--- title: "An interview with Anastasiya Flynn from Sitecore JSS" description: "In this video I’m interviewing Anastasiya Flynn from Sitecore. Anastasiya is a full-stack developer and currently works at Sitecore, a marketing platform with advanced content personalization features, as the Front-End Technical Evangelist." date: "2020-02-21T08:29:31.000Z" url: "https://timbenniks.dev/videos/tim/105-pwqvqnnopiy" youtube_url: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwqVQnnoPIY" playlist: "tim" image: "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/pwqVQnnoPIY/maxresdefault.jpg" tags: ["cms", "personalization", "frontend", "devrel", "career"] --- # An interview with Anastasiya Flynn from Sitecore JSS In this video I’m interviewing Anastasiya Flynn from Sitecore. Anastasiya is a full-stack developer and currently works at Sitecore, a marketing platform with advanced content personalization features, as the Front-End Technical Evangelist. Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwqVQnnoPIY ## Transcript what's up and welcome back to the channel today I'm interviewing Anastacio Flynn with the site called JSS software evangelist who gets a mouthful so she evangelizes the jss product of site core as sitecore is actually a very big CMS that's highly flexible in skills like crazy so the jss part is actually a piece of software that makes site code work in a headless way so we can now build a few GS application that standalone or and react or angular app that then connects to site core in a very elegant way size course still maintains its content editing possibilities and experiences but we can also still now create a super cool front-end app so this is a complex piece of software that needs to be known and needs to be explained to the community but this is what anastasiya does and she does it well so in the interview we dive deep into what she does and how she landed that job and how she feels about working in our community ok let's get to it I think the hardest thing about my job is the public speaking and because I mean so many people are terrified of public speaking right and and they they tell me like I don't understand how you can do it how you can get up there in front of all of these people and just do your thing and you know the first the first time I did it before I became an evangelist I was nearly having a panic attack but then after you keep doing it and you realize like it's not a big deal it's just like having you're just talking like like right now like the talk to you about I'm just telling you about my project about something I build about you know something I've worked on then yeah I've learned doing this quite often that actually when you just know your subject really well and you research that part in that scope you can speak really well nobody's gonna refute you when you're on that stage it's your space at that moment right and you have to be honest if you don't know clearly yeah if you're speaking about something that you just know high-level then speak high-level and people ask you questions then you just say you don't know like yeah honesty so important in my job because the developers are so smart and they know when you're just you know giving them marketing fluff or sugarcoating something so you don't have to be completely honest and yeah so now that we're on that topic actually I want to know more about it because you kind of moved from her like an agency and then you went into like this corporate product company what was the difference for you oh well you know when I was working in an agency um I was a senior dev for a while and then I was usually leading teams and you know they never put the seniors together on the same teams so the people I knew for a long time we were broken up across teams so I think the hardest thing about working in teams in agencies is that your your team is always changing because they have the senior people there and then they try to bringing the new guys the contractors under you so you can mentor them so the the team is always changing it's it's hard to build these long-term bonds and as soon as you you know become friends or you just simply like learn somebody's code style you start messing with somebody you use you know you stop taking offense to you know the code review comments and you learn each other's personalities like as soon as that happens like there's some rotation you know the project shifts and it's all new people and coming into site core I I didn't know what to expect because it's such a big company and I thought there would be so many people I would feel so alone but it's been the opposite we have this small team of evangelists and it really feels like a family I mean we're so close and we're all over the world I'm the only one in the US but I mean we talk online all the time we have meetings and we see each other at events and whenever we we go to events are our boss Peter he always makes sure that we have like team building stuff that's outside of work that's just having fun and so I really liked these the stable team and really you know building a bond yeah I can kind of get that like a true investment right but that also means you kind of have to really agree with the product and the course they are taking in this case with front-end stuff so do you well I guess you do but do you see anything that you might do differently or something like that you know that's a great question I last told not last arias in 2018 I I was considering leaving site