Interview with Janet Kuo(郭), a Software Engineer at Google

For my next post of "Humans Of Programming World" series of interviews, I will now invoke the GOTO command to teleport from Jakarta, Indonesia to Mountain View, California, USA. The aim of these interviews is to highlight the talent diversity in software engineering/technology world. Most of the interviews will be skewed towards Golang, but occasionally some post will be about developers using other programming languages as well.


Tell us something about yourself.

I'm from Taiwan and now work in the US. I've been learning/using Go for a half year. I have experience in Java, C, Python, and iOS development.

Can you briefly tell us about how you got to learn and use Golang?

It's mostly for work. Our product is written in Go.

Which feature(s) that you like the most in Golang?

I love gofmt, goroutines and channels.

What advice or action that you would give or see to help foster diversity in Golang community worldwide?

Encourage more people like me to join Golang community (since I'm one of the minority).

NOTES: Facebook Golang Group and Google Plus Golang Community are the two most active Golang communities online. Most Golang spaces adhere to Go Community Code of Conduct.

What are your advice to newcomers to Golang?

A tour of Go is a fun and useful tutorial that you should finish first. I also find this article about whether Go is OO useful... since I felt confused before reading this article.

Most of the current OS is written in C language. If you are going to create a new Operating System with Golang.What would you name your new OS?

GOS... maybe?

Can you give us some insight into your workflow/thinking process when writing codes? How does or what roles that Golang plays in influencing your work flow/thinking process.

I'm from Java. I love that Go handles all of the synchronization for you and making this so much easier. Plus, Go is much less verbose than Java.

NOTES: Java is just way too 'talkative'.

What is the startup scene like in Silicon Valley? Do you think Golang will be become popular or become the language of choice for new startups in Silicon Valley?

I live in Silicon Valley, so you know... I think Golang will be popular for building web servers for new startups. For example, Medium use Go to build their image server.

NOTES: For the uninitiated, Silicon Valley is the mecca of technology innovation and one of the most flourishing ecosystems for startups.

I asked Janet to watch this video and let us know about her opinions.

I think we should all be conscious about this unconscious bias towards women in technology... (even women sometimes have such bias too!) I'm not sure whether it helps if we keep emphasizing on things like "women in technology" and "girls learn code". Will it make things better or will it eventually become telling people that "tech is for men (which makes women in tech worth mentioning)"? I'm still wondering...

---

A big thank you for taking the time to do this interview! 謝謝!

---

Wrapping up

Can't wait to see more exciting products coming out from Google that are written/powered by Golang and that more people like Janet(minority) will join Golang community worldwide. Janet first appear on my radar screen when I noticed that she is the only woman commentator in the Facebook Golang Group. I believe that with more participation of women in tech communities... it will help to do away the unconscious bias towards women in tech progressively. Eventually, it will become a relic and we don't have to say stuff like ... oh look! a girl in tech. wow! such a unicorn!