00:44 - Pandemic Life * Politics * Healthcare * Society * Work 13:58 - Jay, Happiness, and Fulfillment * Personal Development and Self-Discovery * Brené Brown (https://brenebrown.com/) * Glennon Doyle (https://momastery.com/) * Elizabeth Gilbert (https://www.elizabethgilbert.com/) * Nihilism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism) * Manifestation * Gratitude & Daily Journaling * Morning Pages (https://juliacameronlive.com/basic-tools/morning-pages/) * EarlyWords (https://earlywords.io) 29:09 - Witchcraft & Magic * Intention and Ritual * Terry Pratchett (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Pratchett) * Franz Anton Mesmer (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Franz-Anton-Mesmer) * The Placebo Effect (https://www.webmd.com/pain-management/what-is-the-placebo-effect) * Zenify Stress Relief Drink (https://zenifydrinks.com/) * Effort and Intention Reflections: Mandy: Everyone should journal. Reflect on the past and bring it to the present. Damien: Bringing magic into non-magical environments. Aaron: Ritual, intention, reflection, alignment. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Transcript: DAMIEN: Welcome to Episode 277 of Greater Than Code. I am Damien Burke and I'm joined with Aaron Aldrich. AARON: Hi, I am Aaron and I am here with Mandy. MANDY: Hello, everybody. I'm Mandy Moore and today, it's just the three of us! So if you came expecting more than that, I'm sorry. [laughter] We’re what you get today, but hopefully, we can have a great conversation and we were thinking that we would talk about all the things. I'm doing big hand gestures right now because there's been so many things happening since 2020 that are still happening and how our perspectives have changed. For one, I, myself, can tell you I have grown so much as a person in 2 years. And I'm curious to hear how the two of you have been living your lives since the pandemic. DAMIEN: [chuckles] Where to begin. AARON: I know. It's such a good topic because I feel like everyone's had so much to change, but at the same time, it's like, okay, so 2 million years ago at the beginning of this pandemic. I'm now my third place, third job since the beginning of the pandemic as well and wow, I came out as non-binary in the middle of the pandemic [laughs]. So that was a whole thing, too. I think the question I asked earlier is how much have you radicalized your politics over the course of the past 2 years? [laughs] DAMIEN: Yeah, yeah. That's been bouncing around in my head since you said it off mic. Every time I hear the word pandemic now, I think about, “Oh man,” I hesitate on how far to go into this. [laughs] Because I look at the techno-anarchist crypto bros and I can I say that disparagingly and I will say that disparagingly because I was like them. [laughs] I filled out a survey today and they asked like, “How do you rate yourself as on a conservative and liberal scale?” I'm like, “Well, I think I'm super conservative.” And I still do and every time I align with any political policy, it's always an alignment with people who call themselves socialists and leftists and why is that? [laughs] Hmm. [laughter] But anyway, that was the part I was trying not to go back into. [laughs] One of the big realizations in living in a pandemic is that healthcare is not an exclusive good. MANDY: What? [laughter] DAMIEN: That is to say that I cannot, as an individual, take care of my own health outside of the health of the community and society I live in. Didn't know that. In my defense, I hadn't thought about it, [laughs] but that was an amazing realization. AARON: No, I think that was a big thing. I think so much of the pandemic exposed the way our systems are all interconnected. Exposed the societal things. Like so much we rely on is part of the society that we've built and when things don't work, it's like, well, now what? I don't have any mechanism to do anything on my own. What do we do? DAMIEN: Yeah. It's so fundamental in humanity that we are in society. We are in community. We only survive as a group. That's a fundamental aspect of the species and as much as we would like to stake our own claim and move out to a homestead and depend on no one other than ourselves, that is not a viable option for human beings. AARON: Right, yeah. Even out here in rural Vermont with animals and things, we're still pretty dependent on all of the services that are [chuckles] provided around. I'm still on municipal electric service and everything else. There's still dependence and we still rely on our neighbors and everyone else to keep us sane in other ways. DAMIEN: Yeah, and I feel like people in rural areas—and correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't lived in a rural area in maybe ever—have a better understanding of their independence. You know your neighbors because you need to depend on them. In the city—I live in Los Angeles—we depend on faceless institutions and systems. AARON: Yeah. DAMIEN: And so, we can easily be blind to them. AARON: Yeah. I think it mixes in other ways. I get to travel a bit for work and visit cities, and then I end up coming back out into the rural America to live. So I enjoy seeing both of it because in what I've seen in city spaces is so much has to be formalized because it's such a big deal. There are so many people involved in the system. We need a formal system with someone in charge to run it so that the average everyday person doesn't have to figure out how do I move trash from inside the city outside the city. [laughter] We can make that a group of people's job to deal with. Here, it's much more like, “Well, you can pay this service to do it, or that's where the dump is so can just take care of it yourself if you want.” “Well, this farm will take your food scraps for you so you can just bring this stuff over there if you want.” It's just very funny. It just pops up in these individual pockets and things that need group answers are sometimes like pushed to the town. You get small town drama because like everyone gets to know about what's happening with the road and have an opinion on the town budget as opposed to like, I don't know, isn't that why we hire a whole department to deal with this? [laughs] DAMIEN: Yeah, but small town drama is way better than big town drama. The fact that half of LA's budget goes to policing is a secret. People don't know that. AARON: Yeah. DAMIEN: Between the LA Police Department and LA Sheriff's Department, they have a larger budget than the military of Ukraine. That's the sort of thing that wouldn't happen – [overtalk] AARON: Don't look at the NYPD budget then. DAMIEN: Which is bigger still, yeah. [laughter] That's not the sort thing that would happen in a small town where everybody's involved and in that business. AARON: Yeah. It happens in other weird ways, but it's interesting. This is stuff that I don't know how has, if it's changed during pandemic times. Although, I guess I've started to pay attention more to local politics and trying to be like, “Oh, this is where real people affecting decisions get made every day are at the municipal levels, the city level.” These are things that if we pass a policy to take care of unhoused, or to change police budget, this affects people right now. It's not like, “Oh, wow, that takes time to go into effect and set up a department to eventually go do things.” It's like, “No, we're going to go change something materially.” It's hard to compare the two because the town I'm in rents a police officer part-time from the next [laughs] municipality over. So the comparison to doesn't really work. [laughter] DAMIEN: Everybody knows exactly how much that costs, too. AARON: We do. I just had to vote on it a couple Tuesdays ago. [laughter] DAMIEN: So then I think back to how that has impacted – I'm always trying to bring this podcast more into tech because I feel guilty about that. [laughs] About just wandering off into other things. But I think about how that impacts how I work in the organizations I work in. Hmm. I recognize I'm learning more about myself and how much I can love just sitting down with an editor and churn out awesome code, awesome features, and awesome products. That brings me so much joy and I don't want to do anything else. And what we do has impact and so, it's so beneficial to be aware of the organization I'm in what it's doing, what the product is doing, how that’s impacting people. Sometimes, that involves a lot of management—I do a lot of product management with my main client now. But also, in other places, you would look at, “Well, okay, I don't need to manage the client's finances”. Not because that's not as important, it's because other people are doing it and I trust how they're doing it. That's something I haven't had elsewhere. The advantage of being with a very small organization is that I have these personal relationships and this personal trust that I couldn't get at one of the vampire companies. What'd they call them? FAANG? AARON: Yeah, FAANG. We've been talking about this because FAANG, but Facebook and Google changed their name. So now, is it just MAAN? DAMIEN: Yeah. AARON: I mean Meta, Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, right? DAMIEN: I'm all for the right of individuals to choose what they're called; I don't know if I'm willing to extend that to Facebook and Google. AARON: [laughs] Yeah. DAMIEN: Remember, was it Altria? AARON: Oh, Philip Morris. DAMIEN: Philip Morris, right? AARON: Yeah. DAMIEN: They were just like, “Oh, everything we've been doing is so horrible and harming to society for the past several decades, we'll just change our names and people will forget about it.” AARON: That was Philip Morris. Altria didn't do any of that. DAMIEN: Yeah. Altria didn't do any of that. [chuckles] Yeah, I remember that. AARON: Yeah. I'm curious because I think it's changed for me a bit over this time, too. But I'm curious for folks that have had a sensitivity change to the types of company, not necessarily types of companies, but like, I'm more sensitive to who I'm working for. I think my list of no, I won't work for the X company [chuckles] has probably grown throughout the pandemic and I'm definitely much more critical. Part of it's probably because as in tech we're sort of at an advantage, it is high demand right now and we can be a bit picky about where we work, but I definitely have been [laughs] lately. Much more careful about I'm not just willing to work with anyone. I want someone that's got reasonable values. I interview other companies a lot more and I want to make sure product is not causing harm generally speaking and make sure I get a lot more value alignment out of leadership team and things like that. I don't know if other people have had a similar experience. MANDY: Unfortunately, I haven't had that experience. I'm still working for whoever will give me money. [laughter] But I wish I could do that and I'm currently looking. I mean, I've been trying to break into a full-time DevRel career for I guess, 2 years now and I guess, I'm actively looking. Oh, here we go. If you’re hiring, let me know. [laughter] I guess I am. I'm looking for that job that I'm really feeling fulfilled in is right now I'm not feeling that and I think it's because of the pandemic, I've really stopped to think about what I want in my life and how I want to feel. I want to be happy, I want to be passionate about my job, and I want to wake up and not feel scared to open my computer because – [overtalk] DAMIEN: Wow. MANDY: Are they going to tell me they no longer need my service? DAMIEN: Right. MANDY: And it's been demoralizing really, for me recently, especially because I tried to join a developer relations Slack group just a few months ago and they rejected me flat out and they're like, “You do not work in dev full time. You cannot be a part of our group,” and I'm like, “Oh.” So now I'm like, “Hmm, what do I do in tech?” [laughter] I thought I'd been doing DevRel before DevRel was cool. I'm going to humble brag for a minute, but I have single-handedly put this podcast together and put you people together that you didn't even know and you love each other. You get that vibe. I can tell who's going to get – you're going to love this person and you're going to like – [overtalk] DAMIEN: Oh man, you not only put this podcast together, but you are the sustaining force. You are the heart of it. You are the thing where that all the panelists that are connected to. You are one who gets all of the mechanical, everything besides talking in mics. You do everything else and you're maintaining all these relations with these developers. [laughter] MANDY: I never even wanted to be on mic. I just started doing it because everybody was busy and I was like, “I guess I have to step up.” [laughs] DAMIEN: Whatever it takes to get it done, right? MANDY: Well, yeah. I feel like the topics on this show that we talk about are important and they're even important outside of tech that hence, the whole name: Greater Than Code. There are more things out there than our jobs and our work and I just want to be happy. I want to be fulfilled and I want to be passionate about something and so does my dog. AARON: That was a shift for me, too. That was definitely one of the roles I was in during the pandemic and realized my struggle with it so much was it was clashing with that. It wasn't fulfilling for me, it was clashing with my core values, and it was just like, “You know what, I can't do this anymore.” [chuckles] I'm no longer in a place where I have the energy to do a thing I don't like doing, or don't have some care for. There's always something you don't like doing. There's always some crap around every job that like don't like to do or you have to deal with something, but I'm no longer at a place where I can have a whole job that rubs me the wrong way. MANDY: Yeah. It's hard for me. I should feel great about this, but I'm known as the podcast girl. If you have a tech podcast, you should talk to Mandy, but I'm not just a podcast editor! I do so much more than that. I do operation, I do product management, I do writing; there's so much more that encompasses who I am in tech than the podcast girl. I feel like not a lot of people know that and maybe that's my fault because I guess, I haven't really done a good job of putting myself out there to be like, “Hey wait. But I'm –” because for me, it's still a hustle as a single mom. I have to pay the bills. So it's like, I wish I could be more discerning with the jobs that I take and who I work for, but I don't know. I'm just one of those people of the universe. What will be, will be and if it's meant to be, it'll come to me. [laughs] So I don't ever really actively seek and that's probably half of my problem. DAMIEN: Mm. That's funny because I didn't know all those things about you. I pitch you as a podcast producer and again, I live in a LA, I'm involved in the entertainment industry at a slight level, and the word producer there is very, very powerful and very important. A producer is an executive. A producer is person who gets things done, who makes it happen. I'm not entirely sure what a producer does, even though I've done it. MANDY: I'm not even sure what a – [laughs] DAMIEN: Right, because it's never the same thing. MANDY: No. DAMIEN: It's whatever it takes and that skill. AARON: Yeah. DAMIEN: That being able to be know enough about a movie, or theatrical production, or a podcast, to know what it takes, to be able to manage, and sustain and get it done. That's really what it comes down to: get it done. MANDY: That's why it's so hard for me. Everyone's like, “Do you have a resume?” And I'm like, “I don't know what to put on it!” Like, you tell me you need this done, I'll get it done. If I don’t know how to do it, I'll figure it out because that's what I've done for 13 years. Like I got hired as Avdi Grimm’s virtual assistant because an Indeed.com ad came out and was like, “I need somebody to answer emails for me,” and I'm like, “Don’t know why you can't do that yourself, but sure.” [laughter] And then from there, he had a podcast and was like, “Can you edit my podcast?” And I was like, “Sure,” and then I'm Googling what is a podcast. [laughter] I had no clue. So I got here, I think a lot out of luck from being at the right place and talking to the right person at the right time. But I have busted my ass to just learn what people need me to learn and do what people need me to do. I guess, that's maybe what I should just put on the resume. I'll do what you need me to do. I make it happen. DAMIEN: No, no, no. You put on the resume what your next job is going to be doing. MANDY: [laughs] Yeah, so, it's hard when people ask me for my resume. I have like three resumes and I'm like, “This does not, no.” AARON: It's almost more a portfolio at this point, right. I made this thing happen. I made this thing happen. Here's this other thing that I did. Here's another thing I made happen. DAMIEN: Resumes are horrific. They're not good for anybody and the only people who use them are people who need to filter quickly out of large groups and they're not even good for that. I've long aspired to be at a place in my career where I don't need a resume and I might be there. Steve Jobs didn't have a resume. Didn't need a resume. He didn't send his resume to the board to get that job at Apple back. It's ridiculous. MANDY: Well, that's the thing for me. I get most of my work from word to mouth. DAMIEN: Right. MANDY: So until I really lost a big client and I was like, “Oh, I don't have a resume. Don't you know who I am?” [laughter] DAMIEN: But like, they should. [laughter] AARON: Just say the portfolios level. I mean, it's kind of the same thing, right? This is... MANDY: Yeah. AARON: [laughs] Kind of the same thing. It’s sort of how my resume is morphed in DevRel proper. It's gone from I still kind of have the resume that's like, “Yeah, I worked into these things internally that might not surface otherwise, but also, here's my speaking portfolio and all the things that I have done over the past 3 years. [laughs] You might know me from all of this stuff instead of what's on this resume.” [laughter] MANDY: Yeah. Of course, once I was getting comfortable enough to want to speak, that's when the whole world shut down. DAMIEN: Yeah. MANDY: So I have no videos of myself speaking anywhere whatsoever. DAMIEN: Well, I think there might be a few podcasts that you appear on. MANDY: There's a few episodes as of late that I have ventured to be on out of keeping the show alive. DAMIEN: And every episode of this podcast, and I think several others, are shits near portfolio, right? [laughter] MANDY: Then I'd have a really wrong resume. [laughs] AARON: We'll figure it out. DAMIEN: Yeah. AARON: You just need the highlights. MANDY: But I don’t know, a lot of other things have changed for me over the course of the past 2 years. Just in my personal life, I've gotten sober and that was a really hard thing to do during a pandemic. AARON: Yeah. MANDY: When everybody else was out hoarding toilet paper, I was like, “Oh my God, I need beer,” [laughs] and actually, I did. While everybody was stocking up on those other necessities, I was buying cases of beer and putting them in my garage because I was like, “Oh great, the world's ending and I guess, if that's going to happen, I might as well be drunk.” And then – [overtalk] AARON: I mean, it's a fair argument in your defense. MANDY: But then it became a bad problem because when you're home all day and I was home, I worked from home before this. But everything is so damn depressing and you keep the news on the television and next thing you know, it's lunch time and cracking a beer and I'm like, “Whoa, this is… [laughs] where did this come from?” So no, I got sober and I don't drink anymore and honestly, I have never felt better. I've also become a runner. I got a treadmill and I run a 4, or 5 miles a day and I've lost a good amount of weight, probably a lot from alcohol bloat. DAMIEN: [chuckles] Yeah. MANDY: But it's more for me. It's not even about losing a weight because I don't even own a scale because it's more about how I feel. DAMIEN: Yeah. MANDY: It's what is about how I feel. So when I went to the doctor's office for my yearly checkup on Monday and I got on the scale because they make you, I said, “Whoa,” [laughs] because I didn't even know. For me, it's about how I feel and I think that that's really, what's brought a lot of things into perspective for me is that at our time here on earth is fine. I want to be here for my daughter especially. She's 13 and I want to be healthy for her. I want to be here for my friends. I ask myself why I'm still in York, Pennsylvania and I haven't left because I do have people around here that I care about. DAMIEN: Yeah. MANDY: And other than that, I could take it, or leave it. But because the people who I love are here, that's why I haven't left. DAMIEN: Yeah. MANDY: So that's another thing, the things like the pandemic has just really set me into a lot of personal development work and self-discovery. I journal every day. I read self-help books, which is so weird to me because I was one of those people that were like, “Who are those people that read self-help books?” and now I'm one of them. [chuckles] I want to be Brené Brown and Glennon Doyle’s best friend. [laughter] Those two women are my people. Elizabeth Gilbert. I can give you so many names of people and great authors that just inspire the hell out of me and 2 years ago, I was not that at all. AARON: Yeah, I think there's a lot to be said for getting at our time on earth is finite and so, in refocusing on what matters to us. Another way I had a friend put it to me, it's like optimistic nihilism. Look, at the end of the day, we're all going to be dead and none of this matters. So you might as well do what makes you happy, right? [laughs] You might as well do the things that are fulfilling and meaningful and try to make other people have a good time, too. You might as well. DAMIEN: I always thought it was ridiculous that nihilism had such a negative connotation. It was like, “No. Okay. I can believe that and be –” [overtalk] AARON: No pressure. At the end of the day, we're all going to die so, no pressure. Do what do what you need to do. Doesn't matter if you succeed, or fail. MANDY: That's like, I'm one of those people that would rather spend their money on experiences. AARON: Yeah. MANDY: Because I don't care how much money I die with. [laughter] I'd rather use it now and take my kid Disney world, which I did 3 years ago. DAMIEN: Nice. MANDY: And enjoy those experiences rather than have a bank account full of dollars that I can't use. DAMIEN: High score. MANDY: Yeah, high score. DAMIEN: Shout out to thriving in hand wavy. I feel embarrassed about this and I don't talk about it much because so many people are suffering. People I love are suffering. People I work with and deal with on a daily basis are suffering, and bad things are happening. This is the best year of my life. This is better than last year and last year was better than the year before. I just keep getting better and my life just keeps getting more awesome. I don't know if I was going anywhere with that, but solidarity with Mandy, I guess. You bought a treadmill. I bought a rower. MANDY: I feel like honestly, the universe gives back what you put out and I guess, I’ve become real – a lot of people are like, “You're like, woo-woo witchy now,” and I'm like, “Aha, yeah.” I kind of like that. So I feel like if you manifest things, you can make that happen and yes, there's things happening. Yes, yes, there are so many bad things happening, but sometimes out of self-preservation, you just have to tune all of that out and just be in your immediate dwell. For me, sometimes I'll go a week without watching news and I feel guilty about that a lot, but it's just like, you know what, if something's going to happen, it's going to happen. AARON: I think the best way someone put that to me was anxiety is not activism. MANDY: Yeah. DAMIEN: Yeah. AARON: Right, so just sitting around making yourself anxious and stressed out about everything and whatever emotion you have, making yourself feel bad doesn't improve the situation, it just also makes you feel bad. So it's okay to take a step back and do the self-care that you need to do because just feeling bad isn't fixing the problem either. So step back, find what you can do. Maybe there's stuff you can do here, in your immediate space that you can take action on. MANDY: Exactly. And also, for drinking other people's problems away, – [overtalk] [laughter] AARON: You can’t drink other people’s – disassociating from other people's problems isn't effective. [laughter] MANDY: No. Let me tell you, I tried. [laughter] DAMIEN: That's such a great statement. Anxiety is not activism, but also the opposite is true. Joy is activism, rest is activism, thriving in a world that doesn't want you to thrive is an act of resistance and activism. Shout out, living a good life. AARON: That's been a good conversation. I think that's easy to forget and I've seen it come up a couple times over the past couple years of what they have been of taking those moments for joy are really important. They can be radical in and of themselves. MANDY: Keep a gratitude journal. There are so many great apps that every day before I go to sleep, I just write one sentence and it gives you an option even to have a picture. So you can snap a picture. Even if it's just like this candle, this candle is burning right here and it smells so good and it's making me happy today. So I'm grateful for the candle. DAMIEN: Yeah, I'm up to approximately 2 years of daily journaling. A buddy of mine got together. We built a daily journaling app based on Morning Pages from The Artist's Way. It's called Early Words. Shout out earlywords.io if you want to join and journal with me. But every day, 750 words. I do it first thing in the morning most days. Stream of consciousness. It has absolutely changed my life. It makes me feel good. It made me a better writer. Not because the writing is good, but because it's taught me to turn off the editor. Writing does have to be good for me to write it. MANDY: Yeah. Big proponent of journaling. AARON: I believe in it. I just don't remember to do it. But that's my own problem. [laughter] DAMIEN: Can we go back? Can we talk about witchcraft? AARON: All right, I’m in. DAMIEN: A friend of mine asked me oh my God, maybe it was a year ago. Maybe it was several months ago. I have no idea. She asked me like, “Do you actually believe in witchcraft? Those magic woo-woo stuff?” It's like, “Well, let me tell you something. Every morning when I wake up in the morning, I make a potion with dried leaves that energizes me. At night, I make a different potion with dried flowers that calm me down and helps me sleep. My literal job is making sand think. Do I believe in witchcraft? I mean, yeah.” [chuckles] MANDY: I mean, it's a full moon today so I have a whole jug of water out charging. I do. I literally have a jug of water on my deck charging for full moon water energy and I use it like, I'll put a little bit in my bath water. I'll put it a little bit of it – I'll cook with it. When I boil some water, put it in there. Does it help? I don't know, but it makes me feel better! DAMIEN: Okay. Wait. It makes you feel better? AARON: Sounds like it’s helping. DAMIEN: Doesn’t that means it helps? MANDY: Yeah. It does. AARON: Yeah. I think that's a good point. I believe in the power of intention and ritual. There's a reason why humans developed rituals over time and sometimes, it's just for us to feel the right thing. But like, feelings are important? DAMIEN: [laughs] But like, feelings are important. AARON: I don’t want to say something controversial on the Greater Than Code podcast such as feelings are important. But they are. Sometimes, while you go through a certain step and it centers you, or you go through a certain set of steps and it makes you feel better, or it helps you process the anxiety you're feeling, or it's like, nope, I need to get centered in my five senses again so I can come back into my body and be here instead of going off on an anxiety spiral. MANDY: Absolutely. AARON: What is witchcraft? I actually love this from Terry Pratchett, one of my all-time favorite authors who does the Discworld series of novels, as a very specific approach to witchcraft, which is like, yeah, yeah, yeah, magic and whatever. But their daily thing is checking on all the people of the village and doing all the work that nobody wants to do. So it's like, how are the elderly doing? Do they need help with anything? Making sure and so takes their bath, making sure this person's animals are taken care of, making sure this sort of thing. Sometimes, it's about appearances and going through the ritual to make sure the community is coming along. Sitting with the dead, all that kind of stuff. And that's witchcraft, that's the bread and butter of witchcraft is knowing the right herbs and poultices to put together, being the heart and soul of the community and being able to get people and helping each other, and move the resources around as needed and that sort of thing. So yeah, I believe in that. [laughs] DAMIEN: Yeah. There was there's a great story and about Anton Mesmer, I learned this shout out to Mary Elizabeth Raines who taught me hypnosis. I learned this when she told me this story when I was doing my hypnosis training about Anton Mesmer, who's considered the [31:10] of hypnotism. He introduced hypnotism to the to the white people. The word mesmerism and magnetic person, magnetic personality, all this comes from Mesmer. He had salons where people would hold onto metal rod that he had “magnetized” and be healed and fall out and screaming have spirit and all that. But Mesmer was very popular and very powerful and the king of France did not like this. The king of France put together a blue-ribbon commission. I don't know if he called it a blue-ribbon commission. Probably not because he spoke French, but put together a commission of scientists to discredit Mesmer. One of these scientists was Ben Franklin, by the way. So they did a double-blind study. They did a proper double-blind test. They had Mesmer come out and magnetize a tree. That was a thing he did. He would magnetize trees, people would come out and hug the trees and then they'd be healed. So they did a study. They had to magnetize the tree and they brought people out who were sick and they said, “Hug that tree. That’s magnetized and you'll be healed.” Some of the trees Mesmer had magnetized, some he hadn't and it turns out it didn't matter. People were still healed and so, they all came to conclusion, “All right. See, Mesmer’s not doing anything. It's all placebo effect.” Mesmer was run out of town and lived in exile for the rest of his days. Nobody bothered to ask why were the people healed? Everybody knows placebo effect is a real effect. Nobody's like, “How do we make it more effective? Why is it working this way? What do we do it? What do we do with that? How can we use that?” MANDY: Yeah. AARON: No, I think it's a super interesting thought. The placebo effect is a powerful and interesting concept overall. We did ourselves a disservice to not understand it. DAMIEN: Yeah. To dismiss it as if it doesn't exist. Not only does it exist, it's increasing. AARON: Hmm. DAMIEN: Because people are getting more powerful. MANDY: Yeah. I'm drinking this Zenify Stress Relief Drink. [chuckles] And does it work? I don't know, but it's delicious and you know what? It makes me happy. You know why? Because it's not alcohol. [laughter] So it's not having a negative effect on me. I'm not getting drunk and doing stupid things. Is it taking away? My stress? Eh. I mean, but I love it. I love it and it makes me feel good. It's a treat. It's a special drink. I have one a day and it's one of those things that instead of missing my case of White Claw Seltzer. I know, I know, I wasn't even a bougie – well, I wasn't even a good drinker. That's what made it a problem. [laughs] AARON: This is far too affordable. MANDY: I was not a discerning drinker, so. [laughs] No, I have my one bougie drink that I have and it makes me feel good. Does it relieve my stress? I don't know, but I don't care either. DAMIEN: Yeah. If it works, it works. One of the great things about placebos is they don't – well, I was going to say they don't have to be expensive, but sometimes it works better when they're expensive. [laughs] MANDY: Moon water is free. DAMIEN: Moon water is, yeah. But, well, it's not free actually. You had to put an effort and intention. MANDY: True. DAMIEN: And I think if you didn't, it wouldn't be as effective. AARON: Effort and intention go a long way. DAMIEN: [laughs] That's a root of magic, isn't it? MANDY: Why can't I just get paid for effort and intention? [laughs] AARON: I mean, if I put my effort and intention into this money tree. [laughter] I've always thought it would be nice if real world jobs worked like Animal Crossing. Like, “Oh, so I can just go pick some stuff up and then you're just going to give money and then we can just move on? Great.” “Now look, I dug up a bag of money. If I just plant this bag of money, I'll get more money. It's fine.” [laughs] DAMIEN: I'm trying to bridge that gap. That's such a great question like when effort and intention is so well, literally magical, why does it seem to not have the impact we want in nonmagical environments, I'll call them? AARON: Mm. DAMIEN: I asked that question because I want to know what to do about that. I want to bring magic to nonmagical environment, to city council, to retail stores. I almost named an online retail store; I don't want to name it. [laughs] But it's a city council to corporate interactions. And there's no reason you can't. Corporations are people. Governments are people. I think requires dealing with them in individually in ways that we're not used to. AARON: Yeah. It's a good question. You've got to be really thinking about… MANDY: My wheels are turning. AARON: Yeah. I mean, I think part of it is effort and intention are always going to make the most effect for you because most of it is about aligning your thought processes. It's about taking the, I don't know, I'm just taking this into making the best decision I can to like, okay, if I can focus on this is my goal and my aim and what I'm after, suddenly all of the patterns emerge around that. Oh, now I'm ready for that opportunity, or oh, now this thing is working out, and oh, now this is what is working out because I've focused on my intentions and where I want to put my efforts. I think there's room for these things in other groups. Gets back to what I was thinking about ritual, about how humans are tuned for ritual to tell themselves story. We’re tuned for storytelling and ritual and all this sort of thing. So I think there's room from a tech perspective, I'm thinking about what comes to mind quickly is incident management stuff. Sorry, I'm coming off of SRECon this week so, everything's going to be around that. DAMIEN: Our apologies. [laughter] It’s all right. AARON: It was fantastic, but it's a different podcast. [laughs] But think about that, right? When you're coming in and doing instant reports, it’s so powerful is it to set the intention of the meeting, or any meeting that you have and say, “We are here for this purpose. This is what we're looking to find. We're not looking to do –” Back when Chef had lots to say about this, they'd have those things like we're not here to determine what could have, or should have happened. We're here to find out what did and move the thing. So it's all about setting the intent of that gathering and what outcomes you're after and it focuses the whole conversation can make that meeting more powerful because you've set the focus right off the bat. I think there's room for that other places, too. DAMIEN: That's such a beautiful way of saying it. You described it as setting an attention. AARON: Yeah. S: Whereas, in corporate speak, I would describe it as setting an agenda. AARON: Right, and an agenda is one thing. It's kind of like, “Hey, here's kind of the stuff we're going to do,” but to be like, “We are gathered for this purpose to [laughs] cover this thing.” DAMIEN: No, no. AARON: Right. DAMIEN: Dearly beloved, dear colleague. AARON: Right? Yeah, right. DAMIEN: We are gathered here for this purpose. AARON: Yeah. I mean, we say it this way in personal stuff, why don't we –? Like, it's useful. [laughs] MANDY: It really is. DAMIEN: Because how are you ever going to get something done if you don't know what you're there for? AARON: Right. DAMIEN: Well, you're going to get something done. If you don't have a destination, any road you take is fine. AARON: If you don't have any intention set, it's a series of meetings that could have been emails. [laughter] And then maybe that's the power of it, in a nonmagical space, is forcing yourself to go through this thought process of why am I doing this? Why are we here? What do we want to accomplish? Can probably trim so much of the cruft from all of our meetings and engagements. DAMIEN: That was my favorite sentence as a product manager: what is it you're trying to accomplish? [chuckles] AARON: I say that a lot, DAMIEN: But it is a very, very powerful question. AARON: Especially when you have children asking to use dangerous tools. [laughter] What is it you're trying to accomplish? Maybe we don't need to bust out razor blades. [laughs] DAMIEN: So from an SRE standpoint, when you get together for – what do you call that meeting? An incident review postmortem? Postmortem is a bit – [overtalk] AARON: Yeah, yeah. Post-incident report. There's a handful of names for that reason, but post-incident review. MANDY: Retrospective. DAMIEN: Retrospective, yeah. So the question is, what is it you are trying to accomplish? AARON: Right. DAMIEN: I'm trying to find somebody to blame. AARON: And not blaming. DAMIEN: I'm trying to find somebody to blame so that I look good in my next performance review. AARON: Well, that's what was so important about doing that because that's the shift we're, largely as an industry, trying to make. Finding a person to blame doesn't learn anything about what happened and will teach us nothing for next time. So if we set the intention of like, we're trying to learn from this incident and how we can improve or what we can do better, or maybe there's nothing. Maybe this was just a fluke and let's find that out. That's what we're here to learn. But we're not here to point fingers, or find a root cause because root causes are for plants. [laughter] AARON: Again, that's a whole other podcast. [laughs] MANDY: At the beginning of the pandemic, I owned zero plants. Now, I think I'm the proud plant mother of 20? [laughs] DAMIEN: Wow. AARON: That's amazing. MANDY: I know. AARON: My problem is I can't keep things alive. MANDY: Well, mostly they're all thriving because I set the intention that I was not going to mess this up. [laughter] DAMIEN: There you go. Do you give them moon water? MANDY: I do. DAMIEN: Apparently, it's working. MANDY: I do. Do we want to do some reflections? DAMIEN: Sure. Let's do it. MANDY: I'll start us off. With this conversation, we were just having about the intention and stuff. This is why I think everybody should journal, including CEOs and leaders. Get out a journal, what do you want, and then look back at some of the stuff. I don't it often, but I go back and I'm like, “Oh yeah.” Just reflecting on what you've written in the past and bringing that to the present can really help you put stock in all the things that you want and should be accomplishing. DAMIEN: Yeah. This bringing magic into nonmagical environments and journaling is part of that. A shout out to journaling. Another plug for earlywords.io that I own. Come journal with me because it is a magical thing. It is a ritual I do daily. That clears my mind. That is a practice of the listening to myself. It is a practice of letting go and not controlling what's coming out. Along with that and all the other sort of ways I know of being that I can call magic, I can call hypnotism, I can call NLP, I can call ontological coaching I've done a lot, bringing that into environments where I haven't because they're so useful there and we talked about some of the ways they are and so, we really confirmed more ways of doing that. AARON: I think the things I'm thinking about after this conversation are ritual, intention, and reflection are the big things that are standing up. I think this pandemic, for instance, and how things have changed is because I've had just so much time to have to sit alone by myself and reflect on what's going on externally and internally. But yeah. Anyway, just about setting intentions, of understanding the directions you want to go before going, making sure you're aligned with your goals, and you're not just accidentally wandering down paths that you don't want to be down and turning around and finding out your miserable 10 months later. I think I've thought a lot about the power of even small rituals just to interrupt our standard thought processes and align ourselves with those kind of things. There's been a lot from basic health stuff of here are the rituals I can go through when I'm feeling anxious and I know they'll calm me down to writing in a journal, or directing a group to [laughs] let's align our thought processes. It can be super useful. DAMIEN: Absolutely. MANDY: Awesome. Well, this has been a really fun conversation. I'm glad we just had a panel only episode and I'd love to do more of these in the future. They're really cool. We didn't come to the show with much of an agenda and hopefully, you dear listener, appreciate it. If you would like to give us some feedback, we'd appreciate it. Tweet at us. Join our Slack. AARON: Hire Mandy. DAMIEN: Tell your friends. MANDY: DM me. [chuckles] Tell your friends. DAMIEN: Tell your enemies. MANDY: Tell your enemies, too! [chuckles] We’ll see you all next week.

