Curious Technologist: Path to Fractional CTO with Boomie Odumade (Podcast & Transcript)
“ Most of the time, my roles were chosen more around curiosity. Does this look like a interesting problem to solve? And I'm still curious, but now I also look at the potential impact that it can have and the potential impact I can have at the place. So there are companies, for example, that do amazing things, but they don't need me, I don't need them. Lately it, it's more of, not just the curiosity, but also what they're trying to achieve and, is it a good partnership for us?” - Boomie Odumade
Boomie Odumade is a fractional CTO, a career coach, and an instructor. She’s a senior engineering leader with more than 20 years of experience across startups, nonprofits, and large enterprises, including Accenture, NPR, and Capital One. Boomie is also a board member for two nonprofits focused on advancing women and girls in STEM and is an experienced speaker.
In this episode, we discuss:
Why she decided to pivot from full-time to fractional roles
The best questions to ask in an interview to assess company culture
The advice she’d give her younger self
Networking tips for introverts
Transcript has been edited for clarity.
Karen Ko: Hey there. Welcome to Engineer Your Career, a podcast brought to you by WEST, a learning community empowering women technologists through mentorship. Join us as we hear from inspiring women tech leaders who are challenging stereotypes and paving the way for future generations. We hope their career journeys inspire you with new ideas to engineer your career.
Let's get started.
Heidi Williams: Hello, and welcome to Engineer Your Career. I am so excited today to have a fabulous guest with us. I have Boomie Odumade, who is a fractional CTO, a career coach, and an instructor, and I'm super excited for everybody to hear about Boomie's amazing career stories. So welcome, Boomie.
Boomie Odumade: Hi, everyone.
Thank you for having me.
Heidi: I'm so excited to hear more about your story. You have had such an amazing career. You've done so many cool things, but maybe we can just start off with what is it that you're up to right now? What are you doing?
Boomie: Yeah. So right now I own my own company called TechBees, and through that I provide flexible engineering leadership to companies.
So maybe that's fractional, where it's part-time, or interim, where it's full-time but temporary. Additionally, I'm a career coach, and I've also been releasing some AI courses. I mean, I've been an adjunct instructor on and off for over 20 years, but I've been releasing my own courses on a platform.
Heidi: That's amazing. I love that. I feel like, when I was a kid, I always wanted to be a teacher, a writer, and a psychologist. And it sounds like you've got the teaching part for sure in your role.
Boomie: Yeah.
Heidi: That is really cool, and I love that you're able to do it with organizations or individually, and then also as an instructor.
That's amazing.
Boomie: Yeah. That's actually one of the nice things about this. I have coaching clients who are coming on their own, and then I have companies who are either coming to help solve engineering problems or provide coaching to their leadership or engineers. So I get a wide variety, which I like.
Heidi: Yeah. That's really cool. Keeps it fresh for sure. Yeah, I can see that.
So how did you get started? I mean, it takes a while to sort of build up that amount of experience where you feel good about going out and teaching others, but how'd you get started? Like, what's your origin story?
Boomie: How I got started in software was actually unexpected.
I was getting a mechanical engineering degree, had a computer science class. We had... I forget which language it was, but I had a semicolon in the wrong place, and there were 200 compiler errors.
Heidi: Oh, no.
Boomie: And, I'm like, "This is crazy." And, I also wasn't initially getting good grades in the class, but by the end of the class, I was really curious, and I wanted to understand how to make computers do what I wanted them to do, which meant, at least before AI, meant telling them very precisely what you wanted them to do.
But I got curious, so I got a master's in computer science, and I've been in software ever since. And in terms of what I'm doing currently, it's been a combination of taking all the experiences that I've had from various employers. And my most recent, in the last decade or so, done a really good job of finding places that were a fit, and then for one reason or another they didn't last, but I thought to myself, "I'm great at onboarding, I'm great at making impact quickly. Why don't I just make that my job?" You know?
And, you know, I also don't like being bored. I like learning, and I like doing different things, so being fractional also helps me grow more because I can work on problems at different companies and not just the problems a specific company has. You know, so if a specific company is using one technology or trying to address one part of their strategy, that's what I'm gonna be able to make impact on.
