42: Ep. 42 | Making Silly Software with Christina Martinez

Erika (00:00) Welcome to the Overcommit podcast, your weekly dose of real engineering conversations. I am your host this week, Erica, and I’m joined by…

Brittany Ellich (00:08) Hey, I’m Brittany.

Bethany (00:09) Hi, I’m Bethany.

Erika (00:10) The three of us met while working on a team at GitHub and quickly realized we are all obsessed with getting better at what we do. So we decided to start this podcast to share what we’ve learned. We’ll be talking about everything from leveling up your technical skills to navigating your professional development, all with the goal of creating a community where engineers can learn and connect. Today on Overcommitted, we are joined by Christina Martinez, a developer experience engineer from Resend and a passionate

advocate for making silly software. So welcome, Christina!

Christina Martinez (00:43) Thank you, I’m excited to be here.

Erika (00:45) To kick us off, what’s one thing you are currently building or obsessed with learning with right now?

Christina Martinez (00:50) Yeah, well, I’ll start with something mostly aimed at Brittany right now. We are fiber arts friends. She crochets and I knit. So I’m learning how to make custom knitting patterns. So I made my recent sock. So that’s one thing. And then I have two others. One is I’m getting really into old electronic nostalgia lately. So you can see if you’re listening, have like a…

Macintosh from 1995 behind me in my office and I’m working on getting that online. I bought an iPod Nano recently, so working on that. And then the third thing is events. I’ve been to a ton of events with my new job at Resend and now we’re working on organizing some more like dev meetups and things like that for 2026. And so really breaking down like what makes events worthwhile and fun and exciting to go to and

figuring out all the logistics. So that’s been a new challenge for me. I’ve been in just a software engineering role for quite a while. And so it’s like new kind of soft skills challenges, which has been interesting.

Erika (01:53) very cool. Yeah, I always feel like the end of the year there’s a lot of nostalgia with like the year look back in general. But yeah, anything like early tech is also fun. I was reminded of the like 2000s music video moment where like the Kelly Rowland was like texting, trying to like text through an Excel spreadsheet on her like Nokia. Yeah, and that one music video.

Anyway, I had forgotten about that. I responded about it this morning. I was like, oh my gosh, that’s so funny. Yeah.

Christina Martinez (02:24) It’s always so fun to look back at old movies and stuff and see the tech that they had. It’s just great.

Erika (02:29) Yeah, Reminder that we’re all human and tech moves fast. Cool. Well, we have to ask about some of these really fun projects that you have.

done in your time as a software engineer. You are the creative mind behind the Gen Z Babel plugin and the ⁓ Swift commits tool. And you say that you’re kind of on this big.

push for silly software and that you prefer it over standard corporate apps. So what’s kind of the creative process there? Are you actively hunting for ways to make coding a little more fun and ridiculous, or did the ideas kind of come as a natural discovery?

Christina Martinez (03:16) I think it comes kind of naturally. I appreciate kind of like boring software and even like the company that I work for that could be categorized as boring, it’s emails. And that’s really important to keep the infrastructure intact and working how it should be. But I think it makes it really fun and exciting to work on things that are a little more creative. so, yeah, I think I use…

silly software in two ways. One is like, I just learned a concept. I want to apply it somehow and kind of like practice, but I want to make it kind of fun instead of just building like another to do app or a calculator app or something. And so one example of that was I wanted to learn about web sockets. And so that’s when I built the mux worst video player that we can talk about a little later, but

I wanted to see how can I use this technology to make something that’s really cursed and terrible and fun and funny. And so that’s one way, is starting with the technology. And then the second way is starting with an idea that I wanted to get to. So the Babble plugin that you were talking about, started with just a joke Instagram video from someone else, ⁓ a guy named Justin. And he…

was making a joke about what if people could code in Gen Z slang. And I was like, I bet you could totally make that happen. And so found a way to make it happen by figuring out what tools you could use. And so those are my two approaches. But I like to add a little twist so that it’s a little more interesting than just doing the same thing and following a tutorial or whatever it may be.

