80: From Math Teacher to Developer Community Manager, with Roxy Rodriguez-Becker

Roxy Rodriguez-Becker taught middle school math, moved into the school library after earning a master's in library and information science, and then taught herself to code while raising three kids. She is now a developer community manager at Torc and the host of the She Ships podcast. In this episode she walks through what that transition actually required: the four AM club, waking up to study until she rushed out the door to a five AM gym session, working through 100Devs, and treating the job search as a numbers game with fifty to sixty outreach messages a week. She is candid about the burnout that followed and what it took to come back from it.The conversation also digs into networking as a skill rather than a personality trait. Roxy describes going to her first conference and barely speaking, then meeting her future colleagues at the second one, and shares tactics that work for socially awkward people. We also talk about the Tube Feed Tracker, the web app she built after watching ICU nurses struggle with feed rate math for her medically complex son. It grew to roughly four thousand users and now includes BMI based rate suggestions and a calorie tracker covering seventy verified formulas. Roxy closes with why career switchers cannot go it alone, and why community matters more than any single course. Plus a tiny internet troll lightning round covering course playback speeds, salmon shirtgate, and conference karaoke.

Hosts

• Overcommitted: https://overcommitted.dev
• Bethany Janos: https://www.trustyduck.dev
• Brittany Ellich: https://brittanyellich.com

Guest

• Roxy Rodriguez-Becker: https://linktr.ee/roxyrodbeck
• She Ships on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@roxyrodbeck
• Roxy's blog: https://foxyroxy.dev/
• Roxy on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/roxyrodbeck.bsky.social
• Roxy on X: https://twitter.com/RoxanaCodes
• Roxy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roxana-rodriguez-becker

Links

• Tube Feed Tracker: https://tubefeedrate.com/
• About Tube Feed Tracker: https://tubefeedtracker-about.vercel.app
• Torc: https://www.torc.dev/
• 100Devs: https://100devs.org/
• Scrimba, Learn JavaScript: https://scrimba.com/learn-javascript-c0v