But being fractional, one company might be working on one issue, another company on a different issue, and I'm solving both of them, so I'm having more impact, and I'm growing.
Heidi: I love that. Yeah, I do feel like that problem-solving, whether it's technical or organizational, there are so many... It feels like a through line of a lot of people who stay in the industry for a long time.
Boomie: Mm-hmm.
Heidi: And I think when we were prepping earlier, you talked about you've been at some really interesting and different companies and different industries.
Boomie: Mm-hmm.
Heidi: And was there a through line? Maybe you wanna give us a brief overview of the variety of things, but was there a through line along the way that helped you or inspired you to choose each role?
Boomie: Most of the time, my roles were chosen more around curiosity. Does this look like an interesting problem to solve? And that's... I'm still curious, but now I also look at the potential impact that it can have, and the potential impact I can have at the place. So there are companies, for example, that do amazing things, but they don't need me, I don't need them. [laughs]
Lately, it's more of, not just the curiosity, but also what they're trying to achieve, and is it a good partnership for us? I think partnership is the word there. So in the last decade I've worked in healthcare, finance, media, climate change. You know, so I've worked in a lot of different industries, but usually it's about solving the problem and having impact.
Heidi: Yeah. That's awesome. That really is such a wide range of things and different industries, and all with different things. But, like you said, there's interesting new challenges at each of them.
Boomie: Right.
Heidi: And certainly that curiosity. I love what you said, too, about sometimes you find an amazing organization, but, like, exactly what they need or what problems they need you to solve are not exactly a good fit for sort of you or-
Boomie: Right
Heidi: ...how you operate, and that's a reality. I think sometimes people try to force it, and then it doesn't always go well.
Boomie: I'm so glad you said that. One of the things I tell people is, even in this job market, you're looking for a fit. You're looking for where you can do good work, where you can hopefully be at least not unhappy doing the work.
You know, maybe even happy, you know?
Heidi: Yeah.
Boomie: And, so it's still about finding that good fit and not trying to force yourself into certain categories. I will say, for example, nothing against big tech, but I've decided I just do better at smaller and medium companies. So when I am looking, I don't usually target the big tech, and if they reach out to me, I'll consider, you know? But that's not what I'm targeting.
Heidi: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Yeah, and actually, as we were talking beforehand, you also mentioned a lot about workplace culture, not just is it a fit for the work, but is it a fit—
Boomie: Yeah.
Heidi: ... for how you wanna collaborate or how you wanna, like you said, partnership.
Tell me a little bit about what do you look for in workplace culture? How do you evaluate that it's gonna be a culture that you can thrive in?
Boomie: Yeah, I try to evaluate in the interview questions. I will tell you what I don't do. I may read reviews like Glassdoor and Best Places To Work, but I don't put a lot of stock in them. [laughs]
Heidi: Mm-hmm.
Boomie: But talking to the interview panel or finding people not on the interview panel that you can talk to, I try to get insight from questions. If they don't come up organically in what the panel says, I may ask them. So, for example, I believe in collaboration. I don't believe in us versus them or walls, and so I may ask questions to try to understand how the company feels about collaboration.
Heidi: Mm.
Boomie: And even if they're not where they want to be... Like, okay, I'll give another example. You know, I have a kid, so I care more about work-life balance, and I've interviewed at places that are like, "We don't, it's not great now, but we want to get there." So for me, it's about where the company wants to get, and if they're not there yet, are they willing to acknowledge it and work on getting there, or is it, "This is how we've done things. It's the way you gotta do it"?
So I have a list of interview questions that I try to use to determine it.... I mean, when I'm looking for full-time jobs, if I don't have time for enough questions, I always ask people, "What's your favorite thing about working there, and what's your least favorite or something you would change if you could?"
'Cause a lot of times you'll get insights from just those two answers.
Heidi: That's great. Do you, since sometimes, like especially with the fractional CTO work—
Boomie: Mm-hmm
Heidi: ... you might be interviewing with the CEO. Do you have any spicy questions you like to ask the CEO about your relationship?
Boomie: Well, I like to ask them how they see themselves as a leader.
Heidi: Mm-hmm.
Boomie: I also do like to ask what keeps them up at night.