01:09 - Jenna’s Superpower: Being Super Human: Deeply rooted in what is human in tech * The User is Everything 04:30 - Keeping Focus on the User * Building For Themself * Bother(!!) Users * Walking A Mile In Your Users Shoes - Jamey Hampton (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-zYKo8f7nM) 09:09 - Interviewing Users (Testing) * Preparation * Identifying Bias * Getting Things Wrong * Gamifying/Winning (Developer Dogs & Testing Cats) * Overtesting 23:15 - Working With ADHD * Alerts & Alarms * Medication * Underdiagnosis / Misdiagnosis * Presentation * Medical Misogyny and Socialization * Masking * Finding a Good Clinician Reflections: John: Being a super human. Jacob: Forgetting how to mask. Jamey: Talking about topics that are Greater Than Code. Jenna: Talking about what feels stream-of-consciousness. Having human spaces is important. Support your testers! This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Transcript: JAMEY: Hi, everyone and thanks for tuning in to Episode 276 of Greater Than Code. I’m one of your hosts, Jamey Hampton, and I'm here with my friend, Jacob Stoebel. JACOB: Hello, like to be here. I'm with my friend, John Sawers. JOHN: Thanks, Jacob. And I'm here with our guest, Jenna Charlton. Jenna is a software tester and product owner with over a decade of experience. They've spoken at a number of dev and test conferences and is passionate about risk-based testing, building community within agile teams, developing the next generation of testers, and accessibility. When not testing, Jenna loves to go to punk rock shows and live pro wrestling events with their husband Bob, traveling, and cats. Their favorite of which are the two that share their home, Maka and Excalipurr. Welcome to the show, Jenna! [chuckles] JENNA: Hi, everybody! I'm excited to be here with all the J’s. [laughter] JAMEY: We're so excited to have you. JOHN: And we will start with the question we always start with, which is what is your superpower and how did you acquire it? JENNA: On a less serious note, I have a couple of superpowers. One I discovered when I was a teenager. I can find Legally Blonde on TV [laughter] any kind of day [laughs] somewhere. It's a less valuable superpower than it used to be. But boy, was it a great superpower when you would be scrolling and I'm like, “Legally Blonde, I found it!” [laughter] JAMEY: I was going to ask if one of your superpowers was cat naming, because Excalipurr is very good. It's very good. [laughs] JENNA: I wish I could take credit for that. [laughter] Bob is definitely the one responsible. JAMEY: So it's your husband superpower, cat naming and yours is Legally Blonde. Got it. JENNA: Mine is Legally Blonde. [laughter] I also can find a way to relate anything to pro wrestling. JAMEY: I've seen that one in action, actually. Yes. [laughter] JENNA: But no, my real superpower, or at least as far as tech goes is that I am super human. Not in that I am a supremely powerful human, it's that I am deeply rooted in what is human in tech and that's what matters to me and the user is my everything. I'm not one of those people who nerds out about the latest advancement. Although, I enjoy talking about it. What I care about, what gets me excited, and gets me out of bed every day in tech is thinking about how I can solve a deeply human problem in a way that is empathetic, centers the user, and what matters to them. JAMEY: Do you feel like you were always like that naturally, or do you feel like that was a skill that you fostered over your career? JENNA: I think it's who I am, but I think I had to learn how to harness it to make it useful. I am one of those people who has the negative trait of empathy and when I say negative trait, there's that tipping point on empathy where it goes from being a powerful, positive thing to being something that invades your life. So I am one of those people who sitting in a conference room, I can feel the temperature change and it makes me wiggle in my seat, feel uncomfortable, get really awkward, and then default to things like people pleasing, which is a terrible, terrible trait [laughs] that I fight every day against. It's actually why remote work has saved me. But I've had to learn how to take caring about people and turn it into something that's valuable and useful and delivers because we can talk about the user all day and take no action on it. It's one thing to care about the user and to care about people. It's another thing to understand how to translate that care into something useful. When I learned how to do that in testing, my career changed and then when I learned how to translate that to product, things really started to change. JAMEY: That's amazing. JENNA: Thank you. [laughs] JACOB: I feel like so often at work I sit down at 9:00 AM and I'm like, “Okay, what do our users need in this feature, or how could this potentially go wrong and hurt our users?” And then by 9:20, everything's off the rails. [laughter] As work happens and here's a million fires to put out and it's all about things in the weeds that if I could just get them to work, then I could go back to thinking about to use it. You know what I mean? How do you keep that focus? JENNA: So part it is, I don't want to say the luck, but is the benefit of where I landed. I work for a company that does AI/ML driven test automation. I design and build experiences for myself. I'm building for what I, as a tester, needed when I was testing and let's be honest, I still test. I just test more from a UAT perspective. I get to build for myself, which means that I understand the need of my user. If I was building something for devs, I wouldn't even know where to begin because that's not my frame of reference. I feel like we make a mistake when we are designing things that we take for granted that we know what a user's shoes look like, but I know what my user's shoes look like because I filled them. But I don't know what a dev shoes look like. I don't know what an everyday low-tech user shoes look like. I kind of do because I've worked with those users and I always use my grandmother as an example. She's my frame of reference. She's fairly highly skilled for being 91 years old, but she is 91 years old. She didn't start using computers until 20 years ago and at that point, she was in her 70s. Very, very different starting point. But I have the benefit that that's where I start so I've got to leg up. But I think when we start to think about how do I build this for someone else and that someone isn't yourself, the best place to start is by going to them and interviewing them. What do you need? Talk to me about what your barriers are right now. Talk to me about what hurts you today. Talk to me about what really works for you today. I always tell people that one of the most beneficial things I did when I worked for Progressive was that my users were agents. So I could reach out to them and say like, “Hey, I want to see your workflow.” And I could do that because I was an agent, not a customer. They can show me that and it changed the way I would test because now I could test like them. So I don't have a great answer other than go bother them. Get a user community and go bug the heck out of them all the time. [laughs] Like, what do you mean? How do you do this today? What are your stumbling blocks? How do I remove them for you? Because they've got the answer; they just don't know it. JAMEY: That was really gratifying for me to listen to actually. [laughter] It's not a show about me. It's a show about you. So I don't want to make it about me, but I have a talk called Walking a Mile In Your Users’ Shoes and basically, the takeaway from it is meet them where they are. So when I heard you say that, I was like, “Yes, I totally agree!” [laughs] JENNA: But I also learned so much from you on this because I don't remember if it's that talk, or a different one, but you did the talk about a user experience mistake, or a development mistake thinking about greenhouses. JAMEY: Yes. That's the talk I'm talking about. [laughs] JENNA: Yeah. So I learned so much from you in that talk and I've actually referenced it a number times. Even things when I talk to testers and talk about misunderstandings around the size of a unit and that that may not necessarily be global information. That that was actually siloed to the users and you guys didn't have that and had to create a frame of reference because it was a mess. So I reference that talk all the time. [laughs] JAMEY: I'm going to cry. There's nothing better to hear than you helped someone learn something. [laughter] So I'm so happy. [chuckles] JENNA: You're one of my favorite speakers. I'm not going to lie. [chuckles] JOHN: Aw. JAMEY: You're one of my favorite speakers too, which is why I invited you to come on the show. [laughs] JENNA: Oh, thank you. [laughter] Big warm hugs. [laughs] JOHN: I'm actually lacking in the whole user interviewing process. I haven't really done that much because usually there's a product organization that's handling most of that. Although, I think it would be useful for me as a developer, but I can imagine there are pitfalls you can fall into when you're interviewing users that either force your frame of reference onto them and then they don't really know what you're talking about, or you don't actually get the answer from them that shows you what their pain points are. You get what maybe they think you should build, or something else. So do you have anything specifically that you do to make sure you find out what's really going on for them? JENNA: The first thing is preparation. So I have a list of questions and that time with that user isn't over until I’ve answered them. If it turns out that I walked into that room and those questions were wrong, then we stop and time to regenerate questions because I can bias them, they can bias me, we can wind up building something totally different than we set out to do, which is fine if that's the direction we went end up going. But I need to go into that time with them with that particular experience being the goal. So if I got it wrong, we stop and we start over. Now, not everybody has to do that. Some people can think faster on their feet. Part of being ADHD is I fall into the moment and don't remember like, “Oh, I wrote myself a note, but there's also” – I just read a Twitter thread about this today. I wrote myself a note, but also to remember to go back and read that note. So [laughs] all of those little things, which are why I really hold to, “I got it wrong. We're going to put a pin in this and come. Let's schedule for 2 days from now,” or next week, or whatever the appropriate amount of time is. There have been times – and I'm really lucky because my boss is so good at interviewing users so I've really gotten to learn from her, but there have been times when she'll interview a user and then it totally turns the other direction and she goes, “Well, yes, we're not building this thing we said we were going to build. I'm going to call you again in six months when I'm ready to build this thing we started talking about.” Because now the roadmap's changed. Now my plan has changed. We're going to put a pin in this because in six months, it may not be the same requirement, or the same need. There might be a new solution, or you may have moved past that this may be a temporary requirement. So when we're ready to do it, we'll talk again. But the biggest thing for me is preparation. JAMEY: I have a question about something specific you said during that near the beginning. You said, “They can bias me and I can bias them,” and I wonder if you have any advice on identifying when that is happening. JENNA: When it feels like one of you is being sold? JAMEY: Mm. JENNA: So early in my career, before I got into tech, I worked in sales like everybody who doesn't have a college degree and doesn't know what they want to do with their life does. Both of my grandfathers and my father were in sales. I have a long line of salespeople running through my blood. If I realize that I feel like, and I have a specific way that I feel when I'm selling somebody something because I like to win. So you get this kind of adrenal rush and everything when I realize I'm feeling that. That's when I know ooh, I'm going to bias them because I'm selling them on my idea and it's not my job today to sell them on my idea. I know they're biasing me when I realize that I'm feeling like I'm purchasing something. It's like, oh, okay. So now I'm talking to somebody who's selling me something and while I want to buy their vision, I also want to make sure that it makes sense for the company because I have to balance that. Like I'm all about the user, but there's a bottom line [laughs] and we still have to make sure that's not red. JOHN: So you're talking about a situation where they maybe have a strong idea about what they want you to build and so, their whole deal is focused on this is the thing, this is the thing, you’ve got to do it this way because this would make my life the most amazing, or whatever. JENNA: Yeah, exactly. Or their use case is super, super narrow and all they're focused on is making sure that fits their exact use case and they don't have to make any shifts, or changes so that it's more global. Because that's a big one that you run into, especially when you're like building tools. We have to build it for the majority, but the minority oftentimes has a really good use case, but it's really unique to them. JOHN: What's the most surprising thing you've taken away from a user interview? JENNA: I wouldn't say it's a surprise, but probably the most jarring thing was when I got it wrong the first time and when I got it wrong, I was really wrong. Like not even the wrong side of the stadium, a different city. [chuckles] Like a different stadium in a different city wrong. [laughs] It caught me off guard because I really thought that what I had read and what I understood about the company that I was working with, the customer that I was working with. I thought I understood their business better. I thought I understood what they did and what their needs would be better. I thought I understood their user better. But I missed all of it, all of it. [laughs] So I think that was the most surprising, but it was really valuable. It was the most surprising because I was so off base, but it was probably the most valuable because it showed me how much I let my bias influence before I even step into the conversation. JOHN: Is there a difference between how you think about the user when you have your product hat on versus when you have your tester hat on? JENNA: Oh, absolutely. When I have my product hat on, I have to play a balancing game because it's about everybody's needs. It's about the user's needs. It's about the business' needs. It's about the shareholders’ need. Well, we don't really have shareholders, but the board's needs, the investors’ needs. And when I'm testing, I get to just be a tester and think about what do I need when I'm doing this job? What solves my problem and what doesn't? What's interesting about testing and not every tester is like this, but I certainly am. I mentioned that I like to win. Testing feels like winning when you find bugs. So I get to fill that need to win a little bit because I'm like, “Oh, found one. Oh, found another one. Yes, this is awesome!” I get really excited and I don't get to be that way when I'm product person, but when I'm testing person, I get to be all about it. [laughs] JAMEY: I love that. That's so interesting because to me as a developer, I get a similar feeling when I fix bugs. I feel crappy when I find bugs, [chuckles] but I get that feeling when I fix them. So it's really interesting to hear you talk about that side in that way. I like it. JENNA: Have I ever shared with you that I think developers are like dogs and testers are like cats? JAMEY: Elaborate. JACOB: Let's hear it. [laughs] JENNA: Okay. So I like dogs and cats. That's not what this is about. JAMEY: I like dogs and cats, too. So I'm ready to hear it. [laughs] JENNA: Dogs are very linear. If you teach a dog to do a trick and you reward them in the right way, with the exception of a couple of breeds, for the most part, they'll do that for you on a regular basis. And dogs like to complete their task. If they're a job, because a lot of dogs, they need jobs. They're working animals, it's in their DNA. If their job is to go get you a beer, they're going to go get you a beer because that's their job and they want to finish their job. Cats, on the other hand, with the exception of their job of catching things that move for the most part, they are not task oriented and really, a cat will let a mouse run past it if it's just not in the mood to chase it. It's got to be in the mood and have a prey drive and they don't all. So a cat, you can teach them a trick and if you reward them the right way, sometimes they'll do it and sometimes they won't. Some breeds of cats are more open to doing this than others. But for the most part, cats are much more excited about experimentation. So what happens if I knock on that glass of wall water? What happens if I push on that? What happens if I walk up behind you and whack you in the back of the head? They're not doing it because they're mean, they're doing it because the response is exciting. The reaction to their input in some way is exciting to them as opposed to finishing tasks. Because if you've ever had a cat catch a mouse, they're actually sad after they have caught the mouse. The game is over, the chase is done. It's not fun to give me the mouse; it's fun to chase the mouse. So testers are a lot like that. The chase and the experimentation are a whole lot more fun than the completion. When I find a bug, that's the chase, that's the good part of it. That's like, “Oh yeah, I tracked it down. I figured it out. I found the recreate steps.” After I found the bug, it's not as fun anymore. [chuckles] So I’ve got to find the next one because now I'm back on the hunt and now that's fun again. Dogs on the other hand, it's like, “Oh, I finished the task. I'm getting my reward. I get to cross this off. My list feels really good” Very different feedback. So I think that's part of it is that devs love to finish things and testers love to experiment with things. JOHN: Yeah. JAMEY: I think that's really insightful. JOHN: Yeah. [laughter] JAMEY: I'm like a I put something that I did on my to-do list so that I could cross it off and it feels like I did something kind of person. [laughter] JACOB: I think we, at least I was, early in my career kind of trained to have that mindset and trained away from no, we're not here to like experiment with the newest and coolest thing. We're just trying to ship features. We're just trying to fix bugs. We're just trying to finish the task. Please do not be overly experimental just for fun, which is an over simplification because everyone needs to be creative at some point. But I totally agree. JENNA: Well, and testers do have to balance that, too because there is such a thing as over testing and you hit this tipping point where it becomes wasteful and you move from I've delivered valuable information to now I'm creating scenarios that will never happen. Yes, a user can do pretty incredible things when they want to, but we can only protect from themselves to a point. Eventually, it's like okay, you've reached that tipping point now it's waste. [laughter] JOHN: Yeah. I remember some research that came out recently that if you call the cat and it doesn't come, it understands what you're asking for and it's like, “Nah.” JENNA: Yeah. Maka not so much. But Excalipurr, when she's sleeping, she’ll hear you. That cat is out cold. She has zero interest in what you're saying, or doing. Nothing is going to disturb her well-earned slumber. [chuckles] JACOB: I'm kind of amazed how like my cat is just easily disrupted by the smallest noise when awake and then when he's sleeping, he's dead to the world just like you said. He clearly can't hear it, or if he is, there's something switched off in his brain when he's sleeping, because he's a total spaz when he is awake. [laughter] JENNA: I don't know. I think my vet could explain it better. He actually walked me through what happens in a cat's brain when they were sleeping. I don't remember why. I think we were waiting for a test to come back, or something and he was just killing time with me. But there was this whole neurological thing in their brains that looks for certain inputs and even biochemically, they're wired to certain sounds that are things that they should get awakened by and other things, it's like yeah, that matter. For some reason, though my cats have weird things that they're really tuned into. If you knock on the door, Excalipurr—we call her Purr—will go bananas. She is furious that someone has knocked on the door. Same thing if something beeps like microwave beep, the sound of if I've got a somebody on speaker phone and their car door opens and it beeps, she is mad. She could be dead asleep and she hears that and she is furious. But otherwise, nothing bothers her. She's out cold. [laughs] JAMEY: I also hate when people knock on my door so I can relate to that. JOHN: Yeah. JENNA: Don't come to my door if I'm not expecting you. JACOB: Yeah. JENNA: Also don't call me if I'm not expecting you. [laughs] JAMEY: I have exactly one person I open the door for. His name is Joe and he's our neighborhood person who comes and collects everyone's bottles and cans. But I recognize the cadence of his knocks so that I can answer the door for him and not other people. [laughter] JOHN: So you said earlier that working with ADHD, you had to develop some sort of techniques for how to handle that well in your life. Do you want to talk more about that? JENNA: I don't know if I would say I handle it well, but I handle it. [laughter] Most of the time. Typically, I do you pretty well. So I have lots and lots of alerts for myself. Because as I mentioned, I'll write myself a note, but you still have to have the – somebody said the name of it today and I forgot what it was, but there's a type of memory that tells you to like, “Hey, go look at your notes that you created for yourself,” because you can write the notes, but forget that the notes exist and never go look for them again. So I have lots of like alerts and alarms that tell me like, “Hey, go do this thing. Take your meds. Check to make sure that you have everything you need on the grocery list.” I have a couple of times a day that I have a reminder to go check my to-do list [chuckles] because otherwise, I just won't remember. I'll put the system into place and forget that the system exists and even with those helps, sometimes it'll just slip by especially I'm busy during those alerts. But I try really hard to use those. The most effective thing for me, though is definitely my medication. I was chatting about everybody before we started and I mentioned that because of supply delays and all of the rules around how early you can refill and the rules around not being able to transfer your script from one pharmacy to another and all that kind of stuff, I was without my medication for let's see Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, because I didn't get it until midday yesterday and I was sick. So [chuckles] too many factors at one time that I was just not at all functional over the weekend. I forgot steps in what I was cooking. I forgot things on the grocery list. I couldn't stay awake. That was probably more being sick but. So for me, that's probably the most effective thing. Also, just as a note for those of us assigned female at birth, I that ADHD symptoms get worse [laughs] as we hit 40 and up that all of the hormonal stuff winds up interacting with how our attention is, because I couldn't figure out why my dose had to go up. I was like, “I've been on it forever. Why do we have to raise the dose?” And she's like, “Well, there's some things going on,” and I have a feeling it's all about premenopausal stuff, because for those who don't know, I'll be 40 in June. Not a teenager anymore. [laughs] So all sorts of things that I need to keep it all in balance and things that I'm learning about being in my age group and having ADHD that nobody talks about because of the assumption that ADHD is something only children have and that ADHD is something that you grow out of. When you don't grow out of it; it just kind of changes. And that it's not just men and people who are assigned male at birth that there's a lot of us out there, varying genders. We’ve got to talk about it more because a lot of us feel like we're wandering the wilderness, trying to figure out what's on in our heads. [laughs] JOHN: Yeah. I remember hearing recently that ADHD and ADD present differently in AFAB people and so, it goes underdiagnosed because of that. It doesn't show up in the classical symptom lists in the same way. JENNA: Yeah. So the classic symptom list was developed around pre-pubescent and puberty age boys and in girls, it doesn't tend to present as not being able to sit still. Although, there's still definitely some of that. It presents more in being like a Chatty Cathy as they say like, “Oh, they talk all the time.” So it presents differently and as we get older and all of the other like stuff starts to factor in, AFAB tend to get identified instead as borderline personality disorder, or bipolar as opposed to ADHD, or even anxiety as opposed to ADHD. Because when you feel like your brain is going a mile a minute, it makes you anxious. So they give you an anti-anxiety medication instead of dealing with the fact that you feel like you can't keep up with your thoughts. There are so many different factors there, but we're learning a lot more about the presentation of ADHD and autism in people who are assigned females at birth. JOHN: Yeah. I don't know a ton about the history of the diagnosis and everything, but I can assume well, because it’s the society we live in that there's a giant pile of sexism going on in there, both in who is studied and who they cared about succeeding in classical schooling and the work environment and all sorts of biases up and down the hierarchy. JENNA: Absolutely. There's both, the medical misogyny, but also the socialization because there's an expectation of good girl children and the behavior that girl children should display. So we are socialized to force ourselves to sit even if it means sitting on your hands. You're socialized to doodle instead of wiggling because good girls sit still. So there's all of that kind of stuff that plays into it, too. Even things like if you develop a special interest, which typically people associate with autism, but certainly has some crossover with ADHD because they're very closely related. You learn to either hide that special interest so you just don't talk about it, or you become that person that has the weird quirky thing because ADHD girls are always quirky, right? [chuckles] They're a quirky girl. There's no neurodivergence there. They're just quirky. They're just different. I guess, in many ways, I was kind of lucky because my mom taught autistic, intellectually disabled, and other disabled early childhoods. So she identified early, like kindergarten, that I was probably ADHD. I was dealing with it like really early. Also, she had this kind of belief about raising kids without gender, but also not doing it very well. So I wouldn't say it was a successful thing. [laughs] So let me tell you, we didn't have girl toys and boy toys. We had building blocks and stuff like that. We weren't allowed Barbies. We also weren't allowed Hot Wheels. Very gender in neutral things. But when, as a teenager, I dressed really androgynous, I was told to put on a dress because she is a girl. So I don’t know. [laughter] It didn't really work. But I think that a lot of that played into me being identified really early. I'm probably getting off track, but the benefit of is that I learned a lot about it from an early age and I was able to develop systems that work for me from an early age. Most people who are assigned female at birth don't get the benefit of that. My hope is that our kids, I don't have any kids, but to the people my age that have kids, my hope is that their children are being identified earlier so that they are able to get those systems in place and be more successful in the long term. JACOB: I'm autistic and sometimes I think about the fact that I think that my white male privilege let me get away with some of the less great behaviors that came naturally to me and did not force me to develop masking skills until much later in my life. So when you were talking about that, I can sort of relate to that by the opposite that that's making a lot of sense to me, that I could see how all these sort of societal pressures to sit still and behave weren't put on me. I was just encouraged to just be a weird individual and be myself and how that wasn't put on me in places where maybe it probably should have been. So that makes a lot of sense. JENNA: I have to say, though, I think I've forgotten how to mask COVID has definitely killed masking for me. I have completely forgotten how to make small talk. [laughs] JACOB: Yeah, me too. JENNA: [laughs] I can't do it anymore. I've also forgotten how to fix my face. I was never great at fixing my face. Everything I'm thinking, feeling wears on my face, but I'm even worse at it than I used to be. [laughs] JAMEY: I also struggle with fixing my face, but I've actually been finding that I love wearing face masks in public because I can interact with someone without having to worry about what my face is doing and it takes a lot of the pressure off me, I feel. JENNA: I think it does. So I have resting friendly face. [laughter] For those of you who've never met me in person, I am 4’ 10”. I'm really short. I'm also kind of wide. I'm fine with it. But little ladies in the grocery store will ask me to help them reach things because I look friendly and approachable. [laughter] But I can’t reach them any better than they can! [laughter] Sometimes they're taller than me. So face masks have allowed me to blend in more, which is really nice because I get less of random people coming up to talk to me. People will joke that I make a friend everywhere I go because people just start talking to me and I don't really care. I'll talk to them, that's fine. What I really laugh at is since I can't fix my face, I will put on a plastered-on smile and somebody will be like, “You are really mad at me right now, aren't you?” I'm like, “No, everything's fine. I'm super okay with this,” and they're like, “Yeah, you are furious so we're going to stop.” [laughs] Like I can manage an angry smile without meaning. [laughter] JAMEY: It's interesting what you said about people talking to you randomly, because I also I tend to be that, the kind of person that people talk to randomly in general. I've been having an interesting experience recently where I've been on testosterone for about a year and a half and I'm like finally hitting the point where the way people perceive me in public is different than it used to be. That got cut down dramatically immediately and in a way where people's eyes slide off of me in public. I'm not there in a way that never used to happen to me and it was really interesting realization for me to realize how much of that was the socialization that people think they're entitled to a woman's time and attention. It's not exactly what you were talking about, but it made me think of it and I've been thinking about it a lot lately. [laughs] JENNA: But it's true. It's really true. I think everyone who's perceived as a woman gets it, but gets it in different ways. I tend to get it from people who feel like I'm a safe place to go to. So little old ladies talk to me, little kids talk to me. Now to be fair, bright pink hair, little kids think I'm great. [laughter] Especially when my tattoos are showing, too. The parents are usually like, “Okay, okay. Leave them alone.” [laughter] But I'm also—no offense to anyone who identifies as male in the room—the person that men don't typically stop and talk to, or even notice. I remember I was taking four boxes of nuts to my coworkers and I think it was Fat Tuesday, or something so I was bringing in these special donuts from my favorite donut place around the corner. I had four boxes of donuts and this guy doesn't grab the door, or anything. Just leaves me to try and push the door open with four boxes of donuts. But then granted, she was gorgeous, beautiful blonde starts walking the other direction. He notices her right away, grabs the door, and opens it for her. It's like oh, okay. I've had that happen quite a few times and not to sound dramatic here, but that's part of the reality of living in a fat body that you do get overlooked by others. So the little old ladies tend to tend to gravitate towards me and then other women, men gravitate towards them. I think no matter, what women experience this and people who are perceived as women, because I do identify as non-binary. But let's be honest, people in the broader world perceive me as a woman. We all get it. We just get it very differently and in different ways, but I can't think of a single woman who hasn't experienced it in some way. JAMEY: Definitely. JOHN: Yeah. I've read so many rants frankly from women who have absolutely loved masking well in public because they don't get told to smile and they don't present as female as normal. So they don't fit into that category as much and so, they don't get that same attention. I look very male so no one ever does that to me, but I can imagine what a relief that must be. JENNA: I definitely think it is for some women, especially in super public spaces. JAMEY: I feel like I derailed from ADHD and I want to bring it back. [laughter] I did have a question I was going to ask anyway. So I'm bringing it back to that, which is that I feel like these conversations, like the conversation we're having right now about ADHD, is something that I've been seeing happening more, especially about ADHD and adults. I think it's just something that people have been talking about more the past few years in a way that's positive. I know a lot of people who were like, “Oh, I got diagnosed recently as an adult. I started on medication and I never realized this was what was making my life so hard and my life is so much easier now.” I have several friends that are like really thriving on that currently. So I guess, my question for you is that as someone this whole story you told about being aware of this much younger and being able to make all these coping mechanisms and things like this. What would your advice be to someone who's now, as an adult, realizing this about themselves and then coming to grapple with it? JENNA: Let me preface with this. I'm not one of those people who says medication is the only way; there are lots and lots of ways to manage ADHD symptoms. But I feel like the most beneficial thing you can do for your is to find a clinician that listens to you, that believes you, that doesn't dismiss your experiences because there are as many different presentations of ADHD as there are people who are ADHD. If you've met one ADHD person, you've met one ADHD person; we all have different traits. So finding somebody who is willing to hear you, listen to you, and partner with you, as opposed to try and dictate to you how to manage, how to cope is critical. Part of that is arming yourself with all the information that you can. But the other part of it is being a really, really good self-advocate and if you aren't comfortable with that kind of self-advocacy, finding somebody that's willing to partner with you to help be your advocate. I know a lot of people in the fat community who have personal advocates for medical appointments, because they feel like they're not heard when they go to the doctor. Same thing for us as people who are neurodivergent. We don't get heard all the time and if you feel like your clinician isn't hearing you and because there is a real barrier to getting a new one many times—oftentimes we're stuck with someone. Finding that person that's willing to walk with you is huge. It is really easy to find yourself in a situation where you lose control of your decision-making to a provider who makes the decisions for you, but is clever enough to convince you you're making the decision yourself. That's my biggest advice is don't fall into that trap. If something feels wrong, it's wrong. If a medication doesn't work for you, it doesn't work for you. There are multiple different types of medications, classifications of them, and different brands for a reason is because we all need something different. Like I went through Ritalin, Adderall, finally to Vyvanse because Ritalin and Adderall weren't working for me. Adderall worked, but it raised my heart rate. Ritalin made me feel manic. My provider listened to me when I said I feel manic. I feel out of control, and she's like, “If on the lowest dose you feel out of control, this is not a way to go.” I have a friend who has been pushed off of taking stimulants because she has a history of addiction. She has a history of addiction because she's ADHD and she was self-medicating. It took four different providers to finally get to somebody who said, “Yeah, the stimulants are what worked for you.” The non-stimulant options weren't working, but she had to go and demand and demand and demand and it was the only way to get heard. So I probably got on a tangent there, but self-advocacy, finding someone who will work with you, and getting an advocate if you don't get hurt. JAMEY: I think that advice will be really helpful for people. So thanks. JOHN: Yeah. JENNA: I'm always very worried that I'm going to cross a line and upset somebody, but it just is, right? JACOB: I don't know what line that would be. I feel like everything you said was just really empowering and I wish someone said that to me 10 years ago, honestly. JENNA: I hope it's helpful, but I've had people who haven't realized that even though they're an adult, because they're neurodivergent that they are forever a child. JACOB: Yeah, I know. JENNA: So their opinion, their experience doesn't matter, it's invalid, and those are the folks that sometimes get really upset when I talk about self-advocacy. That's a big personal journey to realize that hey, you are a grown up. You make these decisions. [laughs] You are allowed to be an adult now. In fact, you need to be an adult now. JAMEY: That's also very insightful, I think. JOHN: Yeah, and interestingly, it ties in with – so my company had an event for Black History Month. We're a healthcare company, we have a lot of clinicians of color and they put together a panel discussion about Blackness in a healthcare context and literally one of the panelists was talking about how do you cope with there's still prejudice, there's still people joining medical school right now that believe that Black people don't experience pain as strongly as other people. How do you deal with that? They said almost literally the same thing. You take advocates with you to your medical appointments so that you can have more opinions. You can have someone to help fight for you, someone to help make those arguments, and point out things that you might not be noticing at the moment about how the provider is acting, or just to give you that moral support to actually voice your like, “Hey, what, wait, wait, wait, this is not right. Let's back up and talk about this again.” So I think that advice is important in so many intersections that I'm glad you laid it out like that. JENNA: It's a really interesting conversation that I wound up having. I've had sleep problems my whole life and by the way, if you're ADHD and you have sleep problems, you're not alone. It's a pretty common symptom [chuckles] to have disrupted and disordered sleep partly because our brains get bored and then we wake up. Our brains don’t know how to focus on sleep. Interesting study that somebody's undertaking. But my neurologist that I see for sleep asked me to be part of a panel conversation with a team of doctors and they basically asked me questions about being ADHD and having sleep issues. And one of the things that these doctors had never really considered is that I know enough about my own body and my own sleep to know why all of the things that they've suggested haven't worked. One of them was like, “Did you try having more potassium?” I remember I just stopped myself and I said, “Listen, my parents have told me stories of how I wouldn't sleep as an infant.” We're talking about somebody who was sleeping 2, or 3 hours a night as a toddler. This is not a new thing. This is not insomnia. This is not stress related, stress induced sleep loss. This is a chronic medical condition. I said, “If you think that I haven't tried more potassium, having peanut butter at night, turning off devices an hour before bed, not watching TV before bed, not reading before bed, using the sleep training apps, going for a sleep study. If you think I haven't done this stuff, I don't know how to help you, because if you think I've made it this far in my life without trying anything, we have a whole another conversation to have.” It's the same thing. I'm going to say this and it's going to sound really hurtful to providers, but they think that we were born yesterday and until that change, we just have to keep proving them wrong. JAMEY: I think that you won't probably hopefully hurt the feelings of providers who aren't like that. Because my suspicion is that providers who aren't like that are like, “God, I know.” [laughter] JENNA: I hope so. I hope so because they're patients, too. I really wonder what it's like for them to go to a doctor. JAMEY: Yeah. I didn't want to totally derail into a different conversation again, but I just want to kind of note that this all really resonates with me also as a trans person, because I know way more about trans healthcare than doctors do. [chuckles] So I go in and I say, “This is what we're going to do because I know all about this,” and my doctor's pretty good. He listens to me and he works with me, but he says like, “Cool, I don't know anything about that so sounds good,” and it's just wild to me that I have to learn about all of my own healthcare to do healthcare. JENNA: Yeah, which that's a whole another conversation about how important it is to – like we talk about diversifying tech, which is important, but we also have to diversify the community. Until there are trans clinicians, until there are more Black clinicians, until there are more assigned female at birth clinicians, we are going to continue to find ourselves in these situations and we're going to continue to find ourselves in dangerous situations. I think about—getting off track for a second because that's what I do. I live in Cleveland. Well, I don't live in the city of Cleveland, but Cleveland is my nearest metro area. I’m 10 minutes outside of the city. Cleveland has one of the worst infant and maternal mortality rates for Black women in the country. We also have some of the lowest numbers of Black OB-GYNs in the country. There is a direct correlation there. No offense to my white men, friends, but all of these white men sitting here in their ivory tower guessing at how they're going to solve this problem while at the same time women like Serena Williams nearly die in childbirth because they don't listen to her. It's like, so you're going to come up with these solutions when you're not even listening to some of the most educated and informed patients that you have? It's why there's a whole coalition of Black women in Cleveland that have started a doula organization that they're becoming doula to support other Black women in the city because they don't feel like the medical community is here for them. It's the exact same thing. Like until we have this diversity that's so needed and required, and reflects patients, people are going to die. JAMEY: Yeah. On the flip side of that, when you do have a provider that shares your background in that way, it's so empowering. My new endocrinologist is trans and the experience is just so different that I couldn't have even fathom how it was going to be different beforehand. [chuckles] JENNA: That's amazing, though. That transforms your care, right? JAMEY: Yeah. Totally. JENNA: But it all comes back to what I said about how I care deeply about the human [chuckles] because this is all the human stuff. [chuckles] JOHN: Yeah. JAMEY: So what we like to talk about here on Greater Than Code, the human stuff. JENNA: That's why I love Greater Than Code. [laughs] I can't help myself, though. Whenever I say human stuff, or think about human stuff, I think about Human Music from Rick and Morty. [laughter] That whole thing has always stuck out in my mind. [laughs] Just look up Human Music from Rick and Morty and you'll get a giggle. [laughs] JAMEY: I think it's a great time to do reflections. What do you think? JOHN: Yeah, I can start. I think there's probably a ton I'll be taking away from this. But I think what struck me the most is right at the beginning when you were talking about your superpower, you talked about yourself as a super human, not super human, but as a just super human, just you're really human. All of us are, but we don't think of ourselves that way. I just love that framing of it as just that I'm here as a human and I'm leaning into it. I really like thinking that way and I'll probably start using that term. JACOB: I related really hard to the forgetting how to mask situation since COVID. I don't know if that's a full reflection, or not, but I relate really hard to that. JAMEY: I feel like in a way my reflection is so general, I think it's so great to talk about stuff like this. I think that it's really important. Like I was kind of saying about we have more people realizing things about theirselves because people are just more are open about talking about this kind of topics. I think that that's really amazing and I think that when people like Jenna come on shows like Greater Than Code and we can provide this space to have these kind of conversations. That, to me feels like a real a real privilege and I almost can't come up with a more specific reflection because I hope people will listen to the whole show. [chuckles] JENNA: What's been really amazing is getting to talk about whatever just feels stream of consciousness in this conversation has connected a lot of dots for me, which is really neat because outside of tech, for folks who don't know, I'm a deacon at my church, which is also a very human thing because I provide pastoral care to people who are in the hospital, or who are homebound, or who are going through crisis, or in hospice care, or families who have experienced a loss. All of these things interconnect—the way that I care for my community, the way that I care for my broader community because I have my church community, I have my tech community, I have my work community, I have my family. All of these very human spaces are the spaces that are most important to me. If you are my friend, you are my friend and I am bad about phone calls and stuff, but you are still somebody who's on my mind and if something happens, I'm your person. You just message me and I'm there. It all interconnects back to all of these like disparate ideas that have just coalesced in one conversation and I love that and that makes my heart very full. JAMEY: Thank you so much for coming on the show. Is there anything that you want to plug? JENNA: So I have a couple of talks coming up. At InflectraCon, I am doing a risk-based testing talk and Agile Testing Days, I am doing a workshop on test design techniques. If you came to CodeMash, it's that workshop, it's fun. Support your local testers! That’s my big plug. Support your testers! [laughter] JAMEY: Think about them as the experimental cats. I think that will be helpful for people. [laughter] JENNA: Yes! [laughter] JAMEY: Thank you so much. This was great! JOHN: Yeah, I loved the last line of your reflection. That was beautiful. JENNA: Aw, thank you. Special Guest: Jenna Charlton.