Erika (04:51) For sure, yeah. Well, that’s a good perspective. It’s not even necessarily like the… It sounds like it is the software, but it’s also kind of the approach and the mindset. You can kind of find joy in either the idea or the way you’re going about it. yeah, make it fun.

Yeah, worst actual, it’s the actual worst video player is hilarious. So it’s the idea, like, you literally make everyone suffer when one person pauses the video.

Christina Martinez (05:25) yeah, yep. Yeah, it was a kind of a hackathon style, like competition for mucks. And they were trying to see who could build the worst video player with their tools. And obviously like it still had to work, but it needed to be terrible. So yeah, was all the controls are complicated and, and you control the experience for everyone else. So that was a really fun project to work on. And I learned a lot about WebSockets.

Erika (05:49) Nice. So that one you worked on by yourself in like a hackathon style, but you’ve also collaborated with other people on some of these other projects. So how does that energy change when you’re working on something by yourself versus collaborating with somebody else or a team?

Christina Martinez (06:08) Yeah, I think when you’re working on things by yourself, you have more control over the project itself and the ways that it’s going to go and what the final product is. But it can also be really fun and empowering to find someone that’s like-minded and has a similar goal and things that they want to learn as well. And they’re able to take the projects in ways that you could never expect. And I think of it as like…

I’m not a comedian at all, with improv comedy, it’s like a yes and type of attitude where people like add on to your idea. And I think finding someone that’s like that and you’re able to kind of like riff off each other and make the project better. I think that’s what you need to look for when you’re looking for a partner or like group to work on things and hackathons or just side projects like this.

Erika (06:54) Cool. And I mentioned the Swift commits tool. Do you want to describe that one?

Christina Martinez (07:00) Yeah, that’s just,

if you’ve used better commits, it’s just a fork of that. The goal of better commits is to actually make your commit messages better with the semantic commit styling. But this one is a Taylor Swift version of that. So you choose the era that you want to use, and then you can choose different lyrics. And it needs to describe how you feel about your code. And then that’s your commit message.

Yeah, that was a fun project. I pulled a lot of my favorite quotes out of her songs for that and it was great. I don’t think anyone has ever used it, so that’s okay.

Brittany Ellich (07:33) I have to now though.

Christina Martinez (07:35) Yeah,

Bethany (07:36) Yeah,

Christina Martinez (07:36) I

Bethany (07:36) I was going to say.

Christina Martinez (07:36) want this in production at GitHub, you know?

Bethany (07:38) Yeah, we’ll have to pull some strings.

Christina Martinez (07:40) You

Bethany (07:41) Speaking of that intersection of work and silliness and things like that, I’m curious if you have any tools or tricks on how to bring joy to your day-to-day work if you try to bring that levity into your daily job or if you’re like, ⁓ no, this is just for my side projects and I’m treating work in a different way.

Christina Martinez (08:07) ⁓ yeah, I think I’d say the side projects are a way sort of to get it out of my system a little bit so that I can be serious at work. So I’m not like the class clown at work, like trying to be silly all the time. but yeah, I do try to be human at work and not just, you know, clock in and clock out that type of thing. So relationships at work are really important for me. I like to have friends and, get along and

be lighthearted and things. But yeah, like I think the team that you work for and the bosses that you work for are really important to me personally. And I would take a much lower salary just to be at a place where I feel kind of at home and trusted and that I can trust my team and that sort of thing. So finding the right spot to be is just so important.

Bethany (08:53) Yeah, absolutely. think fun is such a core aspect to how a team works together. Like if a team can have fun together, that’s, I think, the sign of a healthy team. So I like that, like take your work seriously, but like be human, have fun, joke around. Yeah, that makes sense. Do you think that by being a developer experience engineer,

Christina Martinez (09:03) Good one.

Bethany (09:15) allows you to have more of that fun than maybe a traditional software engineering role or was it just something that you felt was more tailored to your experience or your skill set?

