This week Paul and Rich talk with Gina Trapani, a programmer, the founder of Lifehacker, and one of their newest employees. Gina talks about her journey from coding to the technology and lifestyle blog Lifehacker — and about her decision to return to the programming fold. She also reveals why she took a job at Postlight. (spoiler: simpler tax forms!)
Rich: I have this fear, can I just share the fear?
Paul: Go ahead.
Rich: That we are becoming the oldies station of tech podcasts.
Paul: A little bit.
Rich: And so I just want to be careful with it, and I want to talk about wearables.
Paul: OK, let’s talk about wearables and —
Rich: So that we are relevant and modern!
Paul: The internet of things, which probably isn’t even called that anymore.
Gina: (on leaving Lifehacker in 2009) I would write about all these cool things that people were making every day, and every day there was this voice in my head that was like, ‘If I had time, I have fifteen ideas that I’d like to build.’ So I got to a place where I thought, ‘You know what? I’ve done everything that I can do here and now I want to build stuff.’ Instead of writing about stuff other people are building, I want to build stuff.
Gina: I used to feel worried, like, ‘I can’t call myself a real programmer because I don’t know all the new things.’ I’m never going to know all the new things, and that’s OK. Just knowing what you don’t know is cool.
Links
Danny O’Brien—“Life hacks” talk
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Track Changes is the weekly technology and culture podcast from Postlight, hosted by Paul Ford and Rich Ziade. Coordination, research, and management by Elizabeth Minkel, who also prepared the summary of this episode. Production and editing by Tom Meyers. Podcast logo and design by Matt Quintanilla of Postlight. We record with Paul Ruest at Argot Studios. Listen to more episodes.