Geeking Out with Adriana Villela

When Aakansha Priya was working on her computer science degree, she wasn't even sure she wanted to be in tech. She craved human interaction, and thought that a career in tech couldn't give her that. She soon discovered that that was not the case, and was able to find was to thrive in tech. Learn about Aakansha's career journey, from front-end developer, to DevRel, to Solutions Architect, and how her determination to get into the observability world won over her current employer.

About Aakansha Priya:

Aakansha Priya is a Solution Architect at Dash0 and a CNCF Ambassador. With a journey from frontend developer to DevRel to solution architect, she brings both engineering depth and a strong customer advocate perspective. She loves championing her customers and serving as a bridge between them and engineering, ensuring technology delivers real value. Aakansha has spoken at conferences on DevOps and the human side of tech, and is passionate about helping teams unlock the value of observability with OpenTelemetry. Beyond work, she enjoys painting, singing, reading, and spontaneous travel and you'll often find her at meetups and conferences.

Key takeaways:

Being unafraid to approach strangers leads to wonderful connections.

Don't be afraid to learn in public.

Aakansha challenges herself by working her comfort zone of public speaking, and as a result, she is more comfortable on stage.

Many conferences support first-time speakers

Men in tech come from a position of privilege and it's important for them to use that privilege to help underrepresented groups.

Don't be afraid to show up for a conference and bringing your true style, whether it's super dressy, super funky, or super dressed down. The Cloud Native space gives us a safe space to do that.

Conferences provide a great networking opportunity, and could lead you to your next job!

Nobody talks about the stress of the job hunt, but it doesn't mean that it isn't there.

There are many other communities outside the CNCF that are also welcoming, such Commit Your Code.

People don't really understand what networking really means and they forget the human aspect of it.

There is a lack of women in Solutions Architecture roles.

It pays off to prepare well for an interview.

Find Aakansha on:

LinkedIn

Github

Twitter

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bio.site/geekingout

All of Adriana's social channels are on adrianavillela.com/socials

Links:

Aakansha & Adriana at NDC London 2026

Marino Wijay on Geeking Out

Tim Banks on Geeking Out Part 1 and Tim Banks on Geeking Out Part 2

Hazel Weakly on Geeking Out

Commit Your Code conference (Danny Thompson)

Cortney Nickerson on Geeking Out talking about making the most of your conference connections

CKA (Certified Kubernetes Administrator) exam

KCNA (Kubernetes and Cloud Native Associate) exam

 

Chapters:

00:00 Opening credits

00:26 Guest intro

00:43 Icebreaker

00:49 Lefty or righty?

00:55 iPhone or Android?

01:39 Mac, Linux, or Windows?

01:46 Favourite programming language?

02:26 Dev or Ops?

02:59 JSON or YAML?

03:32 Spaces or tabs?

03:48 Video or text?

04:23 What is your superpower?

06:14 How did you start your tech career?

13:24 Aakansha talks about speaking at her first conference

14:52 Becoming a CNCF Ambassador

16:45 Organizing KubeHuddle

19:48 Men supporting women in tech

20:40 Women supporting women

24:23 Dressing up for conferences

28:40 Career transition from DevRel

34:33 The importance of networking at conferences

39:52 Being a Solutions Architect

42:34 Breaking into the observability space

48:21 Parting words of wisdom

GenZ are in a unique position in the Age of AI, because they are coming up "AI native"...or are they? Join us for a special LIVE episode of Geeking Out, in which host Adriana Villela speaks with four GenZ-ers to get their perspectives on how AI is disrupting software development, and their future careers. Featuring Divyasha Pahuja, Stella Gu, Amrithaa Logeswaran, and Rachelle De Man.

Key Takeaways

A great way to use AI is to use it to do all the mundane tasks for you (e.g. formatting code)

When you tell AI to do something for you, you're slightly losing the ability to do it yourself.

When using AI, trust, but verify.

Don't use AI for everything, because it takes away from why you're doing the project in the first place.