Christina Martinez (09:25) Yeah, I do think it provides more opportunities. I started in marketing and kind of like learned to code on the side while I was doing this marketing job at a tech company and got into coding that way. So then I was a software engineer and led a small team and that sort of thing for some time. And now I’m back kind of almost in the middle of those two things. And it’s been really fun so far to

work on code still and need to use my technical skills as well. But be back in a little bit of a role where it’s like more creative, some soft skills, getting to have a big say in the product by talking to customers and seeing what they want and need from our tools, that sort of thing.

Resend has been very kind to me with allowing me different creative opportunities. Like at SuperBase Select this year, I built like an installation, like an interactive type of exhibit where we printed out a bunch of like famous emails or emails that changed the world is what we called it. And people could go and hang those on the wall, like their favorite emails. And this included like…

the first email sent from space, the first spam email. Queen Elizabeth II was the first head of state to send an email, and so there’s one from her, stuff like that. so people could print them out, put them on the wall, they could take it home in a frame, and it was like a really fun project for me to work on. And so I feel like those types of things are really interesting to me, aside from just coding all the time, which is also a fun, creative…

job, but it’s just like a nice mix of the two.

Bethany (10:59) That makes so much sense. That’s really cool that you’re able to combine all your experience to this one job that’s almost tailored to you. What drove you to? Yeah, which is so cool. I love when that happens because it’s sometimes when you switch positions, mean, a lot of us switched from what we thought we were going to be. You’re like, well, did I just waste all those years of doing something else? ⁓

Christina Martinez (11:07) Yeah, this feels very custom fit for me.

Bethany (11:25) but usually it actually is a superpower in a way towards the, as you move on. So that’s so cool. ⁓

Christina Martinez (11:31) Yeah, it does feel strange

to be coding less because at part of my career, I had made that decision. It was like a fork in the road of like, okay, no, I want to be an engineer. And so I moved into that and away from marketing. So it feels weird to go kind of like back a little bit, but it’s not a regression so far. It’s been really empowering and fun and a cool job.

Bethany (11:53) Absolutely. I mean, it’s all valuable skills in the long run. And it’s all valuable things for developers and making people happy at the end of the day. So I think that’s really cool. What drove you to learn the technical side of things for marketing? Was there any key switch that led you down that path?

Christina Martinez (12:13) Yeah, I, in my marketing job, I was mostly like kind of a project manager type of role where I was coordinating different promotions and campaigns that we had. And one of the jobs that we had to do like pretty infrequently, but still like probably once a month or so we would have to edit like these just really basic HTML pages and swap out some products and like change things around. And when the graphic designers would come to me and say like, Hey, can we

add some padding here or like change a color. I had no idea what I was doing and I hated that. It just felt terrible to be really bad at a part of my job ⁓ that was recurrent, even though it was like so rare. So after a rough ⁓ Black Friday season where I was like pulled away from my family trying to edit pages and this sort of thing, I…

decided that I needed to learn and just like buckle down. And I expected to hate every minute of it. I joined this code academy course and it was like a learning path or something like that. But almost like a very mini like self-paced bootcamp. And after that, I learned everything that I needed to know for that marketing job, but I fell in love with coding. It was so just empowering to start with an empty file and end up with whatever was in my brain basically.

And so that just got me hooked and I couldn’t set it down. So it was like my side hobby. I asked my company that I was working for if I could just like practice a couple hours a week. So they gave me little jobs that I could do. And then that turned into a job offer on like a MarTech front end team and then eventually a product team that was a full stack job. So that was, that’s kind of my path. It’s a weird kind of roundabout path, but

I’m really glad that it happened. was a lot of fun to learn that way. They were so kind to me to allow me those opportunities and take chances on me when I was so green and fresh.

Bethany (14:04) Yeah, I think those kinds of things are so nice when that happens because it’s, I mean, when you go to college, you go the traditional path. Sometimes you are passionate about it, but usually it’s for like a greater good of earning money or doing whatnot, which still you got to earn money. But like when you’re doing it through that route, it’s something that it’s truly out of passion. It’s truly out of like an interest. And I think that’s such a great motive for it.

doing like the like technical things or programming and stuff like that. So that is so cool. Is there anything that you’re wanting to or you’re feeling like you should learn more today or anything that’s like on your radar to learn more about moving forward?

