Real Talk on Coding and Coaching with Hai Nghiem | Coach's Insights

Can you introduce yourself?

I studied Cinema (film) and Economics at Denison University (Steve Carell went here actually). Then I became a developer, and now I do a few things in parallel (secret ML engineering / fine-tuning projects as a contractor, organizing the AI Tinkerers chapter in Ottawa, and building Cats with Bats 🐈, a new way to teach with AI)

What does coaching mean to you?

When starting out at Get Coding, I used coaching to better my own understanding of different development tools. Then it became a way to hone people/empathy skills. The more I do it, the better I get at managing other projects in my life. It’s a virtuous flywheel.

Is there something in your coaching that you consider unique or especially important to share with students or other coaches?

The biggest break for me was understanding that people are motivated to pursue/change by their own reasons. I’m lucky to have friends who are therapists / organizational coaches (shout out to @Ange McCabe and Scott Rust from Intuity Performance) who have instilled in me what is / isn’t coaching.

What changes in the programming field are you most excited about right now?

• It’s easier than ever to center a div (using AI).

• Hyper-specialized tasks with marginal gains in end-user values (like CSS, aggregating data for presentation, prototyping UI), can be done quickly and iteratively in a couple of minutes with AI (Code Interpreter is my favorite tool for anything analytics-related).

• People who were silo-ing technical information as a moat now have to look elsewhere to be competitive, which gives out students at Get Coding an advantage by putting their past experiences (as managers, team players, educators, etc..) up front.

• Technical knowledge is being democratized fast, so now it comes down to how developers bring value to the end user (not by remembering some weird syntax, obviously)

How have you evolved your coaching methods since starting at Get Coding?

I went through the full cycle of some text

• The newbie: Am I good enough to coach? 😰

• The over-confident: Why does this feel like a power trip? 😎

• The over-thinker: Is there any science behind coaching? 🤔

• The enlightened: Why am I noticing first-time managers making silly mistakes like taking over a task when the team member is struggling instead of giving them room to learn and support to grow?

In a nut shell, it became more about the student and their needs. Now I provide just-in-time feedbacks, guidance and nudges rather than more hand-holding help.

Do you use any techniques to maintain students' motivation?

One thing I learned from doing sales is people aren’t motivated to buy because of the sales pitch but because they felt understood.

Using the same techniques, a coach can get surprisingly great results if we make sure our student felt heard (lean hard on asking questions rather than giving direct answers)

Afterwards, things just fall into place. I highly recommend trying it.

Are there any things that you have learned while being a coach that you applied to your regular work life?

I found myself treating people with more patience and empathy, and that’s because I’ve put in the reps each week with Get Coding.

A person’s life and career transformation happens in real-time in front of my eyes every week and it’s a privilege to witness these moments. We coaches are very lucky.

Are there any new technologies or tools you strongly recommend students explore?

Scott Stevenson (CEO @ Spellbook) wrote a bunch of cool blogs about how developers like to treat tools as an end instead of what they are: a means. I try my best to influence our students’ thinking so they identify a cool project idea, map out how they can build it, and choose the tools to get there.

Problem solvers rather than tool users.

In your opinion, what is the role of coaches' feedback in the learning process of programming?

Short feedback loops play a huge role in learning (I just happen to be building in this area, so I’m passionate about it).

Get Coding’s satisfaction rate is high is because the lag time between when a question is asked by a student to when it’s answered is shorter than anywhere else.

Radical Candor by Kim Scott is a great book recommended to me by Greg Smyth (a mentor/friend). The gist of it is: our students are owed just-in-time and candor feedbacks. When we’re holding back information, we’re not helping anyone and potentially hinder their growth. But when in doubt, lean-in on empathy.

What is the best advice you would give to students starting their journey in programming?

Understand your motivation for why you want to learn coding (any reason is fine, as long as you’re honest with yourself. For me, the initial attraction was the lifestyle - working in casual office environment, snippets of The Social Network (the movie), etc... Now I’m building my own product and love it when design partners react positively to things I build, but that came much later and after I got over the hurdle of learning the basics.)

When feeling unmotivated, go back to that place.

Again, it only works if you’re being honest with yourself.

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