00:36 - Panelist Consulting Experience and Backgrounds * Debugging Your Brain by Casey Watts (https://www.debuggingyourbrain.com/) * Happy and Effective (https://www.happyandeffective.com/) 10:00 - Marketing, Charging, and Setting Prices * Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/) * Chelsea’s Blog (https://chelseatroy.com/) * Self-Worth by Salary 28:34 - GeePawHill Twitter Thread (https://twitter.com/GeePawHill/status/1478950180904972293) - Impact Consulting * Casey’s Spreadsheet - “Matrix-Based Prioritization For Choosing a Job” (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qVrWOKPe3ElXJhOBS8egGIyGqpm6Fk9kjrFWvB92Fpk/edit#gid=1724142346) * Interdependence (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/interdependence) 38:43 - Management & Mentorship * Detangling the Manager: Supervisor, Team Lead, Mentor (https://dev.to/endangeredmassa/detangling-the-manager-supervisor-team-lead-mentor-gha) * Adrienne Maree Brown (https://adriennemareebrown.net/) 52:15 - Explaining Value and Offerings * The Pumpkin Plan: A Simple Strategy to Grow a Remarkable Business in Any Field by Mike Michalowicz (https://www.amazon.com/Pumpkin-Plan-Strategy-Remarkable-Business/dp/1591844886) * User Research * SPIN Selling: Situation Problem Implication Need-payoff by Neil Rackham (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/833015.SPIN_Selling) 55:08 - Ideal Clients Reflections: Mae: The phrase “indie”. Casey: Having a Patreon to help inspire yourself. Chelsea: Tallying up all of the different things that a given position contributes to in terms of a person’s needs. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Transcript: CHELSEA: Welcome to Greater Than Code, Episode 267. I'm Chelsea Troy, and I'm here with my co-host, Mae. MAE: And also with us is Casey. CASEY: Hi, I'm Casey. And today's episode, we are our own guests. We're going to be talking to you about our experiences in consulting. To get this one started, how about we share what got us into consulting and what we like, don't like about it, just high-level? Chelsea, would you mind going first? CHELSEA: Sure. So I started in consulting, really in a full-time job. So for early in my programming career, I worked for several years for a company called Pivotal Labs and Pivotal Labs is chiefly, or was chiefly at the time, a software engineering consulting organization. My job was to pair program with folks from client teams, various types of clients, a lot of health insurance companies. At the time, there was a restaurant loyalty app that we did some work for. We did some work for General Motors, various clients, a major airline was also a client, and I would switch projects every three to six months. During that time employed by Labs, I would work for this client, pair programming with other pivots, and also with client developers. So that was my introduction to consulting and I think that it made the transition to consulting later, a little bit easier because I already had some consulting experience from under the Labs’ umbrella. After I worked for Labs, I moved on to working at a product company for about 2 years and my experience at that product company burned me out on full-time programming for a little while. So in my last couple of months at that job, I realized that I was either going to have to take some time off, or I was going to have to find an arrangement that worked better for me for work, at least for the next little while. And for that next little while, what I decided I wanted to try to do was work part-time because I was uncomfortable with the idea of taking time off from programming completely. I felt that I was too early in my career and the skill loss would be too great if I took time off completely, but I knew I needed some space and so, I quit my full-time job. After I quit the full time—I probably should have done this before I quit the job, but I didn't—I called an organization that I had previously done some volunteer work with, with whom I discussed a job a couple of years prior, but for a couple of different reasons, it didn't work out. I said to them, “I know that you're a grant-funded organization and you rarely have the funding and capacity to bring somebody on, but just so you're aware, I like working with you. I love your product. I love the stuff that you work on. All our time working together, I've really enjoyed. So if you have an opening, I'm going to have some time available.” The director there emailed me that same day and said, “Our mobile developer put in his two weeks’ notice this morning. So if you have time this afternoon, I'd really like to talk to you,” [chuckles] and that was my first client and they were a part-time client. I still work with them. I love working with them. I would consider them kind of my flagship client. But then from there, I started to kind of pick up more clients and it took off from there after that summer. I spent that summer generally working 3 days a week for that client and then spending 4 days a week lying face down in a park in the sun. That helped me recover a little bit from burnout. And then after that, I consulted full-time for about 2 years and I still consult on the side of a full-time job. So that's my story. Is anyone feeling a penchant for going next? MAE: I can go. I've been trying to think how am I going to say this succinctly. I've had at least two jobs and several club, or organization memberships, or founding, or positions since I was 16. So wherever I go, I've always been saying, “Well, I've done it these 47 ways already [laughs] even since I was a teenager.” So I've sort of always had a consulting orientation to take a broader view and figure out ways in which we can systematize whatever it is that's happening around me. Specifically for programming, I had been an administrator, like an executive leader, for many years. I just got tired of trying to explain what we as administrators needed and I just wanted to be able to build the things. I was already a really big Microsoft access person and anybody who just got a little [laughs] snarky in there knows I love Microsoft Access. It really allowed me to be able to offer all kinds of things to, for example, I was on the board of directors of my Kiwanis Club and I made a member directory and attendance tracker and all these things. Anyway, when I quit my executive job and went to code school in 2014, I did it because I knew that I could build something a lot better than this crazy Access database [laughs] that I had, this very involved ETL things going on in. I had a nonprofit that I had been involved with for 15 years at that point and I had also taken a database class where I modeled this large database that I was envisioning. So I had a bunch of things in order. I quit my full-time job and went to an income of $6,500 my first year and I hung with that flagship customer for a while and tailored my software. So I sort of have this straddling of a SaaS situation and a consulting situation. I embed into whoever I'm working with and help them in many ways. Often, people need lots of different levels of coaching, training, and skills development mixed with just a place to put things that makes sense to them. I think that's the brief version [laughs] that I can come up with and that is how I got where I am and I've gone in and out of also having a full-time job. Before I quit that I referenced the first year I worked a full-time job plus at least 40 to a 100 hours on my software to get it ready for prime time. So a lot of, a lot of work. CASEY: Good story. I don't think I ever heard these fuller stories from either of you, even though I know roughly the shape of your past. It's so cool to hear it. Thanks for sharing them. All right, I'll share about me now. So I've been a developer, a PM, and I've done a lot of design work. I've done all the roles over my time in tech. I started doing programming 10, 15 years ago, and I'm always getting burnt out everywhere I go because I care so much and we get asked to do things that seem dumb. I'm sure anyone listening can relate to this in some organization and when I say dumb, I don't use that word myself directly. I'm quoting a lot of people who would use that word, but I say either we're being asked to do things that don't make sense, aren't good ideas, or there are things that are we're being asked to do that would make sense if we knew why and it's not being communicated really well. It's poor communication. Either one, the other, or both. So after a lot of jobs, I end up taking a 3-month sabbatical and I'm like, “Whatever, I got to go. I can't deal with caring so much anymore, and I'm not willing to care less either.” So most recently, I took a sabbatical and I finished my book, Debugging Your Brain, which takes together psychology ideas, like cognitive behavioral therapy and programming ideas and that, I'm so proud of. If you haven't read it yet, please check it out. Then I went back to my job and I gave them another month where I was like, “All right, look, these are things need to change for me to be happy to work here.” Nothing changed, then I left. Maybe it's changing very slowly, but too slowly for me to be happy there, or most of these past companies. [laughs] After I left, this last sabbatical, I spent three to six months working on a board game version of my book. That's a lot of fun. And then I decided I needed more income, I needed to pay the bills, and I can totally be a tech consultant if I just deal with learning marketing and sales. That's been my… probably six months now, I've been working on the marketing in sales part, thinking a lot about it. I have a lot of support from a lot of friends. Now I consult on ways to make teams happier and more effective and that's my company name, Happy and Effective. I found it really easy to sell workshops, like diversity, equity, and inclusion workshops to HR departments. They're pretty hungry for those kinds of workshops and it's hard to find good, effective facilitators. It's a little bit harder to get companies to pay for coaching for their employees, even though a new EM would love coaching and how to be a good leader. Companies don't always have the budget for that set aside and I wish they would. I'm working with a lot of companies. I have a couple, but not as many as I'd like. And then the hardest, my favorite kind of client is when I get to embed with the team and really work on seeing what's going on me on the ground with them, and help understand what's going on to tell the executives what's happening and what needs to change and really make a big change. I've done that once, or twice and I'd love to do that more, but it's the hardest. So I'm thinking about easy, medium, hard difficulty of selling things to clients. I would actually make plenty of money is doing workshops, honestly, but I want the impact of embedding. That's my bigger goal is the impact. MAE: Yeah. I basically have used my software as a Trojan horse for [laughs] offering the consulting and change management services to help them get there because that is something that people already expect to spend some money on. That, though has been a little problematic because a few years in, they start to think that the line item in the budget is only for software and then it looks very expensive to them. Whereas, if they were looking at it as a consultant gig, it's incredibly inexpensive to them. CASEY: Yeah. It's maybe so inexpensive that it must not be a quality product that they're buying. MAE: Yes. CASEY: Put it that way implicitly. MAE: Definitely, there's also that. CASEY: When setting prices, this is a good general rule of thumb. It could be too low it looks like it'll be junk, like a dollar store purchase, or it can be too high and they just can't afford it, and then there's the middle sweet spot where it seems very valuable. They barely can afford it, but they know it'll be worth it, and that's a really good range to be in. MAE: Yeah. Honestly, for the work that I do, it's more of a passion project. I would do it totally for free, but that doesn't work for this reason you're talking about. CASEY: Yeah. MAE: Like, it needs to hurt a little bit because it's definitely going to be lots and lots of my time and it's going to be some of their time and it needs to be an investment that not hurt bad [laughs] but just be noticeable as opposed to here's a Kenny’s Candy, or something. CASEY: I found that works on another scale, on another level. I do career coaching for friends, and friends of friends, and I'm willing to career coach my friends anyway. I've always been. For 10 years, I've reviewed hundreds, thousands of resumes. I've done so many interviews. I'm down to be a career coach, but no one was taking me up on it until I started charging and now friends are coming to me to pay me money to coach them. I think on their side, it feels more equitable. They're more willing to do it now that I'm willing to take money in exchange for it. I felt really bad charging friends until I had the sliding skill. So people who make less, I charge less for, for this personal service. It's kind of weird having a personal service like that, but it works out really well. I'm so happy for so many friends that have gotten jobs they're happy with now from the support. So even charging friends, like charging them nothing means they're not going to sign up for it. MAE: Yes, and often, there is a bias of like, “Oh, well, that's my friend.” [laughs] so they must not be a BFD.” CASEY: Yeah. But we are all BFDs. MAE: Exactly! How about you Chelsea? How did you start to get to the do the pricing thing? CHELSEA: Yeah, I think it's interesting to hear y'all's approaches to the marketing and the pricing because mine has been pretty different from that. But before I get off on that, one thing I do want to mention around getting started with offering personal services at price is that if it seems too large a step to offer a personal service to one person for an amount of money, one thing that I have witnessed folks have success with in starting out in this vein is to set up a Patreon and then have office hours for patrons wherein they spend 2 hours on a Sunday afternoon, or something like that and anyone who is a patron is welcome to join. What often ends up happening for folks in that situation is that people who are friends of theirs support their Patreon and then the friends can show up. So effectively, folks are paying a monthly fee for access to this office hours, which they might attend, or they might not attend. But there are two nice things about it. The first thing about it is that you're not – from a psychological perspective, it doesn’t feel like charging your friends for your time with them. It feels more indirect than that in a way that can be helpful for folks who are very new to charging for things and uncomfortable with the idea. The second thing is that the friends are often much more willing to pay than somebody who's new to charging is willing to charge. So the friends are putting this money into this Patreon, usually not because they're trying to get access to your office hours, but because they want to support you and one of the nice things about Patreon is that it is a monthly amount. So having a monthly email from Patreon that's like, “Hey, you we're sending you—” it doesn't even have to be a lot. “We're sending you 40 bucks this month.” It is a helpful conditioning exercise for folks who are not used to charging because they are getting this regular monthly income and the amount is not as important as receiving the regular income, which is helpful psychological preparation for charging for things on your own, I think. That's not the way that I did it, but I have seen people be effective that way. So there's that. For me, marketing was something that I was very worried about having to do when I started my business. In fact, it was one of those things where my conviction, when I started my consulting business, was I do not want to have to sell my services. I will coast on what clients I can find and when it is no longer easy, I will just get a full-time job because selling traditionally conceptualized is not something that I enjoyed. I had a head start on the marketing element of things, that is sort of the brand awareness element of things, my reputation and the reason for that is that first of all, I had consulted at Labs for several years, which meant that every client team that I had ever worked with there, the director remembered me, the product owner remember me. So a lot of people who had been clients of Labs – I didn't actually get anybody to be a client of mine who was a client of Labs, but the individuals I had worked with on those projects who had then changed jobs to go to different companies, reached out to me on some occasions. So that was one place that I got clients from. The other place that I gotten clients from has been my blog. Before I started my business, I had already been writing a tech blog for like 4, or 5 years and my goal with the tech blog has never actually been to get clientele, or make money. My goals for the blog when I started it were to write down what I was learning so that I would remember it and then after that, it was to figure out how to communicate my ideas so that I would have an easier time communicating them in the workplace. After that, it became an external validation source so that I would no longer depend on my individual manager's opinion of me to decide how good I was at programming. Only very recently has it changed to something like, okay, now I'm good enough at communicating and good enough at tech that I actually have something to teach anybody else. So honestly, for many years, I would see the viewership on my blog and I would be like, “Who are all these people? Why are they in my house?” Like, this is weird, but I would get some credibility from that. CASEY: They don't expect any tea from me. CHELSEA: Yeah. I really hope. I don't have enough to go around, [laughs] but it did help and that's where a lot of folks have kind of come from. Such that when I posted on my blog a post about how I'm going to be going indie. I've quit my job. I didn't really expect that to go anywhere, but a few people did reach out from that and I've been lucky insofar is that that has helped me sustain a client load in a way that I didn't really expect to. There's also, I would be remiss not to mention that what I do is I sling code for money for the majority of my consulting business, at least historically and especially in the beginning was exclusively that, and there's enough of a demand to have somebody come in and write code that that helped. It also helped that as I was taking on clients, I started to niche down specifically what I wanted to work on to a specific type of client and to a specific type problem. So I quickly got to the point where I had enough of a client load that I was going to have to make a choice about which clients to accept, or I was going to have to work over time. Now, the conventional wisdom in this circumstance is to raise your rates. Vast majority of business development resources will tell you that that's what you're supposed to do in this situation. But part of my goal in creating my consulting business had been to get out of burnout and part of the reason for the burnout was that I did not feel that the work that I was doing was contributing to a cause that made me feel good about what I was doing. It wasn't morally reprehensible, but I just didn't feel like I was contributing to a better future in the way that my self-identity sort of mandated that I did. It was making me irritable and all these kinds of things. MAE: I had the same thing, yeah. CHELSEA: Yeah. So it's interesting to hear that that's a common experience, but if I were to raise my rates, the companies that were still going to be able to afford me were going to be companies whose products were not morally reprehensible, but not things that coincided with what I was trying to get out of my consulting business. So what I did instead was I said, “I'm specifically looking to work with organizations that are contributing to basic scientific research, improving access for underserved communities, and combating the effects of climate change,” and kept my rates effectively the same, but niche down the clientele to that. That ended up being kind of how I did it. I find that rates vary from client to client in part, because of what you were talking about, Casey, wherein you have to hit the right price in order to even get clients board in certain circumstances. CASEY: Right. CHELSEA: I don't know a good way to guess it. My technique for this, which I don't know if this is kosher to say, but my technique for this has been whoever reached out to me, interested in bringing me on as a consultant for that organization, I ask that person to do some research and figure out what rate I'm supposed to pitch. That has helped a lot because a lot of times my expectations have been wildly off in those circumstances. One time I had somebody say to me, this was for a custom workshop they wanted. I was like, “What should I charge?” And they were like, “I don't know, a few thousand.” I was like, “Is that $1,200? Is that $9,000? I don't know how much money that is,” and so they went back and then they came back and they were able to tell me more specifically a band. There was absolutely no way I would've hit that number accurately without that information. CASEY: Yeah, and different clients have different numbers. You setting your price standard flat across all customers is not a good strategy either. That's why prices aren't on websites so often. CHELSEA: Yeah. I find that it does depend a lot. There's similarly, like I said, a lot of my clients are clients who are contributing to basic scientific research are very often grant funded and grants funding is a very particular kind of funding. It can be intermittent. There has to be a skillset on the team for getting the grant funding. A lot of times, to be frank, it doesn't support the kinds of rates that somebody could charge hourly in a for-profit institution. So for me, it was worth it to make the choice that this is who I want to work with. I know that my rate is effectively capped at this, if I'm going to do that and that was fine by me. Although, I'm lying to say it was completely fine by me. I had to take a long, hard look in the mirror, while I was still in that last full-time job, and realize that I had become a person who gauged her self-worth by the salary that she commanded more than I was comfortable with. More than I wanted to. I had to figure out how to weaken that dependency before I was really able to go off and do my own thing. That was my experience with it. I'm curious whether y'all, well, in particular, Casey, did you find the same thing? CASEY: The self-worth by salary? CHELSEA: Yeah. CASEY: I felt that over time, yeah. Like I went from private sector big tech to government and I got a pay cut and I was like, “Ugh.” It kind of hurt a little and it wasn't even as much as I was promised. Once I got through the hiring process, it was lower than that and now I'm making way less. When I do my favorite impact thing, the board game, like if I made a board game about mental health for middle schoolers, which is something I really want to do, that makes less than anything else I could with my time. I'll be lucky to make money on that at all. So it's actually inverse. My salary is inversely proportional to how much impact I can have if I'm working anyway. So my dream is to have enough corporate clients that I can do half-time, or game impact, whatever other impact things I'm thinking about doing. I think of my impact a lot. Impact is my biggest goal, but the thing is salary hurts. If I don't have the salary and I want to live where I'm living and the lifestyle I have, I don't want to cut back on that and I don't need to, hopefully. CHELSEA: Right. CASEY: I'm hoping eventually, I'll have a steady stream of clients, I don't need to do the marketing and sales outreach as much and all those hours I kind of recoup. I can invest those in the impact things. I've heard people can do that. I think I'll get there. CHELSEA: No, I think you absolutely will. Mae, I'm curious as to your experience, because I know that you have a lot of experience with a similar calculation of determining which things are going to provide more income, which things are probably going to provide less income, and then balancing across a bunch of factors like money, but also impact, time spent, emotional drain, and all that stuff. MAE: Well, Chelsea. [laughter] I am a real merry go round in this arena. So before I became a programmer, I had a state job, I was well paid, and I was pretty set. Then I was a programmer and I took huge pay cut because I quit. I became a programmer when I was 37 years old. So I already had a whole career and to start at the beginning and be parallel with 20-year-old so it's not just like my salary, but also my level and my level of impact on my – and level of the amount of people who wanted to ask me for my advice [laughs] was significantly different. So like the ego's joking stopped and so when you mentioned the thing about identity. Doing any kind of consulting in your own deal is a major identity reorganization and having the money, the title, the clout, and the engagement. Like a couple years, I have spent largely alone and that is very different than working at a place where I have colleagues, or when I live somewhere and have roommates. But I have found signing up for lots and lots of different social justice and passion project things, and supporting nonprofits that I believe in. So from my perspective, I'm really offering a capacity building grant out of my own pocket, my own time, and my own heart and that has been deeply rewarding and maybe not feel much about my identity around salary. Except it does make me question myself as an adult. Like these aren't the best financial decisions to be making, [chuckles] but I get enough out of having made them that it's worth it to me. One of the things probably you were thinking of, Chelsea, we worked together a little bit on this mutual aid project that I took on when the pandemic started and I didn't get paid any dollars for that and I was working 18 hours a day on it, [chuckles] or something. So I like to really jump in a wholeheartedly and then once I really, really do need some dollars, then I figure something else out. That is kind of how I've ebbed and flowed with it. But mostly, I've done it by reducing my personal overhead so that I'm not wigged about the money and lowering whatever my quality-of-life spending goals [chuckles] are. But that also has had to happen because I have not wanted to and I couldn't get myself to get excited about marketing of myself and my whole deal. Like I legit still don't have a website and I've been in operation now since 2014 so that's a while. I meet people and I can demonstrate what it is and I get clients and for me, having only a few clients, there's dozens of people that work for each one. So it's more of an organization client than a bunch of individuals and I can't actually handle a ton. I was in a YCombinator thing that wanted me to really be reporting on income, growth rates, and all of these number of new acquisition things, and it just wasn't for me. Those are not my goals. I want to make sure that this nonprofit can help more people this year and that they can get more grant money because they know how many people they helped and that those people are more efficient at their job every day. So those are harder to measure. It's not quite an answer to your question, [laughs] but I took it and ran a little. CHELSEA: No, I appreciate that. There is a software engineer and a teacher that I follow on Twitter. His name is GeePawHill. Are y'all familiar with GeePawHill? MAE: No. CHELSEA: And he did a thread a couple of days ago that this conversation reminds me of and I found it. Is that all right if I read like a piece of it and paraphrase part of it? MAE: Yes, please. CHELSEA: Okay. So this is what he says. He says, “The weirdest thing about being a teacher for young geek minds: I am teaching them things…that their actual first jobs will most likely forbid them to do. The young'uns I work with are actually nearly all hire-able as is, after 18 months of instruction, without any intervention from me. The problem they're going to face when they get to The Show isn't technical, or intellectual at all. No language, or framework, or OS, or library, or algorithm is going to daunt them, not for long. No, the problem they're going to face is how to sustain their connection to the well of geek joy, in a trade that is systematically bent on simultaneously exploiting that connection while denying it exists and refusing any and all access to it. It is possible, to stick it out, to acquire enough space and power, to re-assert one's path to the well. Many have done it; many are doing it today. But it is very hard. Very hard. Far harder than learning the Visitor pattern, or docker, or, dart, or SQL, or even Haskell. How do you tell people you've watched “become” as they bathed in the cool clear water that, for some long time, 5 years or more, they