Christina Martinez (14:36) Yeah, definitely.

Yeah, I mean, I’m always trying to work on my technical skills, even though nowadays I’m using them a little bit less than at my pure software engineering job. but I think kind of like I mentioned before, the events has been really big on my mind. ⁓ my company is fairly small. have, I think 29 employees now. but we’re growing a lot and wanting to host more events and be more involved in a community. And so trying to solve that puzzle where we haven’t really had.

that at all before and I’m not used to it either. It’s not been a focus of mine at all. I think that’s been something that’s really interesting to me. So I’ve been to several events this past, I don’t know, six months or so and looking to host our own starting in January. So that’ll be so exciting.

Brittany Ellich (15:30) That’s awesome. You’ll definitely have to let us know once you have some scheduled, if there are any that we can help share. ⁓ I met a bunch of the recent team at Cascadia JS this year and they’re all super cool. Yeah, in 3D, where people actually have bodies. was weird. So one of the themes that I feel like we come back to a lot.

Christina Martinez (15:36) Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, it was good to see you in real life.

Yeah, real person.

Brittany Ellich (15:56) on this show is like the idea of storytelling. And it sounds like with your marketing background, like you probably have like an opinion about how, you know, a narrative is really important for, you know, telling a story, even as an engineer, even if you’re like doing something really technical. So I’m curious what your thoughts are on like storytelling and investing in those, that skill set as a software engineer or ⁓ as an engineer who’s like blending marketing and engineering like you are now.

Christina Martinez (16:22) Yeah, I think it is really overlooked. A lot of times we focus on building the coolest thing possible and we pour all our energy into it. And then when it gets to sharing it, we just don’t know what to do, I guess. And so then it doesn’t really go anywhere because people don’t know that they should be excited about it or spend time learning about it. And so I guess one example of storytelling

being involved in the product decisions, I guess, is that Mux video player that I did. The tech itself wasn’t anything impressive or exciting, really. It was more about the story that helped the random controls come together in a cohesive thing that you could talk about. So I could just have a bunch of random controls that are just really terrible, and that’s also like…

of a cursed video player, but I made it into a story about like, this is inspired by those group projects in school that everyone hates where like, one person’s input can like negatively impact everyone else. And so that kind of drove all of the decisions that I made as I was trying to figure out like, what controls to add and that sort of thing. But I feel like that helped sell it a little bit more and helped

⁓ It was a competition so I ended up winning the competition and flying to New York for Versailleship and they like Treated me so well the entire time. It was so great but yeah, I guess like being able to sell your story and it like I don’t know it sounds like I’m being very like marketing business person right now of like talking about selling and stuff but You need to think of it as not just being

like a salesperson, like faithfully telling the story of like what the product is and like why you’re so excited about it. And I think that helps people to understand more of where you’re coming from and get excited with you about this thing that you built.

Brittany Ellich (18:16) Yeah, for sure. I feel like that’s super important. And yeah, I get the hesitation around calling it like selling. But I feel like it’s important not only for, when you release a product to the external world, you know, where you might hopefully you have some marketing support to like talk about it. But it’s also important internally. I’ve read so many posts like internal announcements where it’s like, here’s the thing and we shipped this thing and now it is shipped. And it’s like, okay, like.

Great, like why do we care about it? Like how many customers is it gonna solve? Like what are their pain points and like how does this address them? ⁓ I feel like having that narrative around what it is is like a very important skill regardless of where you’re at in your career. So.

Christina Martinez (18:54) Yeah,

there’s just so much to care about all the time that people have to be selective and choose what are the most important things. So I feel like that’s the main goal of like creating a story.

Brittany Ellich (19:03) Yeah, absolutely. Are there any other skills that you feel like you’ve sort of like have as a little bit of a superpower having that marketing background that like crossover to engineering other than the narrative and storytelling?