Using AI to help you code makes things possible that you couldn't have necessarily done on your own. It brings to life ideas that have been in the back burner.

GenZ-ers don't want AI to agree with them. They a partner challenge and brainstorm with, just as another human would.

AI takes away the opportunities and joys of overcoming challenges in coding.

There are higher expectations in terms of productivity now that AI-assisted development is a thing, and GenZ is feeling the pressure!

We are at risk of losing our critical thinking skills due to over-reliance on AI.

Many university course curricula are out of date, as they have not kept pace with AI, leaving students unprepared and without proper direction on how to use it in the workplace.

Many universities aren't sure of how to integrate AI in their curricula in an effective manner.

Final exams are one way to determine whether or not you've mastered the course work, or just got by during the school year by using AI to do most of the work for you.

What's acceptable use of AI in non-engineering classes, such as visual arts, for example?

AI slop cleanup is a real job now!

Today's juniors recognize that they will be tomorrow's seniors. Therefore, they need employers to provide them with mentorship from seniors to help them succeed, and they need time to learn the fundamentals.

It's no longer about writing code; system design is a crucial skill in today's job market.

Words of wisdom: You need a well-rounded view and understanding of AI, as be intentional about how you use it. Be curious!

About our guests

Divyasha Pahuja

Divyasha Pahuja is a GenZ AI engineer, multimodal ML researcher, and four-time peer-reviewed author at ACM/IEEE and Springer — someone whose career started before ChatGPT shipped and accelerated alongside it. She's had quite a journey: software engineer (back when LLMs weren't a household phrase), then back to school, then ML researcher, and now sitting at the cusp of both as an AI engineer.

Off the keyboard, she's spent the last few years with Feeding India leading a digital campaign team, distributing meals, and building recurring partnerships with local NGOs and old age homes.

Outside of all that, she loves playing badminton, is a self-admitted sore loser, has a soft spot for cats, coffee shops and Netflix because who doesn't, and is just starting an AI community at @un__prompted — say hi if you want to be there early.

Find Divyasha on:

LinkedIn

Stella Gu

Stella Gu is an early-career software engineer with past experience at Manulife and Huawei. She has explored a variety of roles within software engineering, including backend systems and data infrastructure. She enjoys working directly with code, turning ideas into meaningful software. Outside of tech, Stella can be found playing sports ⛷️🏐, exploring new food spots, and capturing moments on her phone.

Find Stella on:

LinkedIn

Amrithaa Logeswaran

Amritha is a second-year Integrated Engineering student at the University of Western Ontario, passionate about building inclusive communities and amplifying student voices. Last year, she served as a First-Year Representative with the Undergraduate Engineering Society (UES), where she discovered how much I love connecting with people and created space for everyone to feel included and supported.

She's realized I’m just as passionate about supporting student life as I am about studying engineering. Whether it’s through leadership roles or one-on-one conversations, she loves building community and helping students feel like they truly belong.

Find Amrithaa on:

LinkedIn

Rachelle De Man

Rachelle De Man is a young software engineer with experience working at companies like Google, Okta and 1Password. She has an interest in all things web, primarily with accessibility, security, and testing. She’s passionate about hackathons, being a longtime volunteer and attendee. In her off hours, Rachelle enjoys crocheting, games, and photographing nature.

Find Rachelle on:

LinkedIn

Find Geeking Out on

All of our social channels are on bio.site/geekingout

All of Adriana's social channels are on bio.site/adrianavillela

Chapters

00:08 Intro

01:38 Guest intros

03:59 What was your first programming language?

08:22 What was your first experience with AI-assisted coding?

21:57 Are GenZ-ers better positioned as being more "AI-native"?

27:50 What are expectations around AI usage in school?

45:20 What kind of support do you want from employers for success in an AI world?