must…navigate the horrors of extractive capitalist software development? The best answer I have, so far, is to try and teach them how and where to find water outside of work. It is a lousy answer. I feel horrible giving it. But I'd feel even more horrible if I didn't tell them the truth.” CASEY: I just saw this thread and I really liked it, too. I'm glad you found it. MAE: Oh, yeah. I find it honestly pretty inspiring, like people generally who get involved in the kinds of consulting gigs that we three are talking about, which is a little different than just any random consulting, or any random freelancing. CASEY: Like impact consulting, I might call that. MAE: Yeah. It's awesome if the money comes, but it's almost irrelevant [chuckles] provided that basic needs are meant. So that's kind of been my angle. We'll see how – talk to me in 20 more years when I'm [chuckles] trying to retire and made a lot of choices that I was happy with at the time. CASEY: This reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend who's an executive director of an orchestra in the nonprofit space and he was telling me that so many nonprofits shoot themselves in the foot by not doing enough fundraising, by not raising money, and that comes from not wanting to make money in a way because they're a nonprofit, money is not a motive, and everybody's very clear about that. That's noble and all, but it ends up hurting them because they don't have the money to do the impactful things they would as a nonprofit. Money is a necessary evil here and a lot of people are uncomfortable with it. Including me a lot of the time. Honestly, I have to tell myself not to. What would I tell a friend? “No, charge more money.” Okay, I guess I'll tell myself to do that now. I have this conversation with myself a lot. MAE: Yeah. I've been very aware that when I become anti-money, the well dries up. The money well. [laughs] CASEY: Yeah. MAE: And when I am respectful of and appreciative of money in the world, more comes my way. There is an internal dousing, I think that happens that one needs to be very careful about for sure. CASEY: One of the techniques I use with myself and with clients is a matrix where I write out for this approach, this thing that I'm thinking about how much money will it make, how much impact will it have on this goal, and all the different heuristics I would use to make the decision, or columns and all the options arose. I put numbers in it and I might weight my columns because money is less important than impact, but it's still important. It's there. I do all this math. In the end, the summary column with the averages roughly matches what's in my head, which is the things that are similar in my head are similar on paper, but I can see why and that's very clarifying for me. I really like being able to see it in this matrix form and being able to see that you have to focus on the money some amount. If you just did the high impact one, it wouldn't be on the top of the list. It's like, it's hard to think about so many variables at once, but seeing it helps me. CHELSEA: It is. GeePaw speaks to that some later in the thread. He says, “You’ve got to feed your family. You’ve got to. That's not negotiable. But you don't got to forget the well. To be any good at all, you have to keep finding the well, keep reaching it, keep noticing it. Doesn't matter whether it's office hours, or after hours. Matters whether you get to it. The thing you’ve got to watch, when you become a professional geek, isn't the newest tech, and it sure as hell isn't the org's process. You’ve got to watch whether, or how you're getting to the well. If you're getting to the well, in whatever way, you'll stay alive and change the world.” I think I'm curious as to y'all's thoughts on this, but like I mentioned earlier, I have a full-time job and I also do this consulting on the side. I also teach. I teach at the Master's program in computer science at University of Chicago. I do some mentoring with an organization called Emergent Works, which trains formerly incarcerated technologists. The work situation that I have pieced together for myself, I think manages to get me the income I need and also, the impact that I'm looking for and the ability to work with people and those kinds of things. I think my perspective at this point is that it's probably difficult, if it's realistic at all, to expect any one position to be able to meet all of those needs simultaneously. Maybe they exist, but I suspect that they're relatively few and far between and I think that we probably do ourselves a disservice by propagating this idea that what you need to do is just make yourself so supremely interview-able that everybody wants to hire you and then you get to pick the one position where you get to do that because there's only one in the entirety of tech, it's that rare. Sure, maybe that's an individualist way to look at it. But when we step back and look more closely, or when we step back and look more broadly at that, it's like, all right, so we have to become hypercompetitive in order to be able to get the position where we can make enough while helping people. Like, the means there seem kind of cutthroat for the ends, right? [laughs] CASEY: This reminds me of relationships, too and I think there's a lot of great parallels here. Like you shouldn't expect your partner to meet all of your needs, all of them. MAE: I was thinking the same thing! CASEY: Uh huh. Social, emotional, spiritual, physical, all your needs cannot possibly by one person and that is so much pressure to put on that person, CHELSEA: Right. CASEY: It's like not healthy. CHELSEA: Right. CASEY: You can choose some to prioritize over others for your partner, but you're not going to get a 100% of it and you shouldn't. CHELSEA: Well, and I find that being a conversation fairly regularly in monogamous versus polyamorous circles as well. Like, how much is it appropriate to expect of a partner? But I think it is a valid conversation to have in those circles. But I think that even in the context of a monogamous relationship, a person has other relationships—familial relationships, friend relationships—outside of that single romantic relationship. CASEY: Co-workers, community people, yeah. CHELSEA: Right. But even within that monogamous context, it's most realistic and I would argue, the most healthy to not expect any one person to provide for all of your needs and rather to rely on a community. That's what we're supposed to be able to do. CASEY: Yeah. MAE: Interdependence, not independence. CHELSEA: Right. CASEY: It's more resilient in the face of catastrophe, or change in general, mild, more mild change and you want to be that kind of resilient person for yourself, too. Just like you would do a computer system, or an organization. They should be resilient, too. MAE: Yes. CASEY: Your relationship with your job is another one. MAE: Totally. CHELSEA: Right. And I think that part of the reason the burnout is so quick – like the amount of time, the median amount of time that somebody spends at a company in tech is 2.2 years. MAE: I know, it's so weird. CHELSEA: Very few companies in tech have a large number of lifers, for example, or something like that. There are a number of reasons for that. We don't necessarily have to get into all of them, although, we can if you want. But I think one of them is definitely that we expect to get so much out of a full-time position. Tech is prone. due to circumstances of its origin, to an amount of idealism. We are saving the world. We, as technologists, are saving the world and also, we, as technologists, can expect this salary and we, as technologists, are a family and we play ping pong, and all of these things – [laughter] That contribute to an unrealistic expectation of a work environment, which if that is the only place that we are getting fulfillment as programmers, then people become unsatisfied very quickly because how could an organization that's simultaneously trying to accomplish a goal, meet all of these expect for everybody? I think it's rare at best. CASEY: I want to bring up another example of this kind of thing. Imagine you're an engineer and you have an engineering manager. What's their main job? Is it to get the organization's priorities to be done by the team, like top-down kind of thing? We do need that to happen. Or is it to mentor each individual and coach them and help them grow as an engineer? We need that somewhere, too, yeah. Or is it to make the team – like the team to come together as a team and be very effective together and to represent their needs to the org? That, too, but we don't need one person to do all three of those necessarily. If the person's not technical, you can get someone else in the company to do technical mentorship, like an architect, or just a more senior person on, or off the team somewhere else. But we put a lot of pressure on the engineering managers to do that and this applies to so many roles. That's just one I know that I can define pretty well. There's an article that explains that pretty well. We'll put in the show notes. MAE: Yes! So what I am currently doing is I have a not 40 hours a week job as an engineering manager and especially when I took the gig, I was still doing all of these pandemic charity things and I'm like, “These are more important to me right now and I only have so many hours in the day. So do you need me to code at this place? I can, but do you need me to because all those hours are hours I can go code for all these other things that I'm doing,” and [laughs] it worked. I have been able to do all three of the things that you're talking about, Casey, but certainly able to defer in different places and it's made me – this whole thing of not working full-time makes you optimize in very different ways. So I sprinkle my Slack check-ins all day, but I didn't have to work all day to be present all day. There's a lot that has been awesome. It's not for everyone, but I also have leaned heavily on technical mentorship happening from tech leads as well. CASEY: Sounds good. MAE: But I'm still involved. But this thing about management, especially in tech being whichever programmer seems like the most dominant programmer is probably going to be a good needs to be promoted into management. Just P.S. management is its own discipline, has its own trajectory and when I talk to hiring managers and they only care about my management experience in tech, which is 6 years, right? 8, but I have 25 years of experience in managing. So there's a preciousness of what it is that we are asking for the employees and what the employees are asking of the employer, like you were talking about Chelsea, that is very interesting. It's very privileged, and does lead a lot of people to burnout and disappointment because their ideas got so lofty. I just want to tie this back a little bit too, something you read in that quote about – I forget the last quote, but it was something about having enough to be able to change the world and it reminded me of Adrienne Maree Brown, pleasure activism, emergent strategy, and all of her work, and largely, generations of Black women have been saying, “Yo, you’ve got to take care [chuckles] of yourself to be able to affect change.” Those people have been the most effective and powerful change makers. So definitely, if you're curious about this topic, I urge you to go listen to some brilliant Black women about it. CASEY: We'll link that in the show notes, too. I think a lot about engineering managers and one way that doesn't come up a lot is you can get training for engineering managers to be stronger managers and for some reason, that is not usually an option people reach for. It could happen through HR, or it could happen if you have a training budget and you're a new EM, you could use your training budget to hire coaching from someone. I'm an example. But there's a ton of people out there that offer this kind of thing. If you don't learn the leadership skills when you switch roles, if you don't take time to learn those skills that are totally learnable, you're not going to have them and it's hard to apply them. There's a lot of pressure to magically know them now that you’ve switched hats. MAE: And how I don't understand why everyone in life doesn't have a therapist, [laughs] I don't understand why everyone in life doesn't have multiple job coaches at any time. Like why are we not sourcing more ideas and problem-solving strategies, and thinking we need to be the repository of how to handle X, Y, Z situation? CASEY: For some reason, a lot of people I've talked to think their manager is supposed to do that for them. Their manager is supposed to be their everything; their boss. They think the boss that if they're bad, you quit your job. If they're good, you'll stay. That boss ends up being their career coach for people, unless they're a bad career coach and then you're just stuck. Because we expect it so strongly and that is an assumption I want everyone listening to question. Do you need your manager at work to be that person for you? If they are, that's great. You're very fortunate. If not, how can you find someone? Someone in the community, a friend, family member, a professional coach, there's other options, other mentors in the company. You don't have to depend on that manager who doesn't have time for you to give you that kind of support. CHELSEA: So to that end, my thinking around management and mentorship changed about the time I hit – hmm. It was a while ago now, I don't know, maybe 6 years as a programmer, or something like that. Because before that, I was very bought into this idea that your manager is your mentor and all these types of things. There was something that I realized. There were two things that I realized. The first one was that, for me, most of my managers were not well set up to be mentors to me and this is why. Well, the truth is I level up quickly and for many people who are managers in a tech organization, they were technologists for 3 to 5 years before they became managers. They were often early enough in their career that they didn't necessarily know what management entailed, or whether they should say no based on what they were interested in. Many managers in tech figure out what the job is and then try to find as many surreptitious ways as possible to get back into the code. MAE: Yeah. CHELSEA: Additionally, many of those managers feel somewhat insecure about their weakening connection to the code base of the company that they manage. MAE: Yeah. CHELSEA: And so it can be an emotionally fraught experience for them to be mentor to someone whose knowledge of the code base that they are no longer in makes them feel insecure. So I learned that the most effective mentors for me – well, I learned something about the most effective mentors for me and I learned something of the most effective managers for me. I learned that the most effective managers for me either got way out ahead of me experience wise before they became managers, I mean 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, because those are not people who got promoted to management because they didn't know to say no. Those are people who got promoted to management after they got tired of writing code and they no longer staked their self-image on whether they're better coders than the people that they manage. That's very, very important. The other type of person who was a good manager for me was somebody who had never been a software engineer and there are two reasons for that. First of all, they trended higher on raw management experience. Second of all, they were not comparing their technical skillset to my technical skillset in a competitive capacity and that made them better managers for me, honestly. It made things much, much easier. And then in terms of mentors, I found that I had a lot more luck going outside of the organization I was working for mentors and that's again, for two reasons. The first one is that a lot of people, as they gain experience, go indie. Just a lot of people, like all kinds. Some of my sort of most trusted mentors. Avdi Grimm is somebody I've learned a lot from, indie effectively at this point. GeePawHill, like I mentioned, indie effectively at this point. Kenneth Mayer, indie effectively at this point. And these are all people who had decades of experience and the particular style of programming that I was doing very early in my career for many years. So that's the first reason. And then the second reason is that at your job, it is in your interest to succeed at everything you try—at most jobs. And jobs will tell you it's okay to fail. Jobs will tell you it's okay to like whatever, not be good at things and to be learning. But because if I'm drawing a paycheck from an organization, I do not feel comfortable not being good at the thing that I am drawing the paycheck for. MAE: Same. CHELSEA: And honestly, even if they say that that's the case, when the push comes to shove and there's a deadline, they don't actually want you to be bad at things. Come on! That doesn't make any sense. But I've been able to find ambitious projects that I can contribute to not for pay and in those situations, I'm much more comfortable failing because I can be like, “You know what, if they don't like my work, they can have all their money back.” And I work on a couple projects like that right now where I get to work with very experienced programmers on projects that are interesting and challenging, and a lot of times, I just absolutely eat dirt. My first PR doesn't work and I don't know what's wrong and the whole description is like somebody please help and I don't feel comfortable doing that on – if I had to do it at work, I would do it, but I'm not comfortable doing it. I firmly believe that for people to accelerate their learning to their full capacity for accelerating their learning, they must place themselves in situations where they not only might fail, but it's pretty likely. Because that's what's stretching your capacity to the degree that you need to get better and that's just not a comfortable situation for somewhere that you depend on to make a living. And that ended up being, I ended up approaching my management and my mentorship as effectively mutually exclusive things and it ended up working out really well for me. At this particular point in time, I happened to have a manager who happened to get way out ahead of me technically, and is willing to review PRs and so, that's very nice. But it's a nice-to-have. It's not something that I expect of a manager and it's ended up making me much more happy and manage relationships. MAE: I agree with all of that. So well said, Chelsea. CHELSEA: I try, I try. [laughs] Casey, are there things that you look for specifically in a manager? CASEY: Hmm. I guess for that question, I want to take the perspective inward, into myself. What do I need support on and who can I get that from? And this is true as also an independent worker as a consultant freelancer, too. I need support for when things are hard and I can be validated from people who have similar experiences, that kind of like emotional support. I need technical support and skills, like the sales I don't have yet and I have support for that, thank goodness. Individuals, I need ideally communities and individuals, both. They're both really important to me and some of these could be in a manager, but lately, I'm my own manager and I can be none of those things, really. I'm myself. I can't do this external support for myself. Even when I'm typing into a spreadsheet and the computer's trying to be a mirror, it's not as good as talking to another person. Another perspective that I need support on is how do I know what I'm doing is important and so, I do use spreadsheets as a mirror for that a lot of the time for myself. Like this impact is having this kind of magnitude of impact on this many people and then that calculates to this thing, maybe. Does that match my gut? That's literally what I want to know, too. The numbers aren't telling me, but talking to other people about impact on their projects really kind of solidifies that for me. And it's not always the client directly. It could be someone else who sees the impact I'm having on a client. Kind of like the manager, I don't want to expect clients to tell me the impact I'm having. In fact, for business reasons, I should know what the impact is myself, to tell them, to upsell them and continue it going anyway. So it really helps me to have peers to talk through about impact. Like that, too types of support. What other kinds of support do you need as consultants that I didn't just cover? MAE: I still need – and I have [laughs] hired Casey to help me. I still need a way to explain what it is that I am offering and what the value of that really is in a way that is clear and succinct. Every time I've gone to make a website, or a list of what it is that I offer, I end up in the hundreds of bullet points [laughs] and I just don't – [overtalk] CASEY: Yeah, yeah. MAE: Have a way to capture it yet. So often when people go indie, they do have a unique idea, a unique offering so finding a way to summarize what that is can be really challenging. I loved hearing you two when you were talking about knowing what kinds of work you want to do and who your ideal customer is. Those are things I have a clearer sense of, but how to make that connection is still a little bit of a gap for me. But you reminded me in that and I just want to mention here this book, The Pumpkin Plan, like a very bro business book situation, [chuckles] but what is in there is so good. I don't want to give it away and also, open up another topic [laughs] that I'll talk too long about. So I won't go into it right now, but definitely recommend it. One of the things is how to call your client list and figure out what is the most optimal situation that's going to lead toward the most impact for everybody. CASEY: One of the things I think back to a lot is user research and how can we apply that this business discovery process. I basically used the same techniques that were in my human computer interaction class I took 10, or 15 years ago. Like asking open ended questions, trying to get them to say what their problems are, remembering how they said it in their own words and saying it back to them—that's a big, big step. But then there's a whole lot of techniques I didn't learn from human computer interaction, that are sales techniques, and my favorite resource for that so far is called SPIN selling where SPIN is an acronym and it sounds like a wonky technique that wouldn't work because it's just like a random technique to pull out. I don't know, but it's not. This book is based on studies and it shows what you need to do to make big ticket sales go through, which is very different than selling those plastic things with the poppy bubbles in the mall stand in the middle of the hallway. Those low-key things they can manipulate people into buying and people aren't going to return it probably. But big-ticket things need a different approach than traditional sales and marketing knowledge and I really like the ideas in SPIN selling. I don't want to go into them today. We'll talk about it later. But those are two of the perspectives I bring to this kind of problem, user research and the SPIN selling techniques. I want to share what my ideal client would be. I think that's interesting, too. So I really want to help companies be happier and more effective. I want to help the employees be happier and more effective, and that has the impact on the users of the company, or whoever their clients are. It definitely impacts that, which makes it a thing I can sell, thankfully. So an organization usually knows when they're not the most happy, or the most effective. They know it, but my ideal client isn't just one that knows that, but they also have leadership buy-in; they have some leader who really cares and can advocate for making it better and they just don't know how. They don't have enough resources to make it happen in their org. Maybe they have, or don't have experience with it, but they need support. That's where I come in and then my impact really is on the employees. I want to help the employees be happier and more effective. That's the direct impact I want, and then it has the really strong, indirect impact on the business outcomes. So in that vein, I'm willing to help even large tech companies because if I can help their employees be happier, that is a positive impact. Even if I don't care about large tech companies’ [chuckles] business outcomes, I'm okay with that because my focus is specifically on the employees. That's different than a lot of people I talk to; they really just want to support like nonprofit type, stronger impact of the mission and that totally makes sense to me, too. MAE: Also, it is possible to have a large and ever growing equitably run company. It is possible. I do want to contribute toward that existing in the world and as much as there's focus on what the ultimate looking out impact is, I care about the experience of employees and individuals on the way to get there. I'm not a utilitarian thinker. CASEY: Yeah, but we can even frame it in a utilitarian way if we need to. If we're like a stakeholder presentation, if someone leaves the company and it takes six months to replace them and their work is in the meantime off board to other people, what's the financial impact of all that. I saw a paper about it. Maybe I can dig it up and I'll link to it. It's like to replace a person in tech it costs a $100K. So if they can hire a consultant for less than a $100K to save one person from leaving, it pays for itself. If that number is right, or whatever. Maybe it was ten employees for that number. The paper will say much better than I will. CHELSEA: I think that in mentioning that Casey, you bring up something that businesses I think sometimes don't think about, which is some of the hidden costs that can easily be difficult to predict, or difficult to measure those kinds of things. One of the hidden costs is the turnover costs is the churn cost because there's how much it takes to hire another person and then there's the amount of ramp time before that person gets to where the person who left was. CASEY: Right, right, right. CHELSEA: And that's also a thing. There's all the time that developers are spending on forensic software analysis in order to find out all of the context that got dropped when a person left. CASEY: Yeah. The one person who knew that part of the code base, the last one is gone, uh oh. CHELSEA: Right. CASEY: It's a huge trust. And then engineering team is often really interested in conveying that risk. But if they're not empowered enough and don't have enough bandwidth time and energy to make the case, the executive team, or whoever will never hear it and they won't be able to safeguard against it. MAE: Or using the right language to communicate it. CASEY: Right, right. And that’s its own skill. That's trainable, too thankfully. But we don't usually train engineers in that, traditionally. Engineers don't receive that training unless they go out of their way for it. PMs and designers, too, honestly. Like the stakeholder communication, everybody can work on. MAE: Yeah. CASEY: That's true. MAE: Communication. Everyone can, or not. Yes. [laughs] I learned the phrase indie today. I have never heard it and I really like it! It makes me feel cool inside and so love and – [overtalk] CASEY: Yeah, I have no record label, or I am my own record label, perhaps. MAE: Yo! CASEY: I've got one. I like the idea of having a Patreon, not to make money, but to have to help inspire yourself and I know a lot of friends have had Patreons with low income from it and they were actually upset about it. So I want to go back to those friends and say, “Look, this prove some people find value in what you're doing.” Like the social impact. I might make my own even. Thank you. MAE: I know I might do it too. It's good. That's good. CHELSEA: Absolutely. Highly recommended. One thing that I want to take away is the exercise, Casey, that you were talking about of tallying up all of the different things that a given position contributes in terms of a person's needs. Because I think that an exercise like that would be extremely helpful for, for example, some of my students who are getting their very first tech jobs. Students receive a very one-dimensional message about the way that tech employment goes. It tends to put set of five companies that show remain unnamed front and center, which whatever, but I would like them to be aware of the other options. And there is a very particular way of gauging the value of a tech position that I believe includes fewer dimensions than people should probably consider for the health of their career long-term and not only the health of their career, but also their health in their career. CASEY: One more parting thought I want to share for anyone is you need support for your career growth, for your happiness. If you're going to be a consultant, you need support for that. Find support in individuals and communities, you deserve that support and you can be that support for the people who are supporting you! It can be mutual. They need that, too.

