I've been working on Tampa Devs with the other co-founder since September of 2021, along with a group of really excellent volunteers.
We're a nonprofit that's loosely inspired by nyc's Recurse Center (https://www.recurse.com/). We host events, a mentorship program, and career development resources. All of which are free or very low cost.
Our community has grown to include thousands of local developers. It feels good to be part of something that drives a widely positive impact, especially on a local level. Anyone can do something similar no matter where they are, and I would highly recommend it.
For a cool technical angle, here's a talk I gave at a local conference on the tools we use to run our community at scale: https://go.tampa.dev/unityops.
Love that you're inspired by RC! I went through an RC in-person mini-batch in 2019, and I'm still part of the alumni community there -- I've attended a few virtual Never Graduate Weeks (NGWs). Glad to share my experience.
(You can find me in TampaDevs Slack. I moved to Tampa from NY in 2021. Keep up the good work!)
Yeah, I'm going through my GitHub followers and posting something from each account that looks cool. Pay it forward, give back the love, etc etc! I realized they be doing cool things and I didn't pay enough attention. Put too much focus on what I was doing, and not enough on what the people who value me (in some form or fashion haha! :), online at least) were doing. Hahah! :)
So now it's time to change that and give back. I think it's a cool idea. I encourage you folks to do the same! :)
What are the industries employing software developers in the Tampa area? I assume there's some work in the insurance industry but not so much software industry work?
There's a wild amount of mechanical, electronic and software work going on in the Tampa Bay area.
Work is a lot more physical here than what I saw during 2+ decades in the SF Bay area (which was mostly software oriented, IME).
There's a ton of defense tech companies, medical tech, finance and (at least) 2 huge PCB assemblers are also here (Kimbal and Jabil).
St Pete and Tampa both have extensive areas filled with small physical production companies that can do machining, lasers, plastics, engineering, etc. The services can be pricey and a bit slow because they're built around defense/medical budgets, but unlike many other geographic areas, they are available domestically and folks tend to be really helpful.
Publix technology is a regular employer of .NET and big data developers, and fairly recession-resistant and remote friendly. Verizon, Geico, Amazon have offices in central Florida. Lots of e-commerce and hospitality companies like Disney, Universal, Etc. Not Tampa per se, but within the Tampa-Orlando megalopolis. No state income taxes (or infrastructure) and the weather is favorable. There are a lot of law firms, and most big 5 tech, consulting, and cyber companies have offices in the area.
Yeah St Pete is highly underrated in FL tech. Lot of interesting tech companies in the downtown core. I use to work for a Shopify-esque e-commerce platform that was built with React and Go in 2014. It was my first professional job after doing various jquery freelance work for a year prior.
I learnt quite a bit there about proper software engineering.
It makes me extremely happy to see the company still kicking around, with mostly the same people still but now in leadership positions.
It's been awesome to see Charlton and the team build Tampa Devs and their impact on the tech community. They don't get nearly enough local recognition.
I've been working on Tampa Devs with the other co-founder since September of 2021, along with a group of really excellent volunteers.
We're a nonprofit that's loosely inspired by nyc's Recurse Center (https://www.recurse.com/). We host events, a mentorship program, and career development resources. All of which are free or very low cost.
Our community has grown to include thousands of local developers. It feels good to be part of something that drives a widely positive impact, especially on a local level. Anyone can do something similar no matter where they are, and I would highly recommend it.
For a cool technical angle, here's a talk I gave at a local conference on the tools we use to run our community at scale: https://go.tampa.dev/unityops.