Heidi: Mm-hmm.
Boomie: But the second one is more to do with me understanding what the problems are they may be having and maybe not articulating as much, and how they see themselves as a leader, hopefully should give some insight into what our relationship would be.
So it's mainly those two.
Heidi: Yeah. Those are great questions. I love that. I feel like the one... I don't even know how I happened on this. Maybe I worked someplace where I saw it not going awesome, and so I started asking it, which was, "How does the leadership team resolve conflict?" And one company I talked to actually said, "If we really needed to, we'd hire a mediator."
I was like, "Holy crap." That's... like the nth degree. That's a lot. So yeah. That's amazing. You also had mentioned that more and more over your career, you're still curious, but you're also really interested in making a difference.
Boomie: Mm-hmm.
Heidi: What are some examples, or sort of like how broadly or narrowly do you define making a difference?
Boomie: It's pretty broad. There are many ways to make the world a better place. So when I was a co-founder of a startup, we were making fitness fun, and that improved people's lives. I have before and after pictures of people. I would get people messaging me on Friday nights talking about how the app had changed their life.
One person said it motivated her to get off meth. You know?
Heidi: Oh, wow.
Boomie: I never thought... That was never a goal, you know? I worked on a project at the IRS where we built the modernized EIN system, and it's still in use over 20 years later.
Heidi: Oh, cool.
Boomie: And I know how... I saw what the before was like, but I never had to use it.
When I needed an EIN for my TechBees business or for Nannyshare, how much easier it was to get that EIN is something that definitely helped me.
Heidi: Oh my gosh. That's a legacy.
Boomie: Yeah. So I can think of more examples, but just… things that are somehow making a good difference.
Heidi: I love that.
Yeah, I feel like more and more folks I meet who are further in their career are feeling like they're prioritizing that, which I love—
Boomie: Yes.
Heidi: ... and I feel like gives me a lot of hope that we can sort of put our tech skills to good use—
Boomie: Same.
Heidi: ... and make the world a better place.
Boomie: Same. Yeah, I think my link says I love people, I love technology, so I love using technology to help people.
Heidi: Oh, it's so good. Oh, that's really good. Okay, I can't steal that, but that's really good. [laughter] Amazing. And tell me a little bit more, I mean, obviously doing good in the world and having that positive impact, what else do you feel is most rewarding about what you do?
Boomie: I think it's a little harder to see, but the difference you make in people's confidence, in their career trajectory, et cetera.
As I've been a leader more and more, I've led junior people, senior people, managers, and seeing people really grow in ways that surprise themselves. And they usually surprise me, [laughter] but ... but in ways that surprise themselves and the, you know, the gratitude that they show for that. That's been really rewarding in a way that it's hard to quantify.
You know, you can't say, "Hey, I did this many pull requests," but it's been very rewarding.
Heidi: That's so cool. Yeah, I remember, I feel like I used to answer when someone said, "What's the highlight of your career? What's a high point?" And I did talk about—
Boomie: Mm-hmm
Heidi: ... helping someone grow in their career to a place that they never thought they would get, and was hugely impactful for their organization.
I'm still like, "I helped that guy, and he learned..."
Boomie: Yeah.
Heidi: "He helped me, I learned," and so—
Boomie: Yeah, yeah.
Heidi: I love that. Maybe on the flip side, what is the scariest or riskiest thing you've ever done in your career, and how did you get the courage to do it?
Boomie: Going on my own to be fractional CTO. [laughter]
Heidi: It's a huge leap.
Boomie: It is, it is, it is a huge leap. It is scary. There's a saying that nine out of 10 businesses fail, and even though a lot of people think, "I wanna be a solopreneur," things are getting rough. It is hard when it goes well, and it's not always easy to have it go well.
And when I made the leap, as I do, I had informational interviews with a lot of people who had already had the role, and they were all encouraging. But they all had had the title before they went fractional, and I hadn't. My last job was titled Senior Director of Engineering. It was seen as head of engineering.
I was introduced as the CTO or VP when we'd go to conferences, but that was not the title that's gonna show on my LinkedIn. And it's easy to say titles don't matter, but doing this with what felt like an additional risk was scary. And when there was no momentum for the first few months, I forget how many 'cause I've got momentum now, you know? [laughter]
But when there was no momentum, I'm like, "What have I done?" You know?