Content warnings for discussion of pandemic and sickness, American politics, and mental health issues. In this special episode of Greater Than Code, several of our panelists have a candid conversation about the current COVID-19 situation, how it has been affecting them personally, and how they believe it will affect the tech industry as a whole. Discussion topics include how it feels both to be working and unemployed during the pandemic, productivity while quarantined, the effect on WFH and conference culture, the current political climate, and human resiliency in the face of the unknown. Links Mentioned: I Want to Know What Day It Is - Foreigner Parody (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH4TVYT1OYQ) Becoming More Fully Human with Virginia Satir (https://www.awaken.com/2017/03/becoming-more-fully-human-with-virginia-satir/) Additional show notes: Jamey wanted to report that after recording was finished, they called their favorite restaurant back and was able to successfully order takeout after all. . . . . This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well.

00:56 - Chris’ Superpower: Not Knowing In Public * Asking Questions 02:53 - Source Documents and Their Relation To People * Grace Hopper (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper) * Maintaining Code to Give People Context (Writing Code For People) * Critical Complexity * Indu Alagarsamy (https://indu.dev/) 06:44 - Encouraging Others To Write Code For People * Modeling Behavior * Event Storming * ECO Mapping (Ego, Command, Outcome) (http://chrisstead.net/2020/01/17/ECO-mapping.html) * Creating Culture * Arlo Belshee: Naming is a Process (http://arlobelshee.com/tag/naming-is-a-process/) 12:39 - Naming Things in Code / Narratives in Software and Business 18:53 - Asking the Right Questions * Google-Fu (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Google-fu) * Mobbing Interviews 22:38 - Interviewing for the Benefit of the Interviewee * The Problem with Being Transactional * It’s People All The Way Down * Empathetic Interviewing 33:44 - Treating People as People; Making Things More Humane * Peopleware (https://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Tom-DeMarco/dp/0932633439) * Books by Gerald Weinburg (https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Gerald+Weinburg&ref=nb_sb_noss) * The Mythical Man-Month (https://www.amazon.com/Mythical-Man-Month-Anniversary-Software-Engineering-ebook/dp/B00B8USS14/ref=sr_1_2?crid=1L37LXA2PI79D&dchild=1&keywords=mythical+man+month&qid=1586297658&sprefix=mythical+man%2Caps%2C164&sr=8-2) * The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings On Linux And Open Source By An Accidental Revolutionary (https://www.amazon.com/Cathedral-Bazaar-Musings-Accidental-Revolutionary/dp/0596001088) * Willem Larsen (https://twitter.com/techgreatness) 38:23 - Code Stores Emotion * Measuring Progression * The Valley of Despair 45:19 - Deciding: “Will this be helpful for someone else?” Reflections: Jessica: The idea that code can convey emotions. Even code can be Greater Than Code. John: Structuring interviews with goals around comfort and familiarity so people can perform at their best. Jamey: Imbuing things with the feeling when you wrote it. Chris: If you’re feeling frustrated, kind is great. Also, everything is a systemic whole. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Chris Stead.

01:44 - Ruben’s Superpower: Believing in people more than they believe in themselves and helping people to meet their potential. 03:00 - How Ruben Developed His Superpower * Natural Belief In Self * Father and Mother’s Example 06:35 - Benefits Of Being Underestimated * Conquering Challenges * Career Karma Coaches And Squads 11:15 - Career Karma Success Story 13:50 - Fires Lit Inside 15:03 - Origin Of Career Karma * App Launched January 2019 * CareerKarma.com/schools (http://www.careerkarma.com/schools) * Learn And Experience The Companies * Breaking into Startups (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/breaking-startups-ruben-harris-1?articleId=5964022070152015872#comments-5964022070152015872&trk=public_profile_article_view) * The Reality of Breaking Into Startups: The First Product You Build Is Yourself (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/reality-breaking-startups-first-product-you-build-yourself-harris?articleId=6121165669871411200#comments-6121165669871411200&trk=public_profile_article_view) 18:10 - How Career Karma Secured Funding 23:38 - What Makes The Success Of Career Karma Different * Culture of Experimentation 25:25 - What It Feels Like To Know You Are Doing What You Are Meant To Be Doing * Pay Attention To The Patterns In Your Life 31:21 - Impact of Coronavirus 36:15 - Who Will Benefit From Remote Work 38:00 - The Career Karma Team * Pay It Forward 42:30 - If You Want To Be A Master In Life, You Have To Submit To A Master 44:30 - What’s On The Horizon For Career Karma 48:20 - The Biggest Lesson Ruben Has Learned Thus Far LINKS: State of the Bootcamp Market Report 2020 (https://careerkarma.com/blog/bootcamp-market-report-2020/) Remote Working Tips and Complete Guide to Telecommuting in 2020 (https://careerkarma.com/blog/remote-working-guide/) How to Pay for Coding Bootcamp: The Ultimate Guide (https://careerkarma.com/blog/how-to-pay-for-coding-bootcamp-ultimate-guide/) Income Share Agreements: State of the Market 2019 (https://careerkarma.com/blog/income-share-agreement-market-report-2019/) This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Ruben Harris.

00:57 - Eric’s Superpower: The Ability To Explain Things In A Way That Makes Sense To Most People 02:37 - Legacy Capability Of The Web * Web Technologies Are Long Term * Frameworks * Lynx (https://lynx.browser.org) * Y2K 11:30 - Creating Long Term Within Frameworks * Static Can Be Good 15:50 - Ethical Dimensions * RAINN (https://www.rainn.org) * Information Accessible As Widely As Possible * Long Term vs. Short Term Code 20:50 - Longevity Of The Web 23:11 - Edge Cases - Stress Cases * Evan Hensleigh @futuraprime (https://twitter.com/futuraprime) * Design For Real Life (https://abookapart.com/products/design-for-real-life) 25:44 - Make Everything Accessible To The Most People * Diverse Teams Are Stronger * Making Assumptions * Write People Off Explicitly 44:00 - Design For Real Life * Challenging Team Assumptions * The Designated Dissenter * Sarah Parmenter @sazzy (https://twitter.com/sazzy) Reflections: John: The designated dissenter idea. Doing a pre-mortem on a project - planning ahead. Carina: A whole other conversation could come of the philosophy of agile and move fast and break things. Jacob: How the dissenter could be a challenging position to be in. Eric: The dissenter is stress testing, not criticizing. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Eric A. Meyer.

01:38 - What Does Resilience Mean To The Panelists? * John - [It’s] Like A Flexible Tree That Can Bend With The Wind Or Environment - It Does Not Resist Or Break * Chanté - Tenacity And Grit And Being Able To Cope Or Withstand Something That You Didn’t Foresee - It Doesn’t Break You, It Makes You Stronger * Antifragile (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragile) * Rein - [It’s] About Unforeseen Surprises 03:36 - Thoughts On David Woods - Four Concepts for Resilience (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276139783_Four_concepts_for_resilience_and_the_implications_for_the_future_of_resilience_engineering) * Resilience As Rebound * Resilience As Robustness * Resilience As The Opposite Of Brittleness * Resilience As Sustained Adaptability 04:49 - Applying Resilience To Leadership * High Performance Organization - HPO (https://www.hpocenter.com) * People Make Up Companies 14:40 - The Difference Between Sustainability And Resilience 17:20 - Welcoming The Resilient Mindset 18:30 - Creating And Acknowledging Resilience 21:54 - Organization Resilience And Adaptive Capacity * Richard Cook’s REdeploy 2019 Talk On The Resilience Of Bone (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LbePBiOvZ4&t=3s) * Convincing Employers To Become More Resilient To Reduce Harm To Employees 27:15 - Resilience Related To Diversity And Inclusion * Families And Communities 31:00 - Resilience Within Software Development * Software Being Made Robust, Not Resilient * Rejection Proof (https://www.amazon.com/Rejection-Proof-Became-Invincible-Through/dp/080414138X#ace-g8881249860) - A Parallel Between People And Software * Casey Rosenthal REdeploy2019 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSLBKoFi1jk) 36:27 - What Price Do We Pay For Not Prioritizing Resiliency * Existential Risk 39:00 - Rein’s Wrap-Up On Resilience This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks!

02:22 - Coraline Talks About Her Work With The Open Source Movement * Seth Vargo: @sethvargo (https://twitter.com/sethvargo) * The Open Source License - The Hippocratic License (https://github.com/EthicalSource/hippocratic-license) * Bruce Perens (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Perens) 08:14 - Who Wrote The Open Source License * The Libertarian Platform * Balancing Our Individual Freedoms With Societal Good 10:26 - The Open Source Initiative (https://opensource.org/) 11:25 - Licensing And The Evolution Of Open Source * Realizing The Impact Of Open Source On Human Society * The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (https://www.amazon.com/Structure-Scientific-Revolutions-Thomas-Kuhn/dp/0226458083) - Thomas Kuhn * Procrastination * Assimilation * Revolution 18:43 - Litigation Thoughts * Promoting Arbitration Over Litigation * Advantages Of Adopting The License * Putting The Power In The Hands Of The Creators 23:31 - Creators’ Rights * Corporations Are Benefiting From The Free Labor Of The Community 26:00 - Tying The Hippocratic License To Open Source * The Declaration of Human Rights (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights) * Matt Boehm: @bigolewannabe (https://twitter.com/bigolewannabe) * Accepting Critique * The Ethical Source Working Group (https://ethicalsource.dev/) 28:48 - Other Prongs Of Approach Other Than The License * Scholarship 30:50 - Coraline’s Candidacy For The OSI Board * Tobie Langel: @tobie (https://twitter.com/tobie) 34:00 - What Open Source Means To The Panelists 38:50 - The Concept Of Community * How Maintainers Have Changed Their Relationships With Communities * Writing Values And Aspirations In Codes Of Conduct ethicalsource.dev (https://ethicalsource.dev/) firstdonoharm.dev (https://firstdonoharm.dev/) This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks!

02:12 - Miko’s Superpower: Not Knowing Things. 03:30 - Coming To Your Senses * Breaking Out Of Thinking * Detecting - Venture Capitalism * Pattern Making And Pattern Matching 06:45 - Understand The Limits Of What You Can Know And What You Do Know * Knowing People * Knowing Industries * Most Humans Don’t Know A Lot Of Things * Impermanence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impermanence) 11:45 - Human Decision Making Is An Embodied Process * The Gut Feeling * Enteric Nervous System (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enteric_nervous_system) * Sympathetic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathetic_nervous_system) And Parasympathetic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasympathetic_nervous_system) Nervous Systems * Central Nervous System (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_nervous_system) * The Heart Feelings * Feelings Are Emotions 18:30 - Interviews As Coachable And Teachable Moments * The Gig Economy (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/gig-economy.asp) * Prioritizing The Development Of Relationships * Exhibited Behaviors That Match Patterns Are Coachable And Teachable 25:33 - Problems With The Interview Framework 29:23 - Human Action Is Connected To Emotion * The Human Brain 34:30 - Not Knowing As A Superpower * Action Potential (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_potential) 39:56 - Small Mind, Big Mind * Losing Your Mind And Coming To Your Senses 45:50 - Being Over Reliant On The Posture Of Knowing * Andrew Yang (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Yang) * Peter Thiel - Zero to One (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_to_One) * Human Advantage Over Machines 50:16 - The Notion Of Marriage * Dr. John Gottman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gottman) * The Idea Of Magic Reflections: Jessica: Favorite part is the idea that if we think we know something, that leads to despair sometimes. The release of admitting we don’t know everything is a source of hope. Jacob: Feeling like I’m known personally and professionally is important to me, but being known in a deterministic way resonated with me. Artemis: The Bob Marley principle that was mentioned. Thinking about that philosophy connects with the ideas we talked about. When you realize all the intelligence that is out there, thinking of how small you are. If we can lose our mind and come back to our senses and see that we are part of this fabric, we’re not really all that different. Miko: “You can’t fool all the people all the time.” It is a way of connecting with the world of limitation. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Miko Matsumura.