56:36 Final words of wisdom

59:31 Peace out and geek out

Show Notes

Geeking Out Live: The One Where We Geek Out on Vibing Like It's 1999, Coding Like It's 2026

OSAP

Logo (programming language)

Turing (programming language)

Lua (programming language)

The era of AI slop cleanup has begun (Reddit)

STEM Aspire program (Dell Technologies)

Key Takeaways

Using IDEs took some of the mental load out of hand coding because of features like code completion

Switching to IDEs from plain text editors was a bit of a mental change for many of us (maybe not as big as AI-assisted coding)

AI-assisted coding gives us a similar feel to text editor based coding à la VIM

AI-assisted coding is ADHD friendly — you can explain your architecture and the AI can do the mundane task of writing the code for you

Vibe coding has turned senior developers into architects

Vibe coding turns side projects that have been on your mind forever into reality in hours, days, or weeks

Writing code in a language you don't know becomes dangerous if you're implementing it at scale

As seasoned practitioners, when we vibe code, we know what "good code" is supposed to look like.

The difference between a good senior developer and a great one is mentorship.

We need to be willing to fail more in order to learn, but we also need a safe space to fail.

Should non-developers write code just because they can, through AI coding agents? Not production-ready code, but it shouldn't stop them from using it to show off a proof-of-concept.

Making space for "awesome slop projects" is a great way to showcase creativity and fun side projects, even if they never make it into production.

AI side projects have led to an increase in purchase of domain names as developers finally have the "bandwidth" bring dust off old projects and bring them to life.

Lot of developers now are becoming carpenters. They're building these tools that sometimes it's just vibe coded slop. Sometimes it's just being creative.

Non-developer founders can bring ideas to life, but without a developer at their side, they risk introducing applications into the world that are non-scalable and walking security risks.

Gen Z/Gen Alpha are NOT well positioned as devs in the AI native era if they don't understand some fundamental principles and if they don't learn through failure

The most important skills a software engineer needs today: Trust, but verify, be curious, be a good communication, be willing to teach and learn from other humans

Chapters

00:08 Intro

00:42 Guest intros

03:15 What was your first programming language?

07:59 IDEs took the mental load out of coding

11:21 AI-assisted coding is ADHD friendly

11:40 What do you despise most about hand coding?

13:34 What's your coder persona?

17:50 How do you feel about trusting AI implicitly to write code in a language you don't know?

23:04 Cassidy rant

28:19 Failure is a teaching aid

33:14 "Awesome Slop"

35:13 AI + domain name purchase side effect

36:49 Vibe coding + startup founders

41:54 Are Gen Z/Gen Alpha better positioned as devs in the AI native era?

45:36 Beware the non-developers with no coding experience'

53:35 Why is the AI writing React for me?

58:25 What's the most important skill a software engineer needs today?

About our guests

Cassidy Williams

Cassidy is the Senior Director of Developer Advocacy at GitHub! Outside of that fancy title, Cassidy is a startup advisor and investor, open source-er, and meme-maker on the internet. She enjoys building mechanical keyboards, playing music, hanging out with family and friends, and teaching in her free time.

Find our guest on:

LinkedIn

Bluesky

GitHub

Blog

Newsletter

Tim Banks (they/them)

Tim’s tech career spans over 25 years through various sectors. Tim’s initial journey into tech started in avionics in the US Marine Corps and then into various government contracting roles. After moving to the private sector, Tim worked both in large corporate environments and in small startups, honing his skills in systems administration, automation, architecture, and operations for large cloud-based datastores.

Today, Tim leverages their years in operations, DevOps, and Site Reliability Engineering to advise and consult with the open source and cloud computing communities in his current role. Tim is also a competitive Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner. They are the 2-time American National and is the 5-time Pan American Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu champion in their division.

Find our guest on:

LinkedIn

Bluesky

Instagram

Jeff Blankenburg

Jeff Blankenburg spent the early part of his career in digital advertising, building websites for Victoria's Secret, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Ford Motor Company, among others. He also spent 8 years at Microsoft, primarily as an evangelist for any new technology he could get his hands on. He followed his passion to Amazon, where he was the Chief Technical Evangelist for Alexa for 7 years.

