignalFire gives you access to valuable insights on:

Trends shaping the future of tech and how you can align your career with them.
The skills and mindsets that VCs and founders look for in developers.
Potential paths to future leadership or entrepreneurial roles.

🍻 What to Expect:

Great food, good conversations, and hopefully a dash of inspiration.
Real stories from Alan Shreve and the SignalFire team about navigating the tech world.
The chance to meet fellow developers and expand your network in a relaxed setting.

Date: Thursday, October 23rd
Location: SignalFire HQ, San Francisco
Register here: https://lu.ma/sfsparks1023?utm_source=dev_to

This is more than just a networking event—it’s an opportunity to learn from those who have shaped their careers in tech and find guidance on how to build yours. Come curious, leave inspired!

Hey Developer Relations folks, don't build communities - serve them.

Jarod Reyes 👨🏻‍💻 — Fri, 11 Sep 2020 17:51:18 +0000

A couple days ago an investor asked me how does a developer-facing startup "build their developer community"… so I decided to codify my thoughts into this blog post. It is something I hear all the time from founders and startups, "We really just need to create the developer community!". On its face this is a seemingly genuine and honest impulse, we all belong to communities we love, and we want to create one more for developers to belong to. At Twilio we often had the same impulse, and this conversation came up regularly. By following the impulse to create communities, too often companies end up making mistakes that lead to less community, not more.

Real community does not come easily

The number one fallacy of the " developer community" is that it is even possible to create it. The reality is a strong developer community around a brand or tool is a bi-product of being authentic and credible, not printing some hoodies, renting a venue and creating a day for "your" developers.

But let's just imagine you did rent a venue, print a banner and create the community event to rival all community events… let's call it Hooli Dreamcatchers: A developer community for Hooli developers. It was a great event, lots of cool swag, some great partner speakers, and hundreds of humans showed up. If a random pollster were to interview these humans the day after the Hooli Dreamcatchers event and ask them which communities they belonged to, what do you think they would say? My hunch is they would say they belong to a half dozen communities. That list may include a city, a neighborhood, a church, a local bar, a sports team, a school, a support group, a friends group, a game night and many other real communities in their life. I would bet 50% wouldn't say a single developer community. I doubt any of them would say a Hooli Dreamcatcher.

Great communities already exist!

The other big reason to avoid creating a new developer community, is that there are already so many great communities, and like podcasts, we don't need any more corporate communities! The reality is, the impulse to join a community stems from a person wanting to connect with like-minded people, who have a shared purpose, it is this same organic chemical reaction that leads to developers creating communities. It is possible that there are two developers out there who are like-minded AND have the purpose of "becoming better developers" but if they want to create a community, get out of their way and let it happen.

There are so many great developer communities that exist today. There are groups who are trying to bring under-represented folks into the lucrative world of web development, there are groups who are working towards solving climate change, election-hacking and broken local governments. These groups could probably benefit from your company's resources. For smaller communities, go ask the organizers what could they use; sponsor dinner, send some credits, hang out, give them some swag or just contribute to their cause. For larger communities and conferences, look for ways to help the organizers improve their event. Make it more accessible, create a magical experience for their developers, or like Julian from Heroku recently did for CascadiaJS, donate some developer hours to their platform. I promise that if you do this enough, and with a genuine investment and interest, this will do more for your brand in the long run than any single-day rock-venue "community" event you ship.

If you are looking for some rad developer communities to support may I recommend these few (I'm sure people will leave more in the comments):

Code For America: local chapters like HackforLA
Women Who Code: Empowering women in Tech
Code2040: The largest racial equity org in tech
Write The Docs: devs who care about docs
CascadiaJS: Best JS fest in the northwest, I don't jest
StrangeLoop: consistently self-aware and accessible conference

If these don't float your boat, look locally at the events happening in your city/state/province and if that doesn't work tweet at me and we can talk about a great community for your team or company to support. The most important thing is to show up, and do the work of serving these communities. It's not easy, but it's much more doable than creating a viral video, or in this case creating a (vibrant, non-tribalistic, welcoming, coherent, accessible, equitable, global) community… but if you still want to give it a try, please don't serve pizza.