core or just the cycle world because I really wanted more JavaScript in my life I wanted to go work for somewhere where I could you know be more involved in front end and this was right before Jesus went public and then I saw this job come up and I applied for it and I got it and like this kind of you know real it my passion for the 4sight core and kept me in this and yes I totally think jezus that the headless gem stack I mean that is the future that is that's what scales that's what has the best performance that's what gives you the most flexibility for how you build your front-end it's you know gives you those cool modern websites I totally believe in in the product that that I evangelize you're actually offend utilizing now I like it so what what so what makes you actually a good if Angeles what do you think got you this job for example like I said um honesty is very important and I think I'm very honest with with the developers ie I listen to their to their feedback in the beginning we had some some some messaging out there about jss that you know we thought the workflows and you know like we we thought it would be one way and then I I went and I got myself involved in client and client projects where clients were unhappy and I wanted to know like why are you unhappy what challenges they are you having and I took all that feedback back to marketing and made sure that our decks were updated our messaging was updated you know so I'm not trying to to just be a talking head for the company I'm trying to actually be an advocate for our community so and I really care that the community is being successful with with with JSS you know I so I I want to do everything I can for them so you know I'm one of those because I actually work with JSS and also on pretty big scale and so I think we've been quite successful with a couple of projects and now we are going in another one where it's a bit more challenging and but actually it's not JSS or the frameworks you chose that make it challenging what we noticed is actually if you want to do well this is some terminology for sidecar so we have to maybe I'll explain that later in the intro but like we can go completely code first from the front end and in this case it was a react project and then what we noticed that we would be it was a little bit challenging to get it into the connected mode into site core and we've heard a bit about this um but it's actually fine we'll figure it out buffet but how do you let's say put JSS there in such a way that people who don't really know Sitecore can actually be super successful on their own with it do you have some sort of idea about how to do that or is it just it maybe it takes time maybe you need to figure out what's happening here we are right now there's I don't think it's possible for somebody who doesn't know psycho at all to just go in there code first and and build and architect the solution that's long-term maintainable and that's gonna work for complex multi-site projects that's still Sitecore right so you need to know what you're dealing with I think I think that's it's possible for embedded apps which is where you have a jaysis app that's just encapsulated on one page you know it's maybe some kind of interest calculator or you know like some kind of so like that's really just a react project or a review project in that case it's so encapsulated and and you know it doesn't have it doesn't need to worry about the business logic of multi-site and all the other templates in the case I think it can work but otherwise I think the front-end devs who are coming in need to have they don't need to go in and learn you know back-end stuff about psych but they need to go and poke around and see the experienced editors Caesar clear because because you're building for it for two interfaces you're building for the front end and you're building for the authoring experience so they should go in and poke around see what the authoring experience is like and just learn some of these site core concepts and right now we we know that and we were redoing our jss fundamentals course and adding that you know psych core concepts stuff into it too you know like as an introductory section for fernandes oh that's awesome because I come from some psycho background so I know all these things so I I assume them and it's fine but then when you hire some people and they they don't it's like oh oh yeah yeah it's like war but anyways this interview is not really about site core I want to know more about you because you're doing so well in the community and I just went over your Twitter feed they have so many pictures where you're with people and sidecar stuff but also non sidecar stuff and your react courses things I think that's great so I've been really lucky to meet some awesome people in the conferences I've been to I mean I know you're in the view world and I think you've had the same experiences because I've seen your photos with the view folks yeah it's quite similar I guess yeah yeah like you you see these these people on Twitter and and they they just seem like they're you know such celebrities and you think that when you meet them they will just be so standoffish and like so sick of being talked to but when you need them they're just so nice and they're so willing to talk to you and get to know you yeah well this is one part I really like because in the end they're also just a bunch of people that trying to do cool stuff right exactly and they're doing this because they