Ever hit that point where everything you’ve been faking suddenly stops working? Yeah, me too. What came next? Let’s just say it involved some unexpected career detours, a lot of self-reflection, and maybe a meltdown or two.

In this talk, I’ll share a story that’s part comedy, part cautionary tale—what happens when you realize the path you’ve been on might not be the one you actually care about. If you’re in tech, feeling stuck, or wondering why your career doesn’t feel as fulfilling as it should, you’re not alone.

Let’s explore the fine line between ambition and burnout, and how sometimes the best thing you can do is just stop pretending.

Some of the finest leaders are the ones who remember what it was like to work their way up from the bottom or who can foresee themselves in other positions.

As corporations are being taken over, we have seen a shift in how companies function on a human level. In this session, you’ll learn how to use empathy driven development as your superpower to become a better engineer.

The talk would start by demystifying the myths, followed by how to embed empathy in your engineering practices. We'll focus on how developer empathy plays a major role in every stage of your career, be that as a mentee or a mentor, a junior or a senior engineer, etc.

This talk is going to be beneficial for everyone, no matter the experience level. From junior engineers to seniors, community members, managers, etc. This talk is suited for all the technology teams, enterprise leadership, or open source communities as they will learn how to elevate their work with developer empathy, in every field.

Empathy is the root of open source and communities. It's what makes us human and builds a thriving culture. This talk will benefit the ecosystem as we'll learn how to implement the highly overlooked developer empathy practices in our day to day lives along with some of the mistakes to avoid.

Developer Experience is more than just documentation, static types, and feedback loops. It’s about, well, people. The type of person who enjoys a challenge for that warm fuzzy reward of telling their friends about what they’ve created and at the same time are highly skeptical of appearing to sell to them. So what’s the secret to doing this well? Taz will be talking about his Developer Experience and the key lessons learnt along the way.

Description:
"Starting a tech career has never been easy, and doing it after the rise of AI can feel even more challenging.
This talk explores the key challenges juniors face in tech today and how to turn them into opportunities."

Bio:
Junior Frontend Developer at Whitby Wood, project-based learner, doing LeetCode on Twitch.