Heidi: Yeah.
Boomie: But I reminded myself that it can take time and that I can always go back to looking for a full-time job if it's not working. But I wanted to give it a real chance, a real chance to work out.
Heidi: Yeah. Well, I'm so excited that you did.
I mean, it's been really cool to see all the things that you're working on, and I think you and I had talked about this at some point, that even when you were senior director, you were fulfilling a lot of the responsibilities of a VPE or a CTO, but just without—
Boomie: Oh, for sure...
Heidi: ... the title. And so part of it is getting someone to answer your call, but then once you actually can describe it, you're like, "But I've done everything on the checklist of, like, things that you need."
Boomie: Right.
Yeah. I think when people talk to me, they realize I can do it, but getting them to talk to me, to get the chance. And then it's just... It's also a market where there are so many people looking, so—
Heidi: Yeah ...
Boomie: We're, we're all trying to get people to answer our call.
Heidi: Yeah, yeah.
That's awesome. And, if you don't mind me asking, was there someone early on who took a chance on you? Or how did you get that first person to take your call and actually take a bet on you?
Heidi: Let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsor.
Karen: Are you ready to take control of your career? WEST can help.
The WEST Career Accelerator is a six-month learning program that combines one-on-one mentorship and group-based career coaching to help women gain clarity, save time, and define success on their own terms. We're here to help you create a path towards the career you'll love. Check out how WEST can help you succeed at joinwest.org.
Heidi: And now back to our discussion.
Boomie: I think some of this goes to the network. I will say when I first was going fractional, one of my mentors, I have a lot of mentors, you know, one of my mentors said, oh, the hardest part for him was the visibility and the networking, and he's like, "Boomie, you have no problem with either one."
So he thought it would happen pretty fast, and it didn't happen as fast, but when it did, it was people in my network saying, when they heard that someone was looking, saying, "You should consider Boomie." And so I would say that was the biggest part of it, and that goes to something that sometimes people are afraid to say, afraid or ashamed or whatever to say things like, "I'm looking," or, "I'm available."
And if people hadn't known I was available, they wouldn't have given my name when other people asked.
Heidi: Mm.
Boomie: And so definitely letting people know, I mean, you don't have to be excessive or annoying about it, but letting people know that you're available, to help you spread the word, to think of you as they hear about opportunities that come up.
And then the other thing that is helping me that is somewhat of a surprise to me is just, I mean, I talk about my work, of course, in tech settings, I'm gonna talk about it 'cause that's what we're all talking about. But recently, there have also been some potential opportunities from talking about this in non-tech settings, like dinner parties or doctor offices, you know?
Heidi: That's awesome.
Boomie: And, and just people seeing, you know, being like, "Wow, you know a lot about this. I should connect you with this other person." You know?
Heidi: I love that.
Boomie: So chatting at dinner parties and offices is also helpful.
Heidi: I love that. Yeah. You know, I have kids, and I'm always trying to encourage them to sort of figure out the art of small talk because it leads—
Boomie: Mm-hmm
Heidi: …to so much sort of... I don't know, you just get these connections, and you're like, "Who knew that the person next to me might have an internship that I could do as a…" you know, or whatever. Like, you just gotta start—
Boomie: Yeah.
Heidi: ... talking and put your thoughts and your wishes out there in the world, and something sometimes will come of it, so that's really cool.
Boomie: You said it way more concisely than I did. The art of small talk, you know? [laughter]
Heidi: Love it.
Boomie: I mean, authentically, like, you're not going in there saying, "I'm gonna just whisper this," but it comes up in conversation. People notice your energy, your, you know...
Heidi: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I know certainly earlier in life people are very uncomfortable talking about themselves, but the more—
Boomie: Mm-hmm
Heidi: ...you can get to a point where you're comfortable but don't feel like you're bragging or anything, like, it—
Boomie: Yeah.
Heidi: ... it is an art.
Boomie: Yeah.
Heidi: If you can unlock it, yeah, that's amazing. Well, I would love to dig into networking a little bit more, and I know we have some other topics. We'll come back to those.