01:14 - Chris’s Superpower: His Ability to Sleep. 01:50 - Why Chris Wants To Talk About Web Accessibility * Top 3 Priorities When Building on the Web * Accessibility * Performance * Security 02:45 - Whose Responsibility Is It To Build An Accessible Web? * Anyone Building On The Web * Dominos’ Lawsuit (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-dominos-pizza/u-s-supreme-court-rejects-dominos-bid-to-avoid-disabilities-suit-idUSKBN1WM1P1) * WCAG (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Content_Accessibility_Guidelines) 07:38 - How To Inform And Get Colleagues On Board With Accessibility * Understanding The Clientele * Have Numbers To Back It Up 11:45 - Image Descriptions * Alt Attributes * Twitter Adds Alt Text For .gifs 16:34 - Companies Deal With Accessibility Lawsuits 19:07 - Where To Start Making Changes * Only Shipping One Experience That Works For Everybody * Make Sure You Are Using Semantic Markup * Color Contrast * Make Sure There Are Alt Attributes On Your Images 27:50 - What Can Developers Do Today To Make Changes * Start With An Audit * Compare To Competitors 31:06 - Work Collaboratively With The Designers 34:15 - How To Be Accessible For Various Disabilities * Hearing * Cognitive * Physical 37:10 - Accessibility Can Benefit Everyone Reflections: Chris: Accessibility is not a requirement, it is a must. From Marcy Sutton: Every little bit of accessibility you contribute is so necessary and so needed. Carina: The concrete useful examples such as audits are beneficial to business people. Jacob: Wants to get better at using a screen reader to gain empathy about what the right thing is to do. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Chris DeMars.

00:53 - Chris’s Superpower: Derailing conversations and having a knack for taking complex tasks and breaking them down into smaller, simpler parts that people find easy to understand. 01:44 - The Pitch for Vanilla JavaScript 03:06 - Peoples’ Biggest Challenge as a Developer * Having Trouble Keeping Up * Adding Processes and Tools Make it More Difficult to Get Started * “The Right Way To Do It” 05:50 - The Problem With The Way We Do Things Today * Front-End Development * Back-End Developers Move to Front-End 08:30 - Modern Web Development * The Use of Frameworks * Package Managers * “The Cascade is Bad” - Using More JavaScript 11:42 - A Better Approach To Web Development * Sometimes Old Is Better * Don’t Ditch The Old Just Because Something New Came Out * Embrace The Platform * Think Smaller And More Modular * Remember That The Web Is For Everyone 17:15 - CSS and JavaScript * Web Bloat That Affects The End User * Accessibility - Being Able To Work On Improvement * Accessibility Audit On Gutenberg (https://wpcampus.org/2019/05/gutenberg-audit-results/) * Being Too Heavily Focused On One Programming Language 25:05 - The Notion of Development At Scale * The Google Hiring Process And Frameworks 27:45 - Silos Of Technology 31:10 - Complexity And/Or Simplicity * Focusing On Quality Over Volume * Factoring For Growth 37:20 - Advocating For Vanilla JavaScript * Documentation * Unexpected Incidentals 44:10 - Gradual Movement Of The Code Base 45:30 - Using The Word “Just” 49:30 - The Concept Of State 52:45 - Use Of Static HTML 53:40 - Do Companies Actually Build For The Web Like This * Netflix Page Loads With Vanilla JS * Happy Middle Ground 58:05 - Summation Of Positives Of Vanilla JavaScript * Ease Of Beginner Developer Onboarding * Allowing Non-JavaScript Developers To Participate More Meaningfully In Your Process * Overall Resilience And Performance For The End User Reflections: Rein: Pick the thing that reduces your suffering the most. Jacob: If you are just starting to learn JavaScript, it is ok to not learn a framework immediately. It is also ok to dive into something else and come back to learn vanilla JS. Also, Noel Rappin - Modern Front-End Development for Rails (https://pragprog.com/book/nrclient/modern-front-end-development-for-rails), takes a great approach to using differing technologies and what they can bring to your project. Chris: Thinking about the instances where it does make sense to use some of these tools as opposed to reasons why you shouldn’t use them. Liked the talk about minimizing your pain. If you feel like there are too many moving parts to JavaScript, you are not alone, it’s not you, and you’ve totally got this. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Chris Ferdinandi.

01:49 - Rein Talks About His Recent Career Transition From Being a Consultant to a Full-Time Employee 03:52 - Jamey Talks About the Decision to Leave Their Job * Making The Decision To Leave Your Comfort Zone 05:34 - Pros and Cons of Staying for Job Stability and Comfort * Learned Helplessness (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness) * Being a Part of a System * Don’t Be The Smartest Person in The Room * Shared Space (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_space) 13:20 - Resilience and Regulatory Mechanisms * Dr. Richard Cook - REdeploy 2019 Talk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LbePBiOvZ4) 15:59 - Interviews * Watching Interviewers’ Reactions to Challenging Their Questions * Gerald Weinberg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Weinberg) - Secrets of Consulting (https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Consulting-Giving-Getting-Successfully/dp/0932633013) * Most of the Things We Do Have No Effect Whatsoever in the Larger System 20:20 - Job Success and Effort 22:22 - Safety and Resilience * Aviation and Tech * Kubernetes * David Woods - Resilience is a Verb (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329035477_Resilience_is_a_Verb) 26:05 - Interview Anxiety * Who You Know * Group Bias 30:25 - Team Creating/Building * Assuming Competence * Consideration of New Team Members * Dealing With Change After Being Comfortable * Sidney Dekker - Understanding Human Error (https://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-Understanding-Human-Error/dp/0754648257) 38:04 - Feeling Comfortable in Tech * Privileges of Being in the Field * Switching Career Paths 47:20 - Visualize How You Will Feel Working Somewhere * Analytical vs. Emotional Decision Making 50:08 - No One in Tech is an Expert in Human Performance - Interviewing * Ask Questions of the Interviewer * Being the One That Gets to Make the Decision * Avdi on the Interview Process - We Should be Able to Speak Up 58:25 - Discovering How to Make Better Systems * Tell More Stories This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks!

01:48 - Kate’s Superpower: Empathy * Absorbing Energy * Setting Healthy Energetic Boundaries * Authenticity * Intent vs Impact 10:46 - Words and Narratives Carry Power; Approaching Inclusive Language * Taking Action After Causing Harm * Get Specific, But Don’t Overthink * Practice Makes Progress * Normalize Sharing Pronouns * No-CodeConf (https://webflow.com/nocodeconf) * No-CodeSchool (https://nocodeschool.co/) * Gender Expresion Does Not Always Equal Gender Identity 21:27 - Approaching Inclusive Language in the Written Word * Webflow Accessibility Checklist (https://webflow.com/accessibility/checklist) * Asking For Advice * Do Your Own Research/Work 29:18 - Creating Safe Places, Communities, and Environments * Absorbing and Asking * Authenticity (Cont’d) * Adaptation to Spaces * Shifting Energy 42:34 - Building Kula (https://kulayogadenver.com/) While Working in Tech * Community Care, Mutual Aid-Centered Model * Using Privilege to Pave the Way For More People * Alignment Reflections: John: The dichotomy between perfectionism and authenticity. Arty: Words carry power. Kate: Having an open heart is how you can put any of this into action. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Transcript: PRE-ROLL: Software is broken, but it can be fixed. Test Double’s superpower is improving how the world builds software by building both great software and great teams. And you can help! Test Double is hiring empathetic senior software engineers and DevOps engineers. We work in Ruby, JavaScript, Elixir and a lot more. Test Double trusts developers with autonomy and flexibility at a remote, 100% employee-owned software consulting agency. Looking for more challenges? Enjoy lots of variety while working with the best teams in tech as a developer consultant at Test Double. Find out more and check out remote openings at link.testdouble.com/greater. That’s link.testdouble.com/greater. JOHN: Welcome to Greater Than Code. I'm John Sawers and I'm here with Arty Starr. ARTY: Thanks, John. And I'm here with our guest today, Kate Marshall. Kate is a copywriter and inclusivity activist living in Denver. Since entering tech 4 years ago, she's toured the marketing org from paid efforts to podcast host, eventually falling in love with the world of copy. With this work, she hopes to make the web a more welcoming place using the power of words. Outside of Webflow, you'll find Kate opening Kula, a donation-based yoga studio, and bopping around the Mile High City with her partner, Leah. Welcome to the show, Kate. KATE: Hi, thank you so much! ARTY: So we always start our shows with our famous first question. What is your superpower and how did you acquire it? KATE: My superpower, I've been thinking about this. My superpower is empathy. It can also be one of my biggest downfalls [laughs], which I actually think happens more often than not with any superpower. I once heard from a child, actually, they always seem to know best that too much of the good, good is bad, bad. [laughter] So it turns out sometimes too much empathy can be too overwhelming for my system, but it has really driven everything that I've done in my career and my personal life. As for how I acquired it, I don't know that you can really acquire empathy. I think it's just something you have, or you don't. I've always been extremely intuitive and if you're going through something, it's likely that I can feel it. So I think I'm just [laughs] I hate to steal Maybelline's line, but I think I was born with it. JOHN: You talked about having a downside there and I've heard – and I'm curious, because most people talk about empathy as a positive thing and wanting more people to develop more empathy, but I'd to love hear you talk a little bit more about what you see the downsides are. KATE: Yeah. As someone who struggles with her own mental health issues, it can be really overwhelming for me to really take on whatever it is you're going through. Especially if it's a loved one, you tend to care more about what they're feeling, or what they're going through and an empath truly does absorb the energy of what's happening around them. So although, it does influence a lot of the work that I do, both in my full-time career and opening my yoga studio and everything in between, it's also hard sometimes to set those boundaries, to set healthy, really energetic boundaries. It's hard enough to voice your boundaries to people, but setting energetic boundaries is a whole other ballgame. So it can tend to feel overwhelming at times and bring you down if the energy around you is lower than what you want it to be. ARTY: So what kind of things do you do to try and set healthy, energetic boundaries? KATE: Ah. I do a lot of what some people would call, including myself, woo-woo practices. [chuckles] Obviously, I practice yoga. I teach yoga. I'm super passionate about holistic, or energetic healing so I go to Reiki regularly. I'm in therapy, talk therapy. All of those things combined help me build this essentially an energetic shield that I can psych myself up to use any time I'm leaving the apartment. If it feels a high energy day, or if I'm meeting up with a friend who I know is going through something, I really have to set those boundaries is. Same thing kind of at work, too. So much of the time that we spend in our lives is spent at work, or interacting with coworkers or colleagues and same thing. Everyone's going through their own journey and battles, and you have to carry that energetic shield around you wherever you go. JOHN: One way I've often thought about having those sort of boundaries is the more I know who I am, the more what the limits of me are and the barrier between me and the universe is. So the work that I do, which includes therapy and other things, to understand myself better and to feel like I know what's me and what's not me, helps me have those boundaries. Because then I know if there's something going on with someone else and I can relate to it, but not get swept up by it. KATE: Yeah. It's so funny you say that because I was actually just having a conversation with a friend a couple weeks ago that has really stuck with me. I was kind of feeling like I was messing up, essentially. Like I was not fully able to honor, or notice all of the triggers of the people around me. I think especially at the end of the year and as a queer person who is surrounded by queer community, it can be really tough around the holidays. So that energy can just be generally more charged and I was finding it difficult to reconcile with my idea of perfection in that I really want to honor every person around me who has triggers, who has boundaries that maybe haven't been communicated, and it almost feels like you're almost always crossing some sort of line, especially when you're putting those perfectionism expectations on yourself. My friend was like, “I don't think it's as much about being perfect at it as much as it is feeling like you're being authentically yourself and really authentically interacting with those people.” I don't know if I can really voice what the connection is between being able to honor triggers and boundaries of the people around you and feeling like your authentic self, but there's something about it that feels really connected to me. As long as you're trying your best and feeling like you're coming from a place of love, or connection, or compassion, or empathy whatever feels most to you, that's really all we can do, right? JOHN: Yeah. I feel like that authenticity is such a tricky concept because the thoughts that you're having about wanting to be perfect and take care of everyone and make sure you're not triggering anybody and not stepping on any of your own things, that's also part of you that is authentically you. You may not want it to be that way, but it still is. [laughs]. ARTY: Yeah. JOHN: So I still don't have a really clear sense in my mind what authenticity really is. I think probably it settles down to being a little bit more in the moment, rather than up in the thinking, the judging, the worrying, and being able to be present rather than – [overtalk] ARTY: Totally. JOHN: Those other things, but it is tricky. KATE: Yeah. It can be tricky. Humans, man. [laughter] It really is like being a human and part of the human experience is going to be triggering other people. It’s going to be causing harm. It’s going to be causing trauma to other humans. That's just part of it. I think the more you can get comfy with that idea and then also just really feeling like you're doing everything you can to stay connected to your core, which usually is in humans is a place of love. You're rooted in love for the people around you. How could you criticize yourself too much when you know that you're coming from that place? ARTY: I feel like things change, too as you get feedback. In the context of any intimate relationship where you've got emotionally connected relationship with another person where you are more unguarded and you're having conversations about things that are more personal, that have at least the potential to hurt and cause harm. Like sometimes we do things not meaning to and we end up hurting someone else accidentally, but once that happens—and hopefully, you have an open dialogue where you have a conversation about these things and learn about these things and adapt—then I think the thing to do is honor each person as an individual of we're all peoples and then figure out well, what can we do to adapt how we operate in this relationship and look out for both people's best interests and strive for a win-win. If we don't try and do that, like if we do things that we know we're harming someone else and we're just like, “Well, you should just put up with that,” [laughs], or whatever. I think that's where it becomes problematic is at the same time, we all have our own limitations and sometimes, the best thing to do is this relationship doesn't work. The way that we interact causes mutual harm and we can't this a win-win relationship and the best thing to do sometimes is to separate, even though it hurts because it's not working. KATE: Yeah. I feel like sometimes it's a classic case of intent versus impact, too. Like what's your intention going into a conversation and then how does that end up actually impacting that person and how can you honor that and learn from that? That's actually one thing that I love so much about being a writer is that words do carry so much power—written word, spoken word, whatever it is. They hold so much power and they can cause harm whether we want them to, or not. Part of being an empath is caring a lot about people's lived experiences and I really see it as more than putting – being a writer and doing this every day, I see it so much more than just putting words on a page and hoping signs up for the beta, or watches the thing registers, or the conference. It's words can foster connection, words can build worlds for people; they can make people feel like they belong and I believe that I'm on this planet to foster that connection with each other and with ourselves. So it all connects for me. It all comes back around whether we're talking about being in a romantic relationship, or our relationship with our parents, or our caregivers, or the work that I do every day it all comes back to that connection and really wanting to make people feel more connected to themselves, to each other, and like they have a place with words. ARTY: Yeah. It's very powerful. Words and narratives, I would say too, just thinking about the stories that we tell ourselves, the stories that we tell one another that become foundational in our culture. It's all built upon were words. Words shape the ideas in our head. They shape our thoughts. They shape how we reflect on things, how we feel about things, and then when people give us their words, we absorb those and then those become part of our own reflections. KATE: Yeah. ARTY: We affect one another a lot. I think that's one of the things I'm just seeing and talking to you is just thinking about how much we affect one another through our everyday interactions. KATE: Yeah, and I think a lot of this comes down to – there's something you said earlier that resonated in that it's really about the action you take after you cause the harm, or after you say the thing that hurts the other person and it's less about – and that's what made me say intent versus impact because you see the impact, you acknowledge it, and you make a decision to lessen that next time, or to be aware, more aware next time. This is really at the core of all the work I do for inclusive language as well. It's just the core principle of the words we use carry a lot of power. And I was actually just chatting with someone in the No-Code space. We connected through Webflow a couple weeks ago and he said, “I think people are so scared to get it wrong when it comes to inclusive language,” and I experience this all the time. People freeze in their tracks because they don't know how address someone and then they're so scared to get it wrong and they're like, “Oh, so sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry,” and they're so apologetic. And then that makes it worse and it's just a whole thing. In this conversation, we were talking specifically about misgendering people. My partner is non-binary. They're misgendered every single day when we go to restaurants, when we are just out and about. So this is something that is a part of my life every day. I told him that fear is so real and I carry that fear, too because I don't want to hurt people because I want to like get it right. It comes back to that perfectionism, that expectation that I put on myself, especially as a queer person to get it right all the time. But so much of the good stuff lies in how you approach it and then how you fix it when you mess it up. Like, it's not so much about the thing, it's about the way that you approach it. If you approach inclusive language with an open mind, an open heart, and a real willingness, like true willingness to learn, that's what's important going into it and then you're already doing the work. You're already an ally. You're already however you want to put it. And then when you use an ableist word, or you use a racist word, or you misgender someone, your actions for following that speak volumes. I think we can really get caught up in the action itself and it's more about how you go into it and then how you try to fix it. ARTY: So I'm thinking for listeners that might identify with being in a situation of being in the headlights and not knowing how to respond, or what to do. Other than what you were just talking about with coming at it with an open heart, are there any specific recommendations you might have for how to approach inclusive language? KATE: Yeah. Yeah, I have a couple really, really good ones. So often, the way to speak more inclusively, or to write more inclusively is just to get more specific about what you're trying to say. So instead of saying, “Oh, that's so crazy,” which is ableist, you can say, “Oh, that's so unheard of.” That's a good example. Or instead of unnecessarily gendering something you're saying like, “Oh, I'm out of wine, call the waitress over.” It's server instead of waiter, or waitress. You kind of start to essentially practice replacing these words and these concepts that are so ingrained into who we are, into society at large, and really starting to disrupt those systems within us with challenging the way that we've described things in the past. So just essentially getting more specific when we're speaking. When it comes to misgendering people specifically, it's really important to not be overly apologetic when you misgender someone. I can give an example. If a server, for example, comes up to me and my partner and says, “Can I get you ladies anything else?” And I say, “Oh, actually my partner uses they/them pronouns. They are not a lady,” and they say, “Oh my God, I'm so sorry. Oh shit!” And then that makes my partner feel bad [chuckles] for putting them in that position and then it's kind of this like ping pong back and forth of just bad feelings. The ideal scenario, the server would say, “Oh, excuse me, can I get you all anything else?” Or, “Can I get you folks anything else?” Or just, if you're speaking about someone who uses they/them pronouns and you say, “Yeah, and I heard she, I mean, they did this thing.” You just quickly correct it and move on. Don't make it into a production. It's okay. We get it. Moving on. Just try not to overthink it, basically. [laughs] Get more specific, but don't overthink it. Isn't that like, what a dichotomy. [laughter] JOHN: That ties back to what you were saying about perfectionism also, right? Like you said, you freeze up if you try and be perfect about it all the time, because you can't always know what someone's pronouns are and so, you have to make a guess at some point and maybe you're going to guess wrong. But it's how you deal with it by not making everybody uncomfortable with the situation. [laughs] KATE: Yeah. JOHN: And like you said, ping pong of bad feelings just amplifies, the whole thing blows out of proportion. You can just be like, “Oh, my apologies.” Her, they, whatever it is and then very quickly move on and then it's forgotten the next minute. Everything moves on from that, but you're not weeping and gnashing and – [laughter] KATE: Yeah. JOHN: Well, it means you don't have to keep feeling bad about it for the next 3 days either, like everyone can move on from that point. KATE: Right. Yeah, and just doing your best to not do it again. JOHN: Yeah. KATE: Once you learn, it's important to really let that try to stick. If you're having trouble, I have a friend who really has trouble with they/them pronouns and they practice with their dog. They talk to their dog about this person and they use they/them pronouns in that. Practice really does make perfect in this – not perfect, okay. Practice really does make progress in this kind of scenario and also, normalize sharing pronouns. JOHN: Yeah. KATE: It's more than just putting it in your Zoom name. It's more than just putting it in your Instagram bio. A good example of really starting this conversation was during Webflow's No-Code Conf, our yearly conference. It was mostly online and we had a live portion of it and every single time we introduced someone new, or introduced ourselves, we said, “My name is Kate Marshall, my pronouns are she/her, and I'm so happy to be here with you today.” Or just asking if you don't know, or if you're in a space with someone new, you say, “What are your pronouns?” It's really is that easy. Webflow made some year-round pride mech that we launched over the summer and we have a cute beanie that says “Ask me my pronouns.” It's like, it's cool to ask. It's fine to ask and that's so much better than unintentionally misgendering someone. It's going to take some time to get there, but normalize it. JOHN: Yeah, and I think there's one key to that that has always stuck out of my mind, which is don't ask pronouns just for the people you think might have different pronouns than you would expect. KATE: Yes. JOHN: Make it part of all the conversations so it's not just singling somebody out of a group and saying, “I want to know your pronouns because they're probably different.” That's not good. KATE: Right, because gender expression does not always equal gender identity. JOHN: Yeah. KATE: You can't know someone's gender identity from the way that they express their gender and that's also another huge misconception that I think it's time we talk more about. JOHN: So we've been talking a lot about conversations and person-to-person interactions and inclusive language there. But a lot of what you do is it on the writing level and I imagine there's some differences there. So I'm curious as to what you see as far as the things that you do to work on that in the written form. KATE: Yeah. So this is actually a really great resource that I was planning on sharing with whoever's listening, or whoever's following along this podcast. There is a really wonderful inclusive language guidelines that we have published externally at Webflow and I own it, I update it regularly as different things come in and inclusive language is constantly evolving. It will never be at a final resting point and that's also part of why I love it so much because you truly are always growing. I'm always learning something new about inclusive language, or to make someone feel more included with the words that I'm writing. This table has, or this resource has ableist language, racist language, and sexist language tables with words to avoid, why to avoid them, and some alternatives and just some general principles. I reference it constantly. Like I said, it's always evolving. I actually don't know how many words are on there, but it's a good amount and it's a lot of things have been surfaced to me that I had no idea were racist. For instance, the word gypped. Like if you say, “Oh, they gypped me” is actually racist. It's rooted in the belief that gypsy people are thieves. [chuckles] So it's things like that we really kind of go deep in there and I reference this constantly. Also, ALS language is a really big consideration, especially in the tech space. So instead of – and this can be avoided most of the time, not all of the time. We do work with a really wonderful accessibility consultant who I run things by constantly. Shout out to Michele. Oh, she was actually on the podcast at one point. Michele Williams, shout out. Lovely human. So a good example is instead of “watch now,” or “listen now,” it's “explore this thing,” “browse this thing,” “learn more”. Just try not to get so specific about the way that someone might be consuming the information that I'm putting down on the page. Stuff like that. It truly does come down to just getting more specific as just a general principle. JOHN: So it sounds to me some of the first steps you take are obviously being aware that you have to mold your language to be more accessible and inclusive, then it's informing yourself of what the common pitfalls are. As you said, you have consultants, you've got guides, you've got places where you can gather this information and then once you have that, then you build that into your mental process for writing what you're writing. KATE: Yeah, and truly just asking questions and this goes for everyone. No one would ever – if I reached out to our head of DEI, Mariah, and said, “Mariah, is this thing offensive?” Or, “How should I phrase this thing to feel more inclusive to more people?” She would never come back at me and say, “Why are you asking me this? You should already know this,” and that is the attitude across the board. I would never fault someone for coming to me and asking me how to phrase something, or how to write something to make it feel better for more people. So it's really a humbling experience [laughs] to be in this position. Again, words carry so much power and I just never take for granted, the power essentially that I have, even if it is just for a tech company. A lot of people are consuming that and I want to make them feel included. JOHN: Yeah. The written face of a company is going to tell readers a lot about the culture of the company, the culture of the community around the product. KATE: Yeah. JOHN: Whether they're going to be welcome there, like what their experience is going to be like if they invest their time to learn about it. So it's really important to have that language there and woven into everything that's written, not just off the corner on the DEI page. KATE: Yeah. That's what I was just about to say is especially if you're a company that claims to prioritize DEI, you better be paying close attention to the words that you're using in your product, on your homepage, whatever it is, your customer support. I've worked with the customer support team at Webflow to make sure that the phrasing feels good for people. It truly does trickle into every single asset of a business and it's ongoing work that does not just end at, like you said, putting it on a DEI page. Like, “We care about this,” and then not actually caring about it. That sucks. [laughs] JOHN: Oh, the other thing before we move too far on from last topic, you’re talking about asking for advice. I think one of the keys there, a, being humble and just saying, “I would like to know,” and you're very unlikely to get criticized for simply asking how something can be better. But I feel like one of the keys to doing that well is also not arguing with the person you've asked after they give you an answer. KATE: Right. Yes. Especially if that person is a part of the community that your words are affecting, or that your question is affecting. It's such a tricky balance because it's really not the queer community's job to educate people who are not queer about inclusive language. But when that person is willing to share their knowledge with the you, or willing to share their experience with you, you’ve got to listen. Your opinions about their lived experience don't come into that conversation, or shouldn't come into that conversation. It's not questioning the information that you're given, but then it's also taking that and doing your own research and asking more people and having conversations with your friends and family trying to widen this breadth of information and knowledge as a community. Like I said, kind of dismantling the things that we're taught growing up by capitalism, by society, everything that kind of unnecessarily separates and then doing better next time. I've actually had conversations with people who are very curious, who come to me with questions and then the next time I interact with them, they're just back to factory settings. That's so disappointing and just makes me feel like my energy could have been better spent having that conversation with someone who is more receptive. So I think it really is just about being open to hearing someone's experience, not questioning it, and then really taking that in and doing the work on your own. JOHN: Yeah, and part of that doing the work is also for the things that you can Google for the things where you can look at it from the guide, do that first before asking for someone's time. KATE: Yeah. JOHN: So that they're not answering the same 101 questions every time that are just written in 15 different blog posts. KATE: Yes. Especially if you're asking a marginalized person to do the work for you. JOHN: Yeah. KATE: Intersectionality matters and putting more work on the shoulders of people who are already weighed down by so much ain't it. [laughs] ARTY: Well, I was wanting to go back to your original superpower that you talked about with empathy. We talked a lot about some of these factors that make empathy of a difficult thing of over empathizing and what kind of factors make that hard. But as a superpower, what kind of superpowers does that give you? KATE: Ah, just being able to really connect to a lot of different people. I mentioned earlier that I believe it's my purpose, it's my life's work on this planet at this time to connect people to themselves and to each other. The more asking I can do and the more absorbing I can do of other people's experiences, the better I am at being able to connect with them and being able to make them feel like they belong in whatever space I'm in. I can't connect with someone if I don't try and get it. Try and get what they're going through, or what their experiences are. That's why I do so much time just talking to people, and that's why I love yoga and why I want to start this studio and open this space. Because we live in a world where we don't have a lot of spaces, especially marginalized communities don't have a lot of spaces that feel like they're being understood, or they're truly being heard, or seen. Me being an empath, I'm able to access that in people more and therefore, bringing them closer to safer spaces, or safer people, safer communities where they really feel like they can exist and be their full, whole, and complete selves. It's really special. ARTY: We also touched this concept of authenticity and it seems like that also comes up in this context of creating these safe spaces and safe communities where people can be their whole selves. So when you think about authenticity, we talked about this being a difficult and fuzzy word, but at the same time, it does have some meaning as to what that means, and these challenges with regards to boundaries and things. But I'm curious, what does authenticity mean to you? How does that come into play with this idea of safety and creating these safe spaces for others as well? KATE: Yeah. I feel like there's so much in there. I think one of the biggest things to accept about the word authenticity, or the concept of authenticity is that it's always changing and it means something different to everyone. We are all authentic to ourselves in different ways and at different times in our lives and I think it's so important to honor the real evolution of feeling authentic. There are times and days where I'm like who even am. It's like what even, but there's always this sort of core, root part of me that I don't lose, which is what we've been talking about. This ability to connect, this feeling of empathy, of compassion, of wanting to really be a part of the human experience. That, to me, kind of always stays and I feel like that's the authentic, like the real, real, authentic parts of me. There are layers to it that are always changing and as people, we are also always evolving and always changing. So those different parts of authenticity could be what you wear that make you feel like your most authentic self. It can be how you interact with your friends, or how you interact with the person, getting your popcorn at the movies, or whatever it is. Those can all feel like parts of your authentic self. That means something different to everyone. But I think that's such a beautiful part about it and about just being human is just how often these things are changing for us and how important it is to honor someone's authenticity, whatever that means for them at that time. Even if it's completely different from what you knew about them, or how you knew them before. It's this constant curiosity of yourself and of others, really getting deeply curious about what feels like you. ARTY: I was wondering about safety because you were talking about the importance of creating these safe communities and safe environments where people could be their whole, complete selves, which sounds a lot like the authenticity thing, but you trying to create space for that for others. KATE: Yeah. Well, the reality of safety is that there's no one space that will ever be a “safe space for everyone,” and that's why I like to say safer spaces, or a safer space for people because you can never – I feel like it's all coming full circle where you can never meet every single person exactly where they need to be met in any given moment. You can just do your best to create spaces that feel safer to them and you do that with authentic connection, with getting curious about who they are and what they love, and just making sure that your heart's really in it. [chuckles] Same with inclusive language. It's all about the way you approach it to make someone feel safer. But I do think it's an I distinction to remember. You're never going to be safe for everyone. A space you create is never going to be safe for everyone. The best you can do is just make it safer for more people. ARTY: When I think about just the opposite of that, of times that I've gone into a group where I haven't felt safe being myself and then when you talk of about being your complete whole self, it's like bringing a whole another level of yourself to a space that may not really fit that space and that seems like it's okay, too. Like we don't necessarily have to bring our full self to all these different spaces, but whatever space we're a part of, we kind of sync up and adapt to it. So if I'm in one space and I feel the kind of vibe, energy, context of what's going on, how people are interacting, the energy they put forth when they speak with whatever sorts of words that they use. I'm going to feel that and adapt to that context of what feels safe and then as more people start adapting to that, it creates a norm that other people that then come and see what's going on in this group come to an understanding about what the energy in the room is like. KATE: Yeah. ARTY: And all it takes is one person to bring a different energy into that to shift the whole dynamic of things. KATE: Yeah. The reality is you'll never be able to change every space and I think that's such a good point. It makes me feel like saying you have to be protective of your energy. If you go into a space and it just doesn't feel right, or there's someone who is in the room that doesn't feel safe to you, or that doesn't feel like they're on the same page as you, it's okay to not feel like you need to change the world in that space. Like you don't always have to go into a space and say, “I'm going to change it.” That is how change is made when you feel safe enough. That's why it's so important to foster that energy from the jump. That's just a foundational thing at a company in a yoga studio, in a home, at a restaurant. It can be changed, but it really should be part of the foundation of making a safer space, or a more inclusive space. Because otherwise, you're asking the people who don't feel safe, who are usually marginalized people, or intersectionally marginalized in some way. You're asking them essentially to put in the work to change what you should have done as the foundation of your space. So it's a such a delicate balance of being protective of your energy and really being able to feel out the places where you feel okay saying something, or making a change, or just saying, “No, this isn't worth it for me. I'm going to go find a space that actually feels a little bit better, or that I feel more community in.” ARTY: And it seems like the other people that are in the group, how those people respond to you. If you shift your energy, a lot of times the people that are in the group will shift their energy in kind. Other times, in a different space, you might try to shift energy and then there's a lot of resistance to that where people are going a different way and so, you get pushed out of the group energy wise. These sorts of dynamics, you can feel this stuff going on of just, I just got outcast out of this group. Those are the kinds of things, though that you need to protect your own energy of even if I'm not included in this group, I can still have a good relationship with me and I can still like me and I can think I'm still pretty awesome and I can find other groups of folks that like me. It definitely, at least for me, I tend to be someone who's like, I don't know, I get out grouped a lot. [laughs] But at the same time, I've gotten used to that and then I find other places where I've got friends that love me and care about me and stuff. So those are recharge places where I can go and get back to a place where I feel solid and okay with myself, and then I'm much more resilient then going into these other spaces and stuff where I might not be accepted, where I might have to be kind of shielded and guarded and just put up a front, and operate in a way that makes everyone else feel more comfortable. KATE: Yeah, and isn't it so powerful to feel cared for? ARTY: I love that. KATE: Like just to feel cared for by the people around you is everything. It's everything. That's it. Just to feel like you are wanted, or you belong. To feel cared for. It can exist everywhere is the thing. In your Slack group, or whatever, you can make people feel cared for. I have never regretted reaching out to a coworker, or a friend, or whoever an acquaintance and saying, “Hey, I love this thing about you,” or “Congratulations on this rad thing you just launched,” or whatever. It's the care that's so powerful. ARTY: I feel like this is one of those things where we can learn things from our own pain and these social interactions and stuff. One of the things that I've experienced is you're in a group and you say something and nobody responds. [laughs] KATE: Yeah. ARTY: And after doing that for a while, you feel like you're just shouting into the void and nobody hears you and it's just this feeling of like invisibility. In feeling that way myself, one of the things I go out of my way to do is if somebody says something, I at least try and respond, acknowledge them, let them know that they're heard, they're cared about, and that there's somebody there on the other side [chuckles] and they're not shouting into the wind because I hate that feeling. It's an awful feeling to feel invisible like that. KATE: Awful, yeah. ARTY: But we can learn from those experiences and then we can use those as opportunities to understand how we can give in ways that are subtle, that are often little things that are kind of ignored, but they're little things that actually make a really big difference. KATE: Yeah, the little things. It really is the little things, isn't it? [laughs] Like and it’s just, you can learn from your experiences, but you can also say, “I'm not doing this right now.” You can also check out. If you are giving and giving. and find that you're in the void essentially, more often than not, you can decide that that's no longer are worth your time, your energy, your care, and you can redirect that care to somewhere else that's going to reciprocate, or that's going to give you back that same care and that's so important, too. JOHN: Yeah, and it sounds like starting a yoga studio is not a trivial undertaking and obviously, you're highly motivated to create this kind of an environment in the world. So is there anything more you'd like to say about that because that ties in very closely with what we're talking about? KATE: Yeah. It’s so weird to work full-time and be so passionate about my tech job and then turn around and be like, “I'm opening a yoga studio.” It's such a weird, but again, it's all connected at the root, at the core of what I'm trying to do in this world. The thing about Kula is that it's really built on this foundational mutual aid model. So being donation-based, it's really pay what you can, if you can. And what you pay, if you're able to give an extra $10 for the class that you take, that's going to pay for someone else's experience, who is unable to financially contribute to take that class. That's the basis of community care, of mutual aid and it's really this heart-based business model that is really tricky. I’m trying to get a loan right now and [chuckles] it's really hard to prove business financials when you have a donation-based model and you say, “Well, I'm going to guess what people might donate per class on average.” So it's been a real journey, [laughs] especially with today's famous supply chain issues that you hear about constantly in every single industry. I have an empty space right now. It needs to be completely built out. Construction costs are about triple what they should be. Again, coming from this real mutual aid community care centered model, it's really hard, but I have to keep coming back. I was just telling my partner about this the other day, I have to keep coming back to this core idea, or this real feeling that I don't need to have a beautifully designed space to create what I'm trying to create. When I started this, I envisioned just a literal empty room [chuckles] with some people in it and a bathroom and that's it. So of course, once I saw the designs, I was like, “Oh, I love this can lighting that's shining down in front of the bathroom door.” It's like so whatever, stereotypical. Not stereotypical, but surface level stuff. I really have had to time and time again, return to this longing almost for a space that feels safer for me, for my community, for Black people, for disabled people, for trans people, for Asian people; we don't have a lot of spaces that feel that way and that's just the reality. So it's a real delicate balance of how do I like – this is a business and I need money, [laughs] but then I really want this to be rooted in mutual aid and community care. It comes back to that car and that inclusivity, creating authentic connections. It's tricky out there for a queer woman entrepreneur with no collateral. [laughs] It's a tricky world out there, but I think we'll flip it someday. I really think pioneering this idea, or this business model at least where I'm at in Denver, I think it's going to start the conversation in more communities and with more people who want to do similar things and my hope is that that will foster those conversations and make it more accessible to more people. JOHN: Yeah, and I think every time someone manages to muster up the energy, the capital, and the community effort to put something like this together, it makes it just slightly easier for someone else a, they can learn the lessons and b, they're more examples of this thing operating in the world. So it becomes more possible in people's minds and you can build some of that momentum there. KATE: Yeah. And of course, it's really important to note and to remember that I come from a place of immense privilege. I have a great job in tech. I'm white. I am upper middle class. Technically, I'm “straight passing,” which is a whole other concept, but it is a thing and this is the way that I'm choosing to use my privilege to hopefully pave the way for more people. I do not take for granted the opportunity that I'm given and like I said, intersectionality matters and all of that, but I still have a lot of privilege going into this that I hope turns into something good for more people. ARTY: It also takes a special kind of person to be an entrepreneur because you really have to just keep on going. No matter any obstacle that's in your way, you’ve just got to keep on going and have that drive, desire, and dream to go and build something and make it happen and your superpowers probably going to help you out with that, too. It sounds like we've got multiple superpowers because I think you got to have superpowers to be an entrepreneur in itself. KATE: Yeah. I don't know, man. It's such a weird feeling to have because it just feels like it's what I'm supposed to be doing. That's it. It doesn't feel like I'm like – yes, it's a calling and all of that, but it just feels like the path and that, it feels more, more natural than anything I guess, is what I'm trying to say. The more people follow that feeling, the more authentic of a world, the more connected of a world we're going to have. I see a lot of people doing this work, similar things, and it makes me so happy to see. The words of one of my therapists, one of my past therapists told me, “Always stick with me,” and it was right around the time I was kind of – so I'd started planning before COVID hit and then COVID hit and I had to pause for about a year, a little bit less than a year. It was right around the time I was filing my LLC and really starting to move forward. It was actually December 17th of last year that I filed my LLC paperwork. So it's been a little over a year now. He told me, “How much longer are you willing to wait to give the community this thing that you want to give them? How much are you willing to make them wait for this space?” And I was like, “Yesterday. Yesterday.” Like, “I want to give people this space immediately,” and that has truly carried me through. This supply chain stuff is no joke. [laughs] and it has really carried me through some of the more doubtful moments in this journey. Yeah, and I feel like, man, what powerful words. Like, I just want to keep saying them because they are such powerful words to me. How much longer are you willing to make them wait? And it's like, I don't want to. [chuckles] So I guess I'm going to go do it. [laughter] Throw caution to the wind. [laughs] JOHN: Well, I think that ties back into what you were talking about is as you were thinking about designing the space and what kind of buildout you're going to need, and that can be a guide star for what actually needs to be there. What's the actual MVP for this space? Does it need a perfect coat of paint, or is what's there good enough? Does it need all the things arranged just so in the perfect lighting, or does it just need to exist and have people in the room and you can really focus in on what's going to get you there? And then of course, you iterate like everything else, you improve over time, but. KATE: Right. JOHN: I love that concept of just cut out everything that's in the way of this happening right now as much as possible. KATE: Yeah, and what a concept, I think that can be applied to so many things. Who am I trying to serve with this thing and what do I need to do to get there? It doesn't have to be this shiny, beautiful well-designed creation. It just needs to serve people. The people that you want to serve in the best way possible, and for me, that's getting this space open and actually having it in action. ARTY: I think once you find something that feels in alignment with you, you seem to have lots of clarity around just your sense of purpose, of what you want to move toward of a deep connection with yourself. One thing I found with that is no matter how much you get rejected by various groups in the world, if you can be congruent and authentic with yourself and follow that arrow, that once you start doing that, you find other people that are in resonance with you. They're out there, but you don't find them until you align with yourself. KATE: Yeah. Community. Community is so powerful and I love that you just said alignment because that really is truly what it is. It's finding the thing that makes you feel like you're doing something good and that feels authentic to your core, to those core principles of you that never really change. The things that are rooted in love, the things that are rooted in compassion, or whatever it is you care about. Community, that alignment is absolutely key. It's also, when I say I was born with my superpower of being an empath, this desire to create this space feels, it feels like I was also born with this desire, or born with this alignment. So I feel like so many times it's just going back to the basics of who you are. ARTY: Like you're actualizing who you are. KATE: Yeah. Like full alignment, enlightenment, that all kind of falls into place when you're really making the effort to be connected to your core. ARTY: It seems like a good place to do reflections. So at the end of the show, we usually go around and do final reflections and takeaways, final thoughts that you have and you get to go last, Kate. JOHN: There are a whole lot of different things that I've been thinking about here, but I think one of the ones that's sticking with me is the dichotomy between perfectionism and authenticity, and how I feel like they really are pulling against one another and that, which isn't to say things can't be perfect and authentic at the same time. But I think perfectionism is usually a negative feeling. Like you should do something, you're putting a lot of pressure, there's a lot of anxiety around perfectionism and that is pretty much an opposition to being authentically yourself. It's hard to be in touch with yourself when you're wrapped up in all those anxieties and so, thinking about the two of them together, I hadn't made that connection before, but I think that's something that's interesting that I'll be thinking about for a while. ARTY: I think the thing that's going to stick with me, Kate is you said, “Our words carry so much power,” and I think about our conversation today out just vibes in the room and how that shifts with the energy that we bring to the room, all of these subtle undercurrent conversations that we're having, and then how a sort of energy vibe becomes established. And how powerful even these really little tiny things we do are. We had this conversation around inclusive language and you gave so many great details and specifics around what that means and how we can make little, small alterations to some of these things that are just baked into us because of our culture and the words that we hear, phrasing and things that we hear, that we're just unaware of the impact of things. Just by paying attention and those little subtle details of things and coming at things with an open heart, regardless of how we might stumble, or mess things up, how much of a difference that can make because our words, though carry so much power. KATE: Yeah. And the thing you just said about having an open heart is truly how you can put any of this into action, how you can remain open to learning about authenticity, or what it feels like to not fall into a trap of perfectionism, or how to speak, or write, or interact more inclusively with other human beings. I feel like being open, being openminded, being open-hearted, whatever it is, is just really a superpower on its own. Remaining open and vulnerable in today's world is hard work. It does not come naturally to so many people, especially when you're dealing with your own traumas and your own individual interactions and maybe being forced into spaces where you don't feel safe. To remain open is such a tool for making other people feel cared for. So if that's the goal, I would say just being open is truly your superpower. JOHN: I think that's the quote I'm going to take with me: being open is the key to making people feel cared for. KATE: Yes. I love that. ARTY: Well, thank you for joining us on the show, Kate. It's been a pleasure to have you here. KATE: Thank you so much. This has been just the energy boost I needed. Special Guest: Kate Marshall.