Today, he is the Principal Developer Advocate at Dynatrace, helping developers make cloud native apps easier to build and maintain. Jeff has spoken at conferences all over the world, including London, Munich, India, Tokyo, Sydney, and New York, covering topics ranging from software development technologies to soft skill techniques. He also serves as an organizer for the Stir Trek conference.

Find Jeff on:

LinkedIn

YouTube

Instagram

Twitch

Web site

Josh Lee

Josh is a Developer Advocate at Altinity, where he applies his observability and engineering background to ClickHouse use cases. He has over 15 years of experience in developing and leading software projects for various clients and industries. Josh is also a speaker and a contributor to the OpenTelemetry and CNCF communities, sharing his insights and best practices on topics such as distributed tracing. He is always eager to learn new things and explore new challenges, and he strives to create elegant and innovative solutions that take into account the nuances and correlations of complex problems.

Find Josh on:

LinkedIn

Bluesky

Find Geeking Out on

All of our social channels are on bio.site/geekingout

All of Adriana's social channels are on bio.site/adrianavillela

Show Notes

Tim Banks on Geeking Out (part 1 and part 2)

Josh Lee on the Geeking Out LIVE IWD Panel

Amazon transcribe

Handy Computer (text to speech)

In the AI Era, Shopify Is Investing in Junior Engineers—Not Cutting Them

Be a Carpenter (blog post) - by William Perron

Key takeaways:

Kids take new tech for granted. For example, carriers used to charge by the minute for calls. Text and web browsing were extra (and extra expensive).

Configuring Linux back in the day was 1 part fun, 10 parts pain.

Watching things on video allows us to see expressions and hear intonations that you would otherwise miss with text. With text, you would have to imagine that for yourself.

Being able to take a problem and break it down into first principles allows you to look at a problem from different angle, pulling on your experience and the experiences of others to solve those components and put the layers back on to form a solution.

Many of today's paradigms are just variants of problems that we've seen before, just masquerading with different names.

If we break down a problem enough, we actually start to see examples of how similar problems have been solved.

Breaking down a problem into a way that someone outside of your area of work can understand teaches you to break a problem down into understandable bits and helps you understand the problem better.

It's easy to think you understand something. But as soon as you try to try to explain that to someone else, it forces you to dig deeper.

Understanding things from first principles gives us a better understanding of how things work.

WIth vibe coding, junior engineers don't get to experience more traditional debugging (i.e. with Google). Is that good or bad?

Problem solving loop: come up with a hypothesis, test it out, and if the test fails, come up with another hypothesis, and keep repeating that loop until the problem is solved. Juniors these days aren't necessarily exposed to that.

Debugging with LLMs shortens feedback loops.

Junior engineers, not having been through the "old way" of debugging with Google and StackOverflow may be tempted to view LLMs as an authority.

Maybe it makes sense to just give into All The AI things and retrain ourselves to coexist with AI.

Encode best practices in LLM rules files to help guide junior developers

Style guides can be enforced through instructions files

Mentoring + style guides + other guardrails can help junior engineers level up

Pre-AI-era engineers and AI-native engineers can learn a lot from each other

About our guest:

Jean-Mark is a builder at heart, driven by a passion for creating sustainable architecture, fostering strong teams, and championing Observability.

He has dedicated his career to building across various disciplines with a keen focus on creating systems that are both fit for purpose and built to last. Jean-Mark’s journey into Observability began from a practical challenge: the difficulty of understanding complex production systems at scale. This sparked a deep passion for designing and implementing solutions that provide clarity and insight into these systems.

A natural leader, Jean-Mark is as invested in people as he is in technology. He has brought many others along on his journey, mentoring and training colleagues in best practices and making countless tooling improvements to enhance system visibility across the organization. This commitment to both technical excellence and people development has made a lasting impact. At his core, Jean-Mark is still a builder who finds great joy in investing in people and engaging in endless conversations about all things Observability.