But just to follow that thread about networking, you know, I can't even remember where you and I met, but I feel like it was in, like, three different online communities, and—
Boomie: Probably.
Heidi: ... I've just seen you as a networker and a convener and a connector of people. What is your approach to networking, and how did you get so good at it?
How has it served you? It's a big question, I know.
Boomie: Yeah, it is a big question, and I don't know how I got good at it. I do remember when I was at Wharton, a classmate was like, "Boomie, you're a connector, and you don't see the value in it." And, you know, people think I'm an extrovert. I'm somewhere in between introvert and extrovert.
I say I'm a social nerd. I need enough alone time. I need enough community. But when I am in community, I do somehow usually end up being one of, you know, sharing in it, also helping to organize things, you know? And so that's where, like you said, you thought you'd seen me in three different places.
I get that a lot. If I had a nickel for every time someone said, "Boomie, I met someone who knows you," I, you know, it'd be—
Heidi: I love it.
Boomie: But I will say, as I'm being more intentional about my networking, that I am looking at which groups are serving my goals. You know? So the goals I had five years ago are gonna be different from the goals I have now, for example, and which ones are serving my goals, and are they doing so in a sustainable way?
Or if it feels huge, like, funny enough, I have an easier time being in five different Slack groups than being in one humongous one.
Heidi: Yeah.
Boomie: But I am in the humongous ones, but I've learned how to figure out which few places I'll participate so that it doesn't feel overwhelming, or am I doing just the calls and not the Slacks.
Heidi: Yeah.
Boomie: So if I had to summarize, I would say what I am doing now is figuring out which groups I believe I can be in, as a participant, not just from the sidelines, and looking at what it takes to get involved, and then giving what I can and also learning how to take what they're offering.
Heidi: That's awesome.
Yeah. Yeah. I definitely hear that. I think I joined the Rands leadership group, and it's something like 30,000 people.
Boomie: I know!
Heidi: And I was like, "I'm just a lurker." And I felt very transactional posting, like, "I have a job posting. Okay, I'm out," you know? Yeah. And people direct message me, and I'm like, "I don't check this very often."
And so it is uncomfortable. It's more uncomfortable to be a lurker than to be fully participating in something. So that resonates a lot.
Boomie: And it's interesting you mention that, 'cause that's one of the ones I was thinking of that's overwhelming. I've been in it for over a decade.
Heidi: Wow.
Boomie: But it's only recently... And similar to you, when I would have a job posting, I would go to, like, 20 different Slack channels, post the job, and leave.
Heidi: Yeah.
Boomie: And with Rands, I am more involved now in the fractional CTO coffees, the CTO—
Heidi: Oh, cool.
Boomie: ... coffees, and then I have a handful of channels that I allow to show me the bolded indicator when they've got unreads.
The others, I've either muted or I'm not in, wait for a tag. And—
Heidi: Yeah.
Boomie: ... so even with something like Rands that I have found overwhelming, and— The CTO coffees know I find this overwhelming, so I'm not giving any secrets here.
Heidi: Yeah.
Boomie: But I found ways to still make Rands work for my current goals.
Heidi: That's awesome. Yeah, and like you said, I think it evolves over time. One of the things I've noticed is that, again, I don't know, maybe I'm feeling like I'm getting older and I have to be, like... reminiscing about my younger years, but I've started being attracted to sort of alumni groups and people where I'm like, "Oh, you know me way back when," and, "Remember we all worked together at wherever?" And so I have, like, two work alumni groups that I really love, and that's one that I feel like I emotionally need that right now. Even if it's not, like, a career goal, I feel like it's something useful.
Boomie: Yeah. It's interesting you say that because I made a list recently of all the places I'm in because I'm like, "Okay, this is feeling a lot, and which ones do I want to be more or less involved in?"
I'm also getting more involved in my Wharton alumni group.
Heidi: Mm-hmm
Boomie: The local group that usually meets in person, and also the WhatsApp group. Also, a different section of Wharton WhatsApp group, and I'm finding I'm enjoying it. You know, like the other day, on my Facebook memories, a picture of Wharton 54 came up, and I put it in the general chat, and people are like, "Oh, I recognize this person and that person," you know?