Christina Martinez (19:16) ⁓ that’s a good question. think, since, I don’t know, there’s like a stereotype of what software engineers are, which is not true at all, by the way. But like, I never got into the software engineering growing up and stuff, even though there were several signs along the way that maybe it would be an interesting career for me, just because I didn’t see myself as like a math person or-

someone who’s really into Star Trek or like, you know, that sort of thing. And so I think I bring like different soft skills and things that aren’t always present with engineers. But as I’ve like kind of gotten deeper into this career path, I found that many of them are that way anyways. And it’s just like a stereotype that, you know, you’d have to be really into math or like, yeah, that.

you’ve been building computers in your mom’s basement since you were 12 or whatever the thing is. But yeah, I think like being able to connect people and build relationships and stuff has been like a fun surprise for me at my last company when I was an engineer. I had friends at work, but we didn’t really go out into the broader like tech industry as a whole. We were kind of like siloed on our own. And so in this new role, it’s been really fun to

meet people from different companies and go to conferences and like start to form those relationships. And that’s caught me off guard, especially as an introvert that I just wasn’t expecting that that would be a superpower of mine, I guess.

Brittany Ellich (20:42) Yeah, it’s amazing how much talking you actually have to do in this role where, you know, everybody’s like, you’re only using a computer. No, there’s, there’s a lot involved in getting people on board and, ⁓ yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. ⁓ and speaking of events, you are going to be speaking at React Miami, correct? Is this your first speaking role or have you done these in the past?

Christina Martinez (20:53) Yeah.

Yeah, I am, yeah.

It’s my first one.

I’m really nervous. Any tips? Let me know.

Brittany Ellich (21:08) Congrats. ⁓

That’s awesome. Congrats. What made you want to like sign up? Do you know what you’re talking about already or?

Christina Martinez (21:16) I do know what I’m talking about already. I’m gonna try to convince people that they should build more silly software. So kind of have a theme going here. But I didn’t really sign up. I met Michelle, the organizer of React Miami, this summer at at Versailleship. And we got along great and kept in contact afterwards and stuff, and she asked me to speak and so…

that’s what’s gonna happen. So I think I’m scared to death about it. I am not a public speaker. I’ve never done anything like this before, but I think that being scared of something is not a good reason to not try it. And so I’m gonna see. And if I hate it, I’ll never do another talk again. So we’ll see.

Brittany Ellich (21:57) Yeah, there you go. Yeah, I don’t think anybody

would be like, no, you have to do more speaking. ⁓ Yeah, I think that speaking at tech events has been like one of the most fun ways to get involved at them in my experience. And like, I’ve never been to one where there are people in the audience like actively saying, no, this person sucks. Like everybody’s always like cheering for you, especially with that topic. That’s gonna be, yeah, everybody’s gonna be super excited about it.

Christina Martinez (22:02) Yeah.

Okay, that’s good to hear. Yeah, because you’ve spoken quite a bit, right?

Brittany Ellich (22:26) this last year was the first time I’ve done, quite a bit. And yeah, I did like a couple of like meetups and like larger than meetups before that. And now this last year, I actually just hung up some conference badges yesterday and it’s like, wow, I’ve got like a little collection going. I feel like a big kid now. ⁓ I’ve done a few and yeah, I, ⁓ I want to keep doing more. So hopefully you’ll get the same bug and you’re like, yes, this is the way to engage in events. And, ⁓ yeah.

Christina Martinez (22:41) fun.

Yeah, yeah, that’s good to

hear because I think I’m just like focusing on myself and what my experience is going to be and so it’ll be nice to engage in a different way in those events. So that’s a good way to look at it.

Erika (23:01) Mm.

Well, we are going to switch gears here at the end. This has all been fun, but we have a segment specifically dedicated to talking about something we think is fun and interesting and potentially not strictly software related. And you mentioned that you studied abroad in Spain for a year. You actually owned a business in Spain. So and you said you’d always go back there whenever given a

chance. So selfishly I want some travel tips and ideas and we’ll all go around Robin’s style and share our favorite place in the world where we would recommend everyone goes if they have a chance. So I can start.