care about us they Caribbean but this there's still a valid question here because when I look at your Twitter feed let's say it looks like everything you touch is amazing it all works it looks good it might be curated a bit of course but the question is like people who are successful there's also some mistakes and failures inside this to make you so good at what you are so do you have an example of something that you've had in your career or at home or something like that that actually made you better that at the time felt bad or like a mistake or something like that Wow that's not an easy question well I mean of course there's daily things that you know it's not just all me we everything that my team puts out we have are somebody else from from the team look over it so any kind of content that we produce it's a team effort sure we catch each other's small mistakes and you know if there's something wrong like the videos I put out those aren't my raw videos okay they go through post-production in Camtasia and I take out some poms and you know I so and I won't be doing that in this one right okay no I see um so much I hate hearing myself do conference presentations I can't list them um okay oh you just get one okay let's go to the next let's go we go to the next No so actually we just talked about it when we start I do want to like real deep thing that I I don't usually talk about but I hope this inspires other people I dropped out of my the first college I went to it's because well I was really really perfect student in high school you know I got straight A's it was really easy for me I was a smart kid and so I got this full scholarship to a prestigious engineering school and so when I got there it was just everybody was smart and it was really difficult for me and I was going to school during the week and working on the weekends and I it was really overwhelming and I ended up it was too much like I I give up right I I ended up dropping out and and I well I got serious in my relationship and I I had a child as as a team so I was a teen mom so some people don't know I have a 13 year old so my life took this whole different turn and at the time I mean I thought you know wow I just really ruined my life like you know because I I don't have a college degree how am I gonna support my family I was a single mom for for 10 years and I just I guess my message to anybody else who might be in a similar situation or maybe they didn't finish school and they're thinking of going back is that it's it's it's always possible I ended up going back to to to college a few years later and it wasn't for engineering it was for computer science and you know might my 20s were really difficult because I was a single mom but now I'm in my early 30s and my son is a teen he's all independent so my career is just thriving so you know it turned out to be really great look at that and I think this is super important that you actually manage to turn it around by using technology right it's kind of like still that I think it's super cool that there's these opportunities of course you have to make them work you did that all on your own I think that's very commendable I think computer science is such a great field for for moms for single moms because well for any moms for for any parent because it lets see you have flexible hours and you can work from home so it's just yeah yeah it's it's amazing and I'm also I think maybe in the u.s. there's a little bit more focus on having a diploma because for example for me I'm in Europe and you believe it by I studied to be a nurse and then I dropped out and then I tried to build a website and now I'm here right so this technology track helps people on both sides right so what made you go back to for me I'm a creative person at heart everything I do is creative stuff and at the moment where I studied for that and I actually worked as a nurse in psychiatry I'm the the the system of health care changed the Netherlands so it became a little bit more like the American Way where everything was paid for in a different way so it's more privatized and a lot of people started complaining and we tried to do solutions creatively where you work but it was just complaining complaining and I started to do that and then I was like who it is not good but I paid for my university by making websites not good once I was young but I thought why not push that a little bit more so actually it was relatively easy because at that time I think we're quite the same age at that time there was so much work just relatively easy to jump in and just try yeah all right so it's very hard to it like yeah I'm creative too I paint I and I'm really drawn to building like really nice you eyes and it's it's it's like an art project it certainly is and it needs iteration to get better like I never do it once and it's just good you always have to get back at it and and this is yeah it's it's a nice process right so did you paint the walls in this room yourself yes this is this is my little bridge because I want to know about that room because it looks so much fun turquoise colors and then there's I love color and then my nook is I have a secret nook and that's pink also I can show you plug so this is where so this house we just moved here okay and it used to be owned by an artist and so she redid the debate the garage into her art studio and so this is above like above that and so it's it's it used to be the Attic so there's like all these nooks everywhere so if you go here