Heidi: Oh, that's cool.
Boomie: ... and it led to a fun conversation, you know?
Heidi: Yeah. I love that. I think that's really fun. And you had mentioned for folks who maybe aren't really good at networking yet, you mentioned a little bit of a tip on how to get started or how—
Boomie: Yeah ... yeah.
Heidi: How to?
Boomie: Yeah. I think it's the view to networking.
And by the way, shared these tips with a sister who's definitely an introvert, and she said it might work. But it's about picking two, and I would say two, not one, because if you pick only one and it doesn't go well, then you're gonna just be discouraged. But picking two groups that you think you can be involved in somehow.
What that somehow is, is something you have to decide for yourself. And then being involved in them to that level, seeing how it feels, and continuing with that. So maybe you join a group, and maybe you do lurk for a while. Maybe that's what's comfortable for you. And then encourage yourself to maybe reply to someone's post or someone's comment, or a lot of these groups have a way to introduce yourself.
The number of people who stay in groups and never introduce themselves always surprises me.
Heidi: Yeah.
Boomie: But introduce yourself. I had an introvert friend who introduced themselves in a Slack and were pleasantly surprised to see there were people in their local area. Yeah.
Heidi: Oh, cool. Yeah.
Boomie: So I would do that, and it can just start with the two.
And adjust it. You're not, you may not have it on day one, especially if you're in some... You know, like the groups that I've joined where I thought, "Okay, this channel will be useful for me," I'm like, "Okay, maybe not. I'm gonna try this channel instead or maybe neither." You know? There are groups I'm in that are quiet for weeks, and then we have a conversation, you know?
So, in summary, find two groups, introduce yourself. Find your level of initial engagement and then adjust as you go, you know?
Heidi: I love that. Awesome. Yeah, it's definitely something I'm getting better at. I'm actually, I feel like now I have an action item to go and maybe leave some groups that I really was just like [laughter] oh, that feels like so much work, and it's like that's- ... if that's the mindset, then maybe it's not the right group for me.
Boomie: Yeah.
Heidi: That's amazing. Well, one of the other things I wanted to explore with you a little bit was, has there ever been a moment where you... I think you love what you do, but has there ever been a moment where you thought about leaving or about taking a break, and, if so, what was the scenario?
Boomie: So in terms of leaving tech, I've never thought about it. My parents wanted me to be an accountant. I won the "let me be a technologist," so I'm not going anywhere, so.
Heidi: Yeah.
Boomie: But I will say just, you know, for your audience there, I know people who have considered leaving tech, and I know people who have actually done so.
Heidi: Mm-hmm.
Boomie: Usually they're women, you know? And each person, you know, sometimes it's I just wanna do something different. Sometimes it's not wanting to deal with some of the same things over and over. So if people are thinking of leaving, know you're not alone, and talk to someone about it. In my case, I love it, so I'm not gonna leave.
That being said, I feel like every year for the last I don't know how many years, I've considered leaving leadership. And there was a time that my coding skills were still good. They're rusty now, but there were times I thought, "I will un-rust my coding skills and be a senior engineer or a staff engineer or, or whatever, and not a leader."
And thankfully, each time that I've thought that, I didn't get the opportunity. I either, you know, got the...[laughter] But I do wanna name that, 'cause, you know, sometimes in socials and podcasts, people are like, "Oh, I always knew. I never doubt." No, there are times that I've doubted, and it's more been about some of the difficulties of being a leader.
But I always come back to, yeah, this is what I wanna do, so. [laughs]
Heidi: I love it. I love it, and especially hearing you talk about what's so rewarding about being a people leader and a technology leader.
Boomie: Yeah.
Heidi: I can see how that resonates, although I think you've been playing with AI a lot. Does that entice you—
Boomie: Yeah
Heidi: ...to maybe build some stuff? [laughter]
Boomie: Oh, well, you can do both, you know? My backup if the fractional didn't work is I would take whatever boot camps I wanna be to be an AI engineer.
Heidi: Yeah.
Boomie: That's off the table. However, I'm building things in AI, and my clients are using AI, so I'm getting some involvement there. I built the same app in four different tools just so I could compare them.
Heidi: Oh, cool.
