Episode 03 · Tech with Oben · Season 1 ·
10 Years in Tech, Software & Cloud
Christina Moore on a decade in software and cloud — messy first jobs, real mistakes, imposter syndrome, and what actually helped her grow.
About this episode
In this episode of Things I Wish I Knew, Oben sits down with Christina Moore — manager at Social Finance UK — for an honest look at a decade in tech that didn’t start with “love of tech for tech’s sake.” You’ll hear how she walked into a tiny, wild-west first job with almost no Unix, learned Python on the fly, and still found room to experiment (GraphQL, Vue, the works). Then the war stories: the cron job that took down an email server overnight, and the messaging MVP that looked slick for tens of users and fell apart at hundreds. She talks about what a good mentor does in those moments — and why she still tells those stories on purpose. Expect a clear through-line on choosing people over domain (why she left visual effects for a “boring” manufacturing product job because of one brilliant CTO), how imposter syndrome softens but doesn’t vanish, and a practical way to think about junior → mid → senior: it’s less about titles and more about how far past your keyboard you’re willing to look. The second half goes into her move from full stack into cloud and DevOps — not a glossy roadmap, but learning by doing on AWS (and some Azure), what cloud vs DevOps means in plain English, and how to prove you’ve learned tools without building a Frankenstein portfolio. They close with AI: use it, don’t worship it, keep enough craft to catch hallucinations — plus live Q&A from the community on cloud careers, Azure in the UK, data analytics side-paths, and fighting anxiety on projects. If you’re early in your career, mid-level and restless, or just tired of polished advice that skips the messy middle, this recording is the conversation you’d want saved.