This marks the ninth year of our WeCoded celebration. While each year has had its highs and lows, this one feels especially noteworthy. We are witn...
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Love this.
I've been an avid reader of @blackgirlbytes, @dynamicwebpaige, and @maame-codes for a while now. Glad to see them mentioned here 🙂
Def going to follow @codebunny20, @katcosgrove, and @railsstudent now too!
Since we're at it, I want to shout out @bekahhw and @adiatiayu as two others who've authored some great posts that have made my learning journey much easier!
Thank you for the shoutout! ✨
thank you! awesome folks for me to follow too
Thanks so much!
omg this is so cool to me thanks for the shoutout😃😃
Hey @jess! Hope you are well. Thanks for sharing your experience so far!
The way I see it, I see that you and your team made many great milestones that I never seen! Being able to create Dev and still continuing on for more than a decade is very impressive. Not a lot of people have that consistency to keep building on the project that they loved and being able to bring communities together on this platform. That should be an inspiration for others who are thinking of creating their own platform and building their own communities. I am proud to be part of this community you have built!
I never really thought about more of why the pronouns are important. For me, it's just being respectful to others. I remember someone calling me a "she" back then even though I was not remotely close in looking like a girl! Although it didn't really offended me, I can see how it can be offended by others if I were in their shoes.
Great work and congrats on the Dev + MLH! I wish to see what is in store in the future. I hope you will still connect with us and engage with the community with us like always as time progress. It's always good to hear you and @ben leaving comments throughout the whole Dev.to space! Keep at it no matter how big you get. That's how community survives!
Thanks for sharing Jess! Great work :D
Thank you @francistrdev! Also know that I have your email bookmarked in my inbox and plan to reply soon! Been a bit swamped today 😅
Sounds good! No rush. I am here all day today if you need anything!!
What the BPJ team has done is nothing short of legendary and I'm confident there's even more great things ahead for you!
A lot clicked inside my head when I noticed that basically all clothing stores tried to be inclusive by excluding. I saw an e-commerce with the categories "Men" (and tons of subcategories), "Women" (and tons of subcategories), and "Plus Size". So I couldn't simply choose "Men's clothing."
Designing systems and features that go beyond the basics and let people feel truly included, embraced, and respected is a challenge and denotes a real concern with how we want to be seen and see others. Loved your quote.
@jess, you’re definitely my hero. I’m not mocking anyone — every act of resistance matters.
The reframe on leading through influence instead of direct authority that the part that hit. That kind of leadership can be very invisible 🫠 You can become the force multiplier for everyone around you, but on paper it might look like you're not doing anything.
All your work is hidden in DMs and 3hr Zoom calls that don't neatly tie back to you or a Jira ticket. It's the hardest kind of impact to really prove and the easiest to overlook, and the fact that you named it so clearly... relatable.
Thanks for sharing @jess
btw PBJ is such a dope nickname
Thanks @abarron!
You're a legend. Thank you, Jess!
Thanks, @jess, for the shoutout. I am happy to be mentioned with these amazing women. I was born and grew up in a city not known for technology, so I am touched when people recognize my accomplishments and appreciate my contributions.
The part about identity being intertwined with a company you helped build from scratch really resonates. Acquisitions are celebrated as successes on the outside, but internally there's this quiet grieving process that nobody talks about — the gradual handoff of decisions you used to make instinctively, now requiring sign-off or consensus with new stakeholders.
What's underappreciated is how much of a founder's intuition is tacit knowledge built over years of being in the room for every hard call. That doesn't transfer in a deck or an onboarding doc. The fact that you're naming the transition openly rather than packaging it as purely triumphant is genuinely useful for anyone else navigating something similar. Persistence through ambiguity is different from persistence through challenge — the latter has a clear finish line. Thanks for modeling what the former looks like.
Really thoughtful piece, Jess - the “leading through influence” framing and the reminder that interfaces can quietly enforce or remove barriers both landed strongly.
Really proud to have you on the MLH team @jess . You are truly an inspiring leader, thank you for setting a powerful example for our community!
I have a memory of sitting in an office in NYC for the GDG event many years ago and the PBJ team was just contemplating starting dev.to. Maybe I'm hallucinating, but I have this distinct memory and was always happy to have been a fly on that wall. Kudos to you for your amazing journey.
@jess Thank you and the dev.to team for creating this space and providing us all a place to write, create, share ideas, learn, grow and laugh together. I'm so grateful for dev.to and all of the wonderful people who's articles I've ready, memes I've laughed at and ideas that showed me a new world. Cheers to all!
Nine years of WeCoded is a real thing — most communities don't survive the awkward middle years, let alone reach the point where the mission outlasts the original structure. The part about separating professional and personal changes resonated. The best builders I know can't cleanly split those either. Thank you for continuing to build this space.
Persistence is the most underrated skill in tech. We celebrate the overnight successes but the real stories are people like you showing up after the setbacks. I just spent a week building 10 digital products from zero and some days felt pointless. But the compound effect is real — every article, every product, every comment adds up. Thanks for sharing this. Needed to read it tonight.
The shift from co-founder to 'one voice' in a larger org is a massive mental hurdle, and your perspective on leading through influence is exactly what I needed to hear today.
This was really beautiful. Thank you for sharing it. Sending good energy your way.
Good read - yes I believe things will turn around and change for the better, there's always hope ...
This was a really thoughtful read
the part about how small UI decisions can reinforce bigger systems really stuck with me
it’s easy to treat forms as just implementation details, but they shape real user experience
also appreciate the honesty about navigating change — both personal and professional
Interested in your profile. Let's discuss on Telegram. @coreviber
Nice post! I’m also learning this. Thanks for sharing
thanks