I’ve been lucky enough to go to Switzerland twice. My heritage, my family’s heritage is Swiss. And it’s like everything I love. Like it’s so like healthy, like the air is…

wonderfully fresh and like clean and you you spend your days like hiking and there’s like cows and cute little chalets and would literally go anytime at the drop of a hat. So I don’t have like a specific

place in Switzerland. I was like younger when I went so I don’t even really remember exactly which cities. So I’m gonna say the country of Switzerland which leaves it very broad but yeah outdoorsy activities in Switzerland is my my recommendation.

Brittany Ellich (24:32) I can go next. Yep. Okay. Cool. My recommendation is, well, I would say not as far, but I guess it depends on where you’re listening from. Because if you’re in Europe, Switzerland’s probably more easier to get to. But my recommendation is Hood River, Oregon, which probably doesn’t sound like…

super exciting. But like if I were to buy a vacation home somewhere, it would absolutely be there. It’s on the Columbia River Gorge, which is the river between Oregon and Washington. I try to go at least once a year just to go there. And like it’s on this beautiful river, like with all these canyons around and they have a lot of, they have what’s called the fruit loop there where there’s all these different farms you can stop at and they just grow so much fruit there that it’s like super fun.

the summer to go like farm to farm to just pick up different fruits whatever they specialize in. Lots of wine tasting and just some of the most gorgeous mountain views and river views and nice people so highly recommend that one.

Bethany (25:32) Oregon genuinely is like one of the most incredible places, the Pacific Northwest in general. I fell in love there. My mind went in so many different places, so I’m just gonna kind of be a little chaotic with it. Part of me is selfish and wants everybody to come to Charlotte, where I live because I think that it’s underrated and I love it and I want other people to love it too. But…

for a more exciting, I guess, or out there, recs. I was really surprised by Boston. Me and my husband decided to go there on a whim and it was actually really fun, like, super historic but also very modern and it just was a really cool vibe. And then Japan, I feel like everybody who’s been to Japan has to recommend it, but it truly was so special. We went to Tokyo and Kyoto and it was such a cool culture to…

to realize and kind of what you were talking about, Christina, about like forcing yourself to be a little uncomfortable in places. Like you’re like, oh, I don’t really, I don’t know Japanese. I don’t know the language. I don’t know like all the customs or anything. And so it’s cool to kind of like push yourself and explore beyond what your comfort zone is. that was definitely like an, stretching myself and stretching my comfort zone. And it was so special, hoping to go back soon.

Christina Martinez (26:42) Man, I’m jealous of Japan. I’ve been lobbying the powers that be at Resend that our next offsite needs to be in Japan, so we’ll see. My recommendation is Spain, like you mentioned. I am obsessed with Spain. I love it so much. I’ve spent some time there and I think there’s many good places to go. I think the most, like, classically Spanish with, like, all the architecture and the, like, flamenco and all the things that you think of.

and like most highest concentration of like interesting things to look at and do would be Sevilla and I think though like the city that’s closest to my heart is Malaga which is just like on the coast. It’s like the perfect city in my opinion. It’s right on the beach and has great weather, walkable and like interesting museums and things to do and so that’s like that’s really close to where I lived when I was in Spain.

But those are two of my recommendations. And you can go on a trip and see them both in the same trip because they’re pretty close by. So yeah, I think that’s my recommendation.

Erika (27:41) Definitely adding it to the list. Well, thank you again, Christina, for joining us. Where is the best place for people to find you on the internet?

Christina Martinez (27:50) I think ⁓ ChristinaCodes.dev has all the other links to go elsewhere. And I’m launching a new newsletter at SillySoftware.club. Hasn’t been released yet. Hopefully by the time that this episode airs, it will be. But yeah.

Erika (28:06) Thank you listeners for tuning in to Overcommit It. If you like what you hear, please do follow, subscribe, or do whatever it is you like to do on the podcast app of your choice. Check us out on Blue Sky and share with your friends. Quick plug for our book club. Whatever time you’re listening to this.

it’s kicking off in mid-December and by the time this comes out it’ll probably be running for a bit and there’s great content to catch up on, discussions, yeah great great book club content to engage with so definitely check it out and until next week, goodbye!