July 9, 2020 by Kangni Wang, Sherry Yuan and Daphne Liu

About this event

Yelp’s mission is to connect people with great local businesses, and one of the teams working behind the scenes to make that happen is our five star engineering and product teams.

Playing an active role in our community is a value that we have strongly prioritized over the years. Typically we would invite you to come to Yelp’s HQ to network, grab a slice of ‘za, and learn about the technology and culture behind Yelp. With stay-at-home orders across the globe, Yelp (like many of you) has had no choice but to adapt to these changes. We understand that this is a strange and challenging time for many, so we’d like to invite you to join us as we navigate this new normal for the tech community together.

To stay connected, create space for folks to collaborate and share some of the things Yelp has been working on, we are launching our very own virtual tech talk series. This series of talks will feature Yelpers from engineering and product and will focus on themes such as career development, technical skills, workplace challenges and Yelp’s response to COVID-19.

Talk: Good Products in Tough Times

2020 has fundamentally transformed the landscape for local businesses and the customers they serve. For many of us, where and how we get food, shop, and even exercise are dramatically different than they were four months ago. With this, the need to stay up-to-date and connected with the businesses in our communities is more universal than ever. One of Yelp's newest products, Yelp Connect, is designed to fill this need. Join us as we talk about how we built an idea into a product used by thousands of businesses to help in their fight for survival. We'll explain what Yelp Connect is, how it's helping businesses and consumers in today's environment, and some key product insights we picked up along the way.

Speaker:

Kangni Wang

Talk: Creating Meaningful Data Through Rich Contextual Logging Across Microservice

As engineers, we need data to support our decisions. However, it is a huge step from “we have data” to “we have meaningful data”. At Yelp, we use contextual logging to allow data consumers to connect any data sources. In this talk, Kangni will talk about how contextual logging is adopted across Yelp’s microservices via context propagation, and the challenges we encountered.

Bio: Kangni has been a software engineer on the experimentation team at Yelp for the last 2.5 years. Prior to Yelp, she completed her Bachelor's degree in Computer Science at Harvey Mudd College.

Talk: Fueling Your Career With Coffee Chats

One of the best ways to meet people and launch your career is to set up short chats over coffee. But, there are no guidelines and it can be daunting to start. We'll go over the individual stages of a coffee chat, from asking someone to transforming it into a mentorship. You’ll pick up tools to have meaningful conversations and walk away with a game plan to get started!

Sherry Yuan

Bio: Sherry is an Android engineer at Yelp working on the Yelp for Business Owners Android app. Prior to starting at Yelp, she studied computer science at the University of British Columbia, where she started a coffee chat program with Daphne. She is passionate about Android development, diversity in tech, and creative and technical writing.

Daphne Liu

Bio: Daphne is an Android engineer who enjoys meeting new people and branching out outside her team. She shares her interests in tech, mentorship and diversity by speaking at conferences, writing blogs, and being involved with the Women in CS club she founded at her university. She is currently finishing up her last year of school at the University of British Columbia.

Moderator:

Jorgen Augustenborg

Bio: Jorgen has been at Yelp for over 3 years as an Events & Partnerships specialist. Prior to Yelp, he studied International Affairs at James Madison University and worked in recruiting at Google. Jorgen has lived in six different countries but currently resides in San Francisco.