Boomie: It's called WinCraft for tracking wins, 'cause if you've talked to me, you know I say you should track your wins and kudos in some place. So I built that in Lovable, Replit, Bolt, and Claude Code. Gonna maintain it in Claude Code.
The rest are just, you know... I wrote a blog about it. You know, it's made it into some of my courses. Then I built a few other apps in either Claude Code or Cursor or Codex, so I can get the full range of experience. So I built a job search agent that's supposed to help me find jobs, but I'm... You know my... I built a security policy assistant 'cause I'm usually working on DevSecOps.
Oh, on International Women's Day, when Lovable credits were free, I built a Study Buddy app. Initially, just 'cause I'm like, I'm gonna be on the Zoom with people building on Lovable. I thought of building this, but I've expanded that quite a bit into a product that, I mean, I'm using it for myself because it helps me keep track of the terminology across different clients, but I've expanded it to be, you know, more general use. So-
Heidi: That's cool.
Boomie: ... that's just, that's what I've got so far. I've got a few other apps on the list to build.
Heidi: I love it. I know I didn't ask you this ahead of time, but any sense at some point you wanna start your own thing? Is that in the cards?
Boomie: Start my own, like, product company?
Heidi: Yeah, yeah. Start your own startup or product, yeah.
Boomie: Maybe. Maybe, yeah. [laughter]
Heidi: There's time still.
Boomie: Yes, there is time.
Heidi: That's cool. Awesome. Well, I've just really enjoyed our conversation. I feel like it's been so fun to explore the different things you've done and your approach to different things. Very, very cool. Wanted to end with maybe two questions, which I always love to ask and share out with the WEST community.
What is a piece of advice you would give to your younger self?
Boomie: Oh, the biggest piece of advice would be you gotta speak up for yourself. Don't expect the work to speak up for it. Don't think it's boastful. Don't think it's being immodest. You have to speak up for yourself. It's a lesson I learned way too late, and so I shout it from the rooftops now. [laughs]
Heidi: I love it.
Boomie: And yeah, actually, my latest Ada Marie blog was sent yesterday, so when it's published, the topic is self-advocacy in under 750 words. So-
Heidi: Oh, wow.
Boomie: ... it's short, but it's about self-advocacy 'cause it's such an important lesson.
Heidi: Oh my gosh. We'll make sure to link to your blog post from the episode when it's live.
That's fantastic. And then also, I know you are... You have lots of things going on. Any opportunity to spotlight something that's coming up that you're excited for folks to hear about?
Boomie: Yeah. I just released some courses to help people understand tech and AI, even if they don't have a tech or software background.
And it's been fun 'cause I've been, like, beta testing them on my dad, so he didn't... Yeah. [laughs]
Heidi: Love it.
Boomie: And he's honest about when he doesn't understand things, so that's been cool. Because I know that AI's moving so fast, and there's a lot of confusion. And so, you know, some are free, some just cost a little bit.
They're all on demand. So that's something that may be helpful, and I'm enjoying building it. Other than that, you know, the challenge and opportunity with fractional is even if you're fully booked, you need to be looking for more clients because you're not a full-time permanent hire, right? You're either part-time or you're temporary.
So yeah, I always tell people, if you know someone looking for engineering leadership or career coaching, send them my way 'cause I may have availability, and if I don't, I may soon thereafter.
Heidi: That's awesome. And where can folks find you for that?
Boomie: Techbees.me, so think like a busy bee. It's T-E-C-H-B-E-E-S dot me.
And also feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. You know, I talk on LinkedIn about fun stuff like how my boss, me, is being so demanding, but I also talk about some of the AI building out loud or advice. Yeah.
Heidi: That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing all of your insights. It's been such a pleasure to learn more about you and to share it out with the WEST community, so thank you.
Boomie: Thank you.
Karen: Engineer Your Career is produced by WEST, a learning community that empowers women technologists through mentorship. Special thanks to our audio production team, Heidi Williams, Amanda Beaty, and yours truly, Karen Ko. If you enjoy our work, we encourage you to share this episode with a friend.
Want to hear more from Engineer Your Career? Subscribe on your favorite podcasting app. We look forward to having you back for our next episode. Thanks for tuning in.