01:06 - Kortney’s Superpower: Being a visionary. Seeing things that aren’t necessarily there. 01:50 - How Appolition (https://appolition.us/) Came to Be * Grassroots Company Crowdfunding Money for Incarcerated Black Mothers * Tweeted About Using the Change Round Up Model * Educating Those in Tech About What Bail Is * Gaining Trust 07:20 - Kortney’s Professional Background * Building Things in Technological Space * PhD in 2011 - difficulty finding substantial employment * Filmmaker, Scholar * Encountered a lot of discrimination in professional career * Became Entrepreneur in 2012/2013 * Attended Filmmakers Hackathon * Launched Trans*H4CK (http://www.transhack.org/) * Appolition (https://appolition.us/) 13:10 - Appolition Specifics * Bail is Predatory * Educate Yourself About Bail * Partnered With Outside Team * 2000 Users, Waitlist of 8000 * Then Brought In House * Unlimited Users * Web App - No Download Required 19:45 - Partnering With Others To Provide Education 21:00 - Surprises/Ah-Ha Moments * The Expenses * Humbling to Recognize the Work That Goes Into It * Naming of the App Traveling in Media Convos 25:10 - The Goal of Appolition * How We Can Leverage Technology That Exists 30:00 - Lessons From A Hackathon * Went As Award Winning Filmmaker * Engineers Not Willing to Hear Ideas of Creators * Led to Creating Trans*H4CK (http://www.transhack.org/) * Refuge Restroom 35:19 - Changes Seen At Tech Events Since Trans*H4CK * Great Conversations and Events Happened * Startups Can Shift Rules, They Haven’t been As Inclusive As the Discourse Surrounding Them Was Encouraging Them To Be * Some Things Were Good, Some Things Were Bad, Some Things Need Improvement 43:08 - Plans After Leaving Tech * Getting Back to Creative Side * Filmmaking * Self-Improvement 45:49 - Fatigue 50:00 - Future Endeavors Follow @Appolition (https://twitter.com/Appolition) #AppolitionBookList Reflections: Jamey: Appolition being a webapp so that it is accessible to those who don’t have smartphones. Chanté: Going back into self improvement and self reflection is being tucked into the back of my mind. Jacob: What are conversations I can have that I have access to about diversity and inclusion before the professional gets called in. Kortney: Moved by the idea of finding community in tech. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Dr. Kortney Ziegler.

01:20 - Ted’s Superpower: Translating things for people to understand better. 02:49 - Coding on a Live Stream * Curiosity is Useful and Dangerous * Comparing Coding to Puzzles 07:13 - Research is a Drug * Finding Answers is Gratifying * Current Reading Infects Daily Thought * Anders Ericsson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K._Anders_Ericsson) 10:45 - Connecting the Academic Idea of Expertise to Everyday Context * Worked Examples (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worked-example_effect) * Memory Limits * Gaining a Solid Foundation for Training Purposes * The Path of Decision-making 16:50 - Code Reviews * Learning About Decisions Made Along the Way * Pair Programming and Mob Programming * Externalizing Your Thinking * Curse of Knowledge 19:41 - Recording Yourself Coding/Learning Something New * Gaining Empathy * Improving Documentation and Communication 21:56 - Live Streaming as an Introvert * What Other People Get Out of It * Seeing People Struggle and Being Able to Help * We All Get Lost * Building Community * Being Comfortable Showing Frustration 29:41 - The Difference Between Training and Live Coding * Suz Hinton (https://medium.com/@suzhinton) * Accountability in Live Coding * Privilege 35:35 - Applying Research to TDD Teaching Technique * James Shore (https://twitter.com/jamesshore?lang=en) * The Thinking Part and the Predictive Aspect * It’s Not About the Test Failing, It’s About Validating Your Mental Model * Retrieval Practice * Formative and Summative Assessments (https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/assessment/basics/formative-summative.html) * Spaced Repetition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition) * AnkiApp (https://www.ankiapp.com) * The Purpose of Patterns 48:27 - Human Learning * Stop Teaching People What They Know and Find Out What They Don’t Know Reflections: Jamey: ‘Predictions’ in TDD - Having more succinct language for things in your head strengthens understanding. Artemis: The concept of strengthening and muscle. If we can work deliberately on strengthening these muscles then in the moments of our everyday work we can improve the quality of our day to day decisions. Ted: An aspect of expertise is you start connecting more things. We have to find a place for the ‘why.’ This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Ted M. Young.

01:10 - Phil’s Superpower: Putting Himself in Others’ Shoes. 02:03/09:14 From Software Engineer to Management * Empathy Through The Career Shift * The Learning Curve * Making a Conscious Choice To Switch * Gaining Leadership Skills * Making Your Own Opportunities 03:34 - How Phil Came Into The Greater Than Code Community * Found Through Twitter * Codemania (https://codemania.io/) 05:54 - Commonalities Between Issues Between USA and NZ * Inclusion, Equality in Technology 07:05 - Life Science Software Experience * Cloud Based, LT * Awareness of Accessibility 16:45 - To Get Into Management or Not * It’s Not For Everyone * Impostor Syndrome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome) 18:55 - The Parallels Of Management And Parenting 26:17 - Working From Home Or The Office * Setting The Right Examples For The Team * Encouraging People To Take Leave, Learning And Development Opportunities, Health Reasons Without Repercussions 31:47 - Living In A College/University Town 32:54 - Overcoming Impostor Syndrome * Exists In The Technology Sector * Exists In Other Disciplines * Turn The Ship Around! (https://www.davidmarquet.com/turn-the-ship-around-a-true-story-of-turning-followers-into-leaders-by-david-marquet/) * The Manager’s Path (https://www.amazon.com/Managers-Path-Leaders-Navigating-Growth/dp/1491973897) 35:58 - Empathy For Managers And Employees * Leadership Development * Self-Reflection/Self-Awareness * Journaling/Note Taking * Becoming A Technical Leader (https://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Technical-Leader-Problem-Solving-Approach/dp/0932633021) 51:11 - Phil’s Thoughts For The Future * Citizens Before Consumers * What Can We Do Better? * The Global Digital Citizen Foundation (https://globaldigitalcitizen.org/) Reflections: Jacob: Happy being an individual contributor but contributing to the art of management by being a better employee and having empathy for managers. Phil: Self-Awareness and empathy. Wanting to push his people in a certain direction but taking that step back and determining where that motivation is coming from. Chanté: Impostor syndrome: at some point in time we’re all impostors. Doing reading about leadership can help whether you are taking that path or not. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Phil Wheeler.

Please enjoy this mini-episode of Greater Than Code featuring guest Penelope Phippen (https://twitter.com/penelope_zone) as we begin to pivot to our new podcast theme, the Fast & Furious (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_%26_Furious). * ( * Just kidding, we are still a tech podcast.) But we do hope you enjoy this set of outtakes where we grill Penelope on her Fast & Furious knowledge and speculate about the future of the franchise.) This is the kind of content we normally release exclusively to our Patreon subscribers, but we didn't want to hoard such joy, so it's a gift to all of you. But if you want more content like this, an invite to our Slack group, AND an invite to the Fast & Furious party at Jamey's house, please support us on Patreon! (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) * ( * That is also a joke, if you're a Patron, thank you for your support, but please don't show up to Jamey's house unannounced.) Special Guest: Penelope Phippen.

01:37 - Penelope’s Superpower: An extremely cursed knowledge of the Ruby programming language’s grammar. 03:09 - Writing Ruby Programming 05:50 - Why Penelope is Doing This the Way She Is * Were Any Bugs Found in the Ruby Grammar * There is No Spec * There is No Written Standard for How Ruby is Supposed to Work 07:32 - Inability to Extract Parse.y Out * Penelope’s Ideas 12:02 - What Problem Penelope is Trying to Solve With This Program * Rubocop Doesn’t Well Solve This Problem 18:30 - Hierarchy of Nitpicking 20:35 - Opportunities for Collaboration 22:44 - Major Challenges Faced * Finding Time * No Major Challenges * Community Overwhelmingly Welcoming * This is Not a Gem 25:58 - What Others Will Do With Rubyfmt (https://github.com/penelopezone/rubyfmt) 28:08 - Finding Time and Motivation to Work on Rubyfmt (https://github.com/penelopezone/rubyfmt) 30:00 - Why Penelope Hasn’t Got Pushback * There Isn’t Another Tool in This Class for Ruby 34:25 - Heretically Creating An Ergonomic Way To Work With ASTs 37:00 - The Fate of Regional Ruby Conferences * Regional Conferences Are Valuable For Other People * Speakers Can Get Their Start * Local Conferences Can Benefit Local Speakers * Struggling to Get Speakers * Organizers Burnout and No One Takes Over * $$ - Hard to Break Even This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Penelope Phippen.