this is amazing so this is so I painted this pink and this is where I sometimes lay with my cats and work from here I just wanted to ask where's to get yeah I usually come in by now I have a little I have a little cat door for them oh that's so very cute yeah Claire is usually asleep in here oh yeah how many cats do you have okay well I've three it's all good everybody should own a pet cat or dog it doesn't matter the love of an animal it's like nothing else I never had animals and then my wife came into my life and suddenly even if I said no we still got another one and it's all good now I love it so that was your mistake saying say no because he could have had that that love earlier exactly but yeah I had to learn and now it's so good and now I have a dog in three cats in an apartment in Paris but it works we make it work yeah is there something you argue that that nobody really knows about like of course we already know you're a mom and you have cats and you paint and so you gave it away a little bit I used to take ballroom dancing in Ukraine so I am a pretty good dancer awesome we're from Ukraine are you thank you okay I been many times for work yeah yeah it's a great place okay so that was a very quick answer awesome mm-hmm so there's the one that's another one I always kind of ask because you know it's your job you're doing it really well it's clear otherwise I wouldn't have reached out there is a way we connected but you're in a like a world full of men so is there any sort of bias towards you as a woman working and being so good at it in my in this current job if there is I'm not seeing it to my face okay I think it's actually people want to put female speakers out there so I think it helps me as a developer I saw some bias but as an evangelist I I think that this field is more diverse what I've noticed of what I've heard from other women that are speakers in the beginning it was quite challenging for them to to see okay how do I start speaking and then suddenly this diversity thing happened and they were just pushed forward or they were asked because they were a woman and sometimes it would be like that's super annoying because I'm good about know it's me I'm great it doesn't matter if I'm a woman but then they started to use it to their advantage and actually get amazing speaking gigs and then be so good at it that it became normal that they would speak everywhere did you have a similar experience you know no and any time then I was asked to be involved in like some kind of panel on you know women of psyche or or something like that I don't I never do that because I never want to be up there speaking about being a woman in tech I only want to be on stage talking about tech so that's kind of how I make sure that I'm sending the right message and representing women devs in the right way I think I think just that that first time that I did a talk at symposium it was a really original talk and it got such great feedback and I just I was just really I mean I worked really hard I I'm on that presentation I worked very you know many many hours but I was just like I was just lucky that it was the right time because that symposium was very focused on women of Sitecore they're very focused on elevating women and celebrating women so there are a lot of women at that conference I was told a lot more than they were in the past it was my first symposium so I I didn't know so I think I'm coming into it at the right time I went to diversity tech conference in Atlanta which was all focused about bringing in all different you know minority Oh underrepresented groups in tech and I mean there's there talks were incredible so I mean yeah it's it's it's so great that there's groups pushing me to get these people out there yeah it's a sensitive complicated subject but in the end I would say content always wins exactly and I I would tell organizers to have less panels about you know being a woman being whatever underrepresented group like don't put women on stage and put them in a position to just complain about how hard it is don't like I think that takes takes away from what we're trying to do thanks for that it's very interesting so with that in mind maybe not exactly with that in mind but imagine if you had a billboard and you could put that somewhere let's say on some highway that millions of people would see it and it's like a huge billboard so everybody would see it what would you write on that it wouldn't be words I know exactly what I would put and when you when you post produce this put in that last picture I tweeted of my lab ah I know which picture yes because I think people would just see it and it would make them happy oh yeah it made me certainly happy that's an amazing picture and that's what you need when you're sitting in traffic seeing them seeing a billboard yes exactly I really want to thank you for this and I know sometimes in an interview like this it's hard to open up a bit but there's so much pure gold coming out that people can really use his experiences and used to have use it to further their lives so I want to thank you for doing that and I mean yeah it's super great and I think we should be working together a lot more this sitecore and JSS is it's really the future of sitecore and how it will all work together it might not be there 100% but it's clear like every project we do now goes that way so I hope we get to spend a bit more time together to actually work on this kind of stuff yes yes is the futures for the word yes