Find Jean-Mark on:

LinkedIn

Blog

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bio.site/geekingout

All of Adriana's social channels are on bio.site/adrianavillela

Links:

Adriana's blog post born out of one of her chat's on LinkedIn with Jean-Mark

Symbian operating system (mobile phones)

Sony Ericsson

Nokia 3310

LG Chocolate phone

BlackBerry Curve

Nokia phone case meme

GPRS

CDMA

TDMA

Observability Engineering book

Anthropic AI fluency course

Key Takeaways

With many companies scaling back DEI programs, conversations about gender equity are more important than ever.

Seeing women in technical and leadership roles encourages others to enter and stay in the field.

Men and women alike should use their privilege to advocate for and uplift women

There's a difference between supportive and performative males. Performative males want to be "seen" doing the right things, but aren't actually supporting women in the workplace.

Men who use their privilege to support women should not be put on a pedestal; that should be the bare minimum and something that should be done by default

Don't wait until you're "ready" (we never feel fully ready). There's always someone less qualified than you who will apply for jobs/pursue speaking opportunities/scholarships/etc., so why not take a chance and put yourself out there?

Don't be afraid to reach out to women to mentor/guide them; sometimes they may be too shy/scared to reach out

Chapters

00:08 Intro

00:29 Guest intros

06:24 Why is IWD important?

11:20 Name one woman who inspires you

22:24 What can women do to support other women in the workplace?

31:43 Name one man who inspires you

42:55 What can men do to support other men in the workplace

51:48 What are some workplace inequalities that need to be fixed

58:22 What advice do you have for women entering tech?

About our guests

Colleen Coll

"Allow myself to introduce...myself." - Austin Powers

Ever feel like you're juggling flaming torches planning events—trying to keep all the details in the air while something’s always about to catch fire? Yep, she's been there. Events have a way of throwing curveballs, and when tech and tools aren’t playing nice, chaos can easily take over.

That’s where Colleen Coll comes in. She love turning event madness into magic. Whether it’s on-site event coverage using digital media, live reporting, or behind-the-scenes management, she makes sure everything runs like clockwork. She's also a huge fan of using There.App, which simplifies on-location event management by keeping everyone in sync and streamlining the entire process, so no detail gets lost in the shuffle.

From tech conferences to startup launches, I capture the moments that matter and keep things smooth, whether it's happening live or behind the scenes. And when she's not on the ground, she's writing—blogs, articles, and ghostwriting for tech leaders to tell the bigger story behind the event, brand, or mission.

Find Colleen on:

Bluesky

LinkedIn

Reese Lee

Reese Lee (she/her) is a Senior Developer Relations Engineer at New Relic, where she enables users on open source technologies such as OpenTelemetry. She has spoken on various topics related to OpenTelemetry, and maintains and creates community resources aimed at OTel end users. She is super into anything paranormal, and enjoys sci-fi and traveling.

Find Reese on:

Mastodon

LinkedIn

X

Imma Valls

Imma is a Developer Advocate at Grafana Labs. She loves simplifying and sharing knowledge on Observability, OpenTelemetry, and Cloud Native accessible. Her mission is to create high-value technical content while driving the adoption of best practices within the community. As a community organizer and ally, she's passionate about building inclusive communities and events where underrepresented people in tech can confidently share their stories and knowledge. Knowledge isn't static; it's an asset that multiplies when shared.

Find Imma on:

LinkedIn

Bluesky

Josh Lee

Josh is a Developer Advocate at Altinity, where he applies his observability and engineering background to ClickHouse use cases. He has over 15 years of experience in developing and leading software projects for various clients and industries. Josh is also a speaker and a contributor to the OpenTelemetry and CNCF communities, sharing his insights and best practices on topics such as distributed tracing. He is always eager to learn new things and explore new challenges, and he strives to create elegant and innovative solutions that take into account the nuances and correlations of complex problems.

Find Josh on:

LinkedIn

Bluesky

Find Geeking Out on

All of our social channels are on bio.site/geekingout

All of Adriana's social channels are on bio.site/adrianavillela

Show Notes

Colleen Coll on Geeking Out

Reese Lee on Geeking Out