01:14 - Mireille’s Superpower: Being just herself. The sense of respect around the individuality of every person. 02:30 - Being Different From Others is a Good Thing * Nature vs. Nurture * Epigenetics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics) 05:59 - Our Brains and Empathy * Mirror Neurons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron) * Dr. Dan Siegel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_J._Siegel) * The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon/Frequency Illusion 11:15 - The Brain vs. The Mind * Extended Cognition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_cognition) * Sensation and Perception * Survival Rules - Virginia Satir (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Satir) 19:22 - Three Brains in One (https://psycheducation.org/brain-tours/3-brains-in-one-brain/) 21:51 - HPA Axis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothalamic%E2%80%93pituitary%E2%80%93adrenal_axis) * Dr. John Briere (http://s1097954.instanturl.net/) 23:06 - Overcoming Unconscious Impulses * Fight or Flight * Collateral Data * Brené Brown (https://brenebrown.com/) * Grounding 26:56 - Affective Prosody (https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Psycholinguistics/Prosody) * Gavin de Becker - The Gift of Fear (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gift_of_Fear) * Incongruence 33:26 - Balancing Transparency at Work * Humanity in Tech * Codeswitching * Arianna Huffington (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arianna_Huffington) * Relationships at Work * Psychological Safety * Shame * Learned Helplessness (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness) 48:41 - Effort Over Outcome 56:15 - Using the Word “While” 59:25 - Decoding Your Anger * Using Energy 01:05:28 - “Plays” or Neural Routes 01:09:20 - Correlation vs. Causation Reflections: Rein: Bringing our whole self to work without thinking about punishment or reprisal. Finding psychological safety. Jacob: How he thinks one of the biggest problems in the tech industry is that there is this brick wall around feelings and how feelings and work don’t mix. Rather than a brick wall, what kind of filter can we put in front of our emotional lives that is appropriate for the professional world? Mireille: It really is around being able to see other people as people and when we do that most of the time people are not trying to make our lives more difficult. Check out Mireille’s podcast Brain Science here (https://changelog.com/brainscience). This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Dr. Mireille Reece.

01:24 - Kim’s Superpower: Being a Black Woman in Tech with a Strategy and a Platform. 02:21 - Continuously Validating Your Space as a Black Woman * Technical vs. Technology * Kamala Harris (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamala_Harris) Suspending Her Campaign * Inclusion, Diversity, and Business Strategy 08:10 - The System was Built to Harm and Oppress Black Women * Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift_Every_Voice_and_Sing) * Stacey Abrams (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stacey_Abrams) * F*ck Civility * White People are on a Spectrum of Racist * Ibram Kendi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibram_X._Kendi): How To Be an Antiracist * Black People Cannot be Racist 15:42 - The Only Power Black People Have is the Power Whiteness Has Given Them * Capitalism, Communism, Marxism, Socialism are Theories Rooted in White Supremacy 21:24 - White Feminism is Bullsh*t * White Women are Now the Default Diversity in Tech 25:50 - Being a Strategist * Influencing Small to Medium Sized Business * Making Meaningful Impactful Change in Tech 33:15 - #causeascene (https://hashtagcauseascene.com/) 35:41 - Price Asymmetry 36:48 - Kim’s Six-Step Process 40:15 - Stop Looking for Simple Solutions to Complex Problems * Defining Racism Beyond the Dictionary Definition 44:29 - Future of Jobs Report from World Economic Forum (https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-future-of-jobs-report-2018) 45:55 - Strategies for Developing Your Other Technical Skills 48:15 - Bounded Rationality (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounded_rationality) * Facts Change, Truth Remains the Same * Collaboration Over Competition 52:10 - Can We Have Antiracist Capitalism? 01:00:59 - Defining Racism This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Kim Crayton.

00:58 - Denise’s Superpower: She is a classically trained musician and is good at transcribing music in her head. 03:30 - Glue Work (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19846720) * Tanya Reilly (https://twitter.com/whereistanya) * Doing Tasks That Are Adjacent to Coding * Scheduling * Making Sure Meetings Have Agendas * Who Tends to do Glue Work * Emotional Labor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_labor) 13:07 - What Denise Has Done to Improve the Glue Work Situation * Having the Terminology Helps A Lot 17:31 - How to Address Changing the Structure of Glue Work * Thinking Globally and Acting Locally * Burnout * Writing More Feedback Than Managers Expect * Writing Feedback About Glue Work * Virginia Satir (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_labor) 31:40 - Offboarding Yourself 37:10 - Release Engineering (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_engineering) 39:45 - Being a Product Manager 46:39 - Being Back in the Development Role * Working With Teams Reflections: John: The distinction between glue work that is just work that you are doing and glue work that you are enjoying and getting satisfaction out of. See what he can do to add glue work tasks into evaluations and part of everyone’s job. Rein: Burnout isn’t just working long hours. Burnout becomes a real danger when those things combine with acute alienation. Jacob: If product managers tried to be more transparent with their day to day tasks, and trying to listen more himself to what the PMs are saying. Denise: Thinking globally but solving locally. Always be offboarding yourself. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Denise Yu.

01:48 - Bärí’s Superpower: Being a Black Woman 05:20/22:50 - Admitting and Knowing What You Don’t Know * Intersectionality and Culture 10:00 - Born and Raised in Oakland * Gentrification * What is the Deficit of the City * Being Connected to Your Roots 19:30 - Unintended Consequences * Building Algorithms That Fact Check * You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know * Facts Are Not Facts Anymore * Tutorial to Boy Scouts About Getting Stopped by Police * Keeping the Kids Alive 33:15 - Where is the Light (In the Technology) * Technology is the Mirror of the People Creating It * Creating an Open Space * Prioritizing Important Events 42:34 - Getting Organizations to Buy Into the Open Space Concept 48:50 - Who’s Job is it to Educate the Children About Bias * Allyship * Seeing White Podcast (https://www.sceneonradio.org/) 58:47 - Diversity or Inclusion * Lagging Metric or Leading Metric * Draw People In With Inclusion 01:03:59 - Taking Space and Making Space Reflections: Arty: Multigenerational roots, becoming your own being, being raised to be proud of yourself and say what you think. Be the roots for the people around you. There has been a loss of grounding. Chanté: Bärí is the real deal. It takes only a few to change history. Being real is valuable. Jacob: Wants his son to know that he won’t have to worry when being pulled over, and he should be troubled by that fact. Bärí: What do you connect to, who do you connect to? What and who are you thankful for? Think about that. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Bärí A. Williams.

01:50 - Getting Sucked into Twitter Vortexes 03:06 - Dynamics of Human Emotion * Willem Larsen Episode (https://www.greaterthancode.com/reinventing-education) * Prometheus Rising (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_Rising) 05:36 - Creating Safe Spaces for Emotionally Charged Conversations 07:57 - Radical Inclusion * Shared Conversation About Humanity 09:49 - Overidentification/Over Attachment to Tribalism * Race and Ethnicity are Socially Constructed (yes!) 12:15 - Digital Activism * Retweeting What We Agree With, Not What We Disagree With (How it’s Taken) * Encouraging Good Faith Disagreements 15:22 - Tribal Dynamics 16:45 - People From Oppressed Groups Have the Right to Rage * Being an Advocate * Making Space 24:30 - The Changing Frequencies of People 26:58 - Call-Out Culture * Calling In * Invisibilia (https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510307/invisibilia) * Wanting to See People Make Right/Not Shunning Them 32:20 - We Are All Human! Reflections: Arty: How much our connectivity is an opportunity to see our diversity and the strength and power and creative coolness of one another and if we can come together in shared space, what is the vision we can craft together. Chanté: Synchronicity and thinking about the way things happen. Glad to have this conversation. Jacob: How to make a community of people that can have difficult conversations, certain boundaries need to be respected. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks!

00:54 - Emily’s Superpower: Being a Good Teacher * Greater Than Code Episode 261: Celebrating Computer Science Education with Dave Bock (https://www.greaterthancode.com/celebrating-computer-science-education) * CyberPatriot (https://www.uscyberpatriot.org/) 06:24 - Online College Courses vs In-Person Learning / Emily’s Community College Path * Network Engineering (https://www.fieldengineer.com/blogs/what-is-network-engineer-definition) * Virginia Tech (https://vt.edu/) * Guaranteed Transfer Programs (https://blog.collegevine.com/an-introduction-to-guaranteed-transfer-programs/) * Loudoun Codes (http://loudouncodes.org/) * Emily Haggard: My Path to Virginia Tech (http://loudouncodes.org/2020/09/23/path_to_va_tech.html) 11:58 - Computer Science Curriculums * Technical Depth * The Missing Semester of Your CS Education (https://missing.csail.mit.edu/) 19:28 - Being A Good Mentor / Mentor, Student Relationships * Using Intuition * Putting Yourself in Others’ Mindsets * Diversity and Focusing On Commonalities * Addressing Gatekeeping in Tech * Celebrating Accomplishments * Bragging Loudly * Grace Hopper Conference (https://ghc.anitab.org/) * Cultural Dynamics Spread 38:24 - Dungeons & Dragons (https://dnd.wizards.com/) * Characters as an Extensions of Players Reflections: Dave: College is what you make of it, not where you went. Arty: Teaching people better who don’t have a lot of experience yet. Mandy: “Empowered women, empower women.” Empowered men also empower women. Emily: Your mentor should have different skills from you and you should seek them out for that reason. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Transcript: MANDY: Hey, everybody! Welcome to Episode 265 of Greater Than Code. My name is Mandy Moore and I'm here with our guest panelist, Dave Bock. DAVE: Hi, I'm David Bock and I am here with our usual co-host, Arty Starr. ARTY: Thank you, Dave. And I'm here today with our guest, Emily Haggard. Emily is graduating from Virginia Tech with a Bachelor’s in Computer Science this past December so, congratulations. She has a wide variety of experience in technology from web development to kernel programming, and even network engineering and cybersecurity. She is an active member of her community, having founded a cybersecurity club for middle schoolers. In her free time, she enjoys playing Dungeons and Dragons and writing novels. Welcome to the show, Emily. EMILY: Thank you. ARTY: So our first question we always ask is what is your superpower and how did you acquire it? EMILY: So I spent some time thinking about this and I would say that my superpower is that I'm a good teacher and what that means is that the people who come to me with questions wanting to learn something number one, my goal is to help them understand and number two, I think it's very important to make sure that whatever gap we have in our experience doesn't matter and that they don't feel that. So that they could be my 6-year-old brother and I'm trying to teach him algebra, or something and he doesn't feel like he is the 6-year-old trying to learn algebra. DAVE: I'll echo that sentiment about being a good teacher actually on two fronts, Emily. First of all, I am teaching your brother now in high school and just the other day, he credited you towards giving him a lot of background knowledge about the course and the curriculum before we ever started the class. So he seconds that you're a good teacher. And then listeners might remember, I was on a few weeks ago talking about my nonprofit and Emily was there at the beginning of me starting to volunteer in high schools. In fact, the way I met Emily, it was the fall of 2014. The first time I was volunteering at Loudoun Valley High School and one morning prior to class, there was going to be a meeting of a cybersecurity club. There were a bunch to the students milling about and there was this sophomore girl sitting in front of a computer, looking at a PowerPoint presentation of networking IP addresses, how the /24 of an IP address resolves and just all that kind of detail. Like very low-level detail about networking stuff and I was like, “Oh, that's interesting.” I wouldn't have expected a sophomore girl to be so interested in the low-level type of details of IP. And then the club started and she got up and started giving that presentation. That was not a slide deck she was reading; it was a slide deck she was creating. EMILY: Thank you. I actually remember that. [laughs] ARTY: So how did you acquire that superpower? EMILY: I think it was out of necessity. So going back to the story that David mentioned in high school, there was a cybersecurity competition called CyberPatriot that I competed in with friends and one year, all of a sudden, they just introduced network engineering to the competition. We had to configure and troubleshoot a simulated network and no one knew how to do that. So I took it upon myself to just figure it out so that my team could be competitive and win, but then part of the way that I learn actually is being able to teach something like that's how I grasp. I know that I've understood something and I'm ready to move on to the next topic is like, if I could teach this thing. So actually, I started out building all of that as a way to kind of condense my notes and condense my knowledge so that it’d stick in my head for the competition and I just realized it's already here, I should share this. So that's how I started there. Teaching network engineering to high schoolers that don't have any background knowledge is really hard. It forced me to put it in terms that would make sense and take away the really technical aspects of it and I think that built the teaching skill. DAVE: That relates to the club you started at the middle school for a CyberPatriot. How did that start? EMILY: That was initially a desire to have a capstone project and get out of high school a few weeks early. But I was sitting there with my friend and thinking about, “Okay, well, we need to do something that actually helps people. What should we do?” Like some people are going out and they're painting murals in schools, or gardening. It was like, well, we don't really like being outside and we're not really artistic. [chuckles] But what we do have is a lot of technical knowledge from all this work with CyberPatriot and we know that CyberPatriot has a middle school competition. So we actually approached the middle school. We had a sit down with, I think the dean at our local middle school. We talked about what CyberPatriot was and what we wanted to do with the students, which was have them bust over to the high school so we could teach them as an afterschool program. I guess we convinced him and so, a couple months later they're busing students over for us to teach. DAVE: Wow. And did they ever participate in competitions as middle schoolers? EMILY: Yes, they did. DAVE: Very cool. EMILY: Yeah. DAVE: Can you go into what those competitions are like? I don't think most of the audience even knows that exists. EMILY: Yeah, sure. So CyberPatriot, it's a cybersecurity competition for predominantly high schoolers that's run by the Air Force and you have a couple rounds throughout the year, I think it’s like five, or so, and at each round you have 6 hours and you're given some virtual machines, which you have to secure and remove viruses from and things, and you get points for doing all of that. They added on network simulation, which was with some Cisco proprietary software, which would simulate your routers, your firewalls, and everything. So you'd have to configure and troubleshoot that as well and you would get points for the same thing. It builds a lot of comradery with all of us having to sit there for 6 hours after school and like, we're getting tired. It's a Friday night, everyone's a little bit loopy and all we've eaten is pizza for 6 hours. [laughs] DAVE: Well, that's a good jumpstart to your career, I think. [laughs] EMILY: Yes, for sure. MANDY: So while in college, I'm guessing that – well, I'm assuming that you've been pretty impacted by COVID and doing in-person learning versus online learning. How's that been for you? EMILY: I've actually found it pushes me to challenge the status quo. Online college classes, for the most part, the lectures aren't that helpful. They're not that great. So I had to pick up a lot of skills, like learning to teach myself, reading books, and figuring out ways to discern if I needed to research something further, if I really understood it yet, or not. That's a really hard question to ask actually is if you don't have the knowledge, how do you know that you don't have that knowledge? That's something I kind of had – it's a skill that you have to work on. So that is something I developed over the time when we were online and I've actually also done – I worked time for a year after high school and I took mostly online classes at the community college. Those skills started there, too and then I just built on them when I came to Virginia Tech and we had COVID happen. DAVE: Actually, I'd like to ask about that community college time. I know you had an interesting path into Virginia Tech, one that I'm really interested in for my own kids as well. Can you talk about that? EMILY: Yeah. So I, out of high school, always thought I'm going to – I'm a first-generation student. My parents did not go to college. They went to the military and grandparents before them. So I had always had it in my head that I am going to go and get that 4-year degree. That's what I want for myself. At the end of high school, I applied to Virginia Tech. I had a dream school. I wanted to go to Georgia Tech. They rejected me. Oh, well, that dream shot. I need to find something new. So I applied to Virginia Tech thinking it was going to be a safe bet. It's an in-state school, I was a very good student; they would never reject me and so, I applied for the engineering program and I was rejected. They did admit me for the neuroscience program, but it wasn't going to be what I wanted and I was realizing that I did not like either chemistry, or biology, so that would never work. And then at the same time, because of my work with CyberPatriot, I was able to get an internship in network engineering at a college not too far from where I lived. After I graduated high school, they offered me a job as a network engineer, which I took because my team was fantastic, I really liked my manager, and I was comfortable there. I took this job and I said, “Okay, I'm going to keep working on the college thing because it's what I always wanted for myself.” So I just signed up for community college and that was pretty tough working a full-time and doing community college until 11 o'clock at night and getting up the next day and doing it all over again. And from there, I decided that Virginia Tech was going to be the best option for me, just from a very logical perspective. I kind of thought Virginia Tech was a bit cult-y. I was never really gung-ho about going, but it made the most sense being an in-state school that's very well-known. I worked through community college and I applied to Virginia Tech again after 1 year at community college and they rejected me again. so I was like, “Oh no, now what do I do I?” And I realized I needed to make use of the guaranteed transfer program. One of the really cool things in Virginia at least is that a lot of the state schools have agreements with the community college, where if you get an associates with a specific GPA, you can transfer into that program and the university and your transfer's guaranteed, they can't reject you. So I was like, “Aha, they can't get rid of me this time.” Yeah, I did it and it's kind of a messy process. I actually went into that in a blog post on David has a nonprofit called Loudoun Codes. I wrote a blog post for his website and detailed that entire – being a transfer student is hard because there's a lot of credits that may not get transferred over because Virginia Tech is a little bit – all 4-year colleges are a little bit elitist in their attitude towards community college and they didn't take some of the credits that I had, which put me behind quite far, even though I had that knowledge, they said I didn't. So that added on some extra time and some extra summer semesters while I was at Tech. ARTY: Yeah. I did something similar with doing community college and then what you're talking about with the whole elitist attitude with the transfer and having a whole bunch of your credits not transferring and I'm definitely familiar with that whole experience. DAVE: Yeah. EMILY: And even now that I think about it, I remember community college, too. It's built for one specific type of student, which is great. I think they're really good at helping people who just weren't present, or weren't able to do the work and make the progress in high school. They're really good at helping those types of students. But as someone who did a whole bunch of AP classes, had a crazy GPA, they just didn't really know how to handle me. They said, “Okay, you've tested out of pretty much all of our math classes, but you are still lacking some credits.” So I had to take multi-variable calculus in community college in order to get credit to replace the fact that I tested out of pre-cal and which was kind of silly, but in the long run, it was great because I hear multi-variable calculus at Tech is pretty hard. But definitely, there's a lot of bureaucratic nonsense about college. Education is important. It's great. I've learned a lot of things, but there's still all these old ways of thinking and people are just not ready for change in college a lot of the time. The people who make decisions that is. DAVE: Well, I'd like to ask a little bit about the computer science curriculum that you've had and the angle I'm asking from when I worked at LivingSocial, I worked with one of the first group of people that had graduated from our bootcamp program and had transferred from other careers, spent 12 weeks learning software engineering skills, and then were integrated with a group of software engineers at LivingSocial. We would occasionally get into conversations about, well, if I learned to be a software engineer in 12 weeks, what do you learn in 4 years of college? So we started to do these internal brown bags that were kind of the Discovery Channel version of computer science. A lot of that material I've since recycled into the presentations I do at high school. But for your typical person who might have sidelined into this career from a different perspective, what's been your curriculum like? EMILY: I really like the parts of the curriculum that had technical depth because coming into it at my level, that's what I was lacking in certain areas. I had built the foundation really strong, but the details of it, I didn't have. The classes that Virginia Tech, like the notorious systems class and a cybersecurity class I have taken this semester, that have gone in detail with technology and pushed what I understood, those were my most valuable classes. There was a lot of it that I would've been happy without [laughs] because I'm not sure it will apply so much to my life going forward. I'm a very practical person. Engineer mindset; I don't want to worry about things that can actually be applied to the real world so much. So for me this semester, actually, it's been really challenging because I've taken a data structures and algorithms class where we're talking about NP complete versus NP hard, and what it would mean if we could solve an NP complete problem in polynomial time. It's really hard to care. It's really hard to see how that [laughs] helps. It's interesting from a pure math perspective, but coming into it as someone who was already in the adult world and very grounded, it feels like bloat. DAVE: Yeah. That stuff is interesting if you're are designing databases, but most of us are just using databases and that – [overtalk] EMILY: Right. DAVE: Stuff is all kind of baked in. EMILY: Yeah. DAVE: For the average person on a technical career path, we're far more interested in the business problems than the math problems. ARTY: I'm curious, too. There's also lots of stuff that seems like it's missing in college curriculum from just really fundamental things that you need to know as a software engineer. So did you have things like source control and continuous integration? I think back to my own college experience and I didn't learn about source control until I got out of college. [laughs] And why is that? Why is that? It seems so backwards because there's these fundamental things that we need to learn and within 4 years, can we not somehow get that in the curriculum? I'm wondering what your experience has been like. EMILY: So Virginia Tech, I think the CS department head is actually really good at being reflective because he requires every senior to take a seminar class as they exit. It's a one credit class; it's mostly just feedback for the school and I think it's really cool because he asks all of us to make a presentation, just record ourselves talking over some slides about our experience and the things we would change. That really impressed me that this guy who gets to make so many decisions is listening to the people who are just kind of peons of the system and what I said was that there are certain classes that they give background knowledge. Like there's one in particular where it's essentially the closest crossover we have with the electrical engineering department and it's really painful, as someone who works with software, to try and put myself in a hardware mindset working with AND gates, OR gates, and all that, and trying to deal with these simulated chips. It's awful and then it never comes back. We never talk about again in the curriculum and it's a prerequisite for the systems class, which has nothing at all to do with that, really. This segues into another thing. I've had an internship while I've been at Virginia Tech that's a web consultant role, or a development consultant role with a company called Acceleration. They run just a small office in Blacksburg and they have a really cool business model. They take students at Virginia Tech and at Radford, a neighboring school, and they have us work with clients on real software development projects. They pair us with mentors who have 5, 10 years of experiences, software consultants, and we get to learn all those things that school doesn't teach us. So that's actually how I learned Git, Scrum, and all that stuff that isn't taught in college even now and I went back to the CS department head and I said, “Replace that class with the class that teaches us Git, Scrum, Kanban, and even just a brief overview of Docker, AWS, and the concepts so that people have a foundation when they try to go to work and they're trying to read all this documentation, or they're asked to build a container image and they have no idea what it's talking about, or what it's for.” Yeah, going back to the original question, no, I didn't learn version control in college, but the weird thing is that I was expected to know it in my classes without ever being taught it because, especially in the upper level like 3,004 level, or 1,000 level classes, they have you work on group projects where Git is essential and some of them, especially the capstone project, are long-term projects and you really need to use Scrum, or use some sort of methodology rather than just the how you would treat a two-week project. Actually, it's interesting because David was my sponsor on my capstone project in college and he really helped my team with the whole project planning, sprint planning, and just understanding how Scrum and all that works and what it's for. DAVE: Yeah. I just shared a link that is a series of videos from MIT called The Missing Semester of Your Computer Science Education that talks about Git, version control and command line, using the back shell, stuff about using a database, how to use a debugger; just all that kind of stuff is stuff that you're expected to know, but never formally taught. ARTY: What about unit testing? EMILY: Okay. So that's an interesting exception to the rule, but I don't think they really carried it through, through my entire experience at Tech. So in the earlier classes, we were actually forced to write unit tests that was part of our assignments and they would look to see that we had – I think we had to have a 100% testing coverage, or very close to it. So that was good, but then it kind of dropped away as we went to the upper-level classes and you just had to be a good programmer and you had to know to test small chunks of your code because we'd have these massive projects and there would be a testing framework to see if the entire thing worked, but there was no unit testing, really. Whereas, at work in my internship, unit tests are paramount, like [laughs], we put a huge emphasis on that. ARTY: So earlier Emily, you had had mentioned teaching people that had no experience at all and the challenge of trying to be able to help and support people and learning to understand regardless of what their gap was in existing experience. So what are some of the ideas, principles, things that you've learned on how to do that effectively? EMILY: That's a really tough question because I've worked on building intuition rather than a set of rules. But I think a few of the major things probably are thinking about it long enough beforehand, because there's always a lot of background context that they need. Usually, you don't present a solution before you’ve presented the problem and so, it's important to spend time thinking about that and especially how you're going to order concepts. I've noticed, too with some of the best teachers I've had in college is they were very careful with the order in which they introduced topics to build the necessary context and that's something that's really important with complete beginners. The thing is sometimes you have to build that context very quickly, which the best trick I have for that is just to create an analogy that has nothing to do with technology at all, create it out of a shared experience that you have, or something that they've probably experienced. Like a lot of times analogies for IP addressing use the mailing service, houses on a street and things like that, things that are common to our experience. I guess, maybe that's the foundation of it is you're trying to figure out what you have in common with this person that can take them from where they are to where you are currently and that requires a lot of social skills, intuition, and practice, so. DAVE: That’s a really good observation because one of the things I find teaching high school, and this has been a skill I've had to learn, is being able to put my mindset in the point of view of the student that I need to go to where they are and use a good metaphor analogy to bring them up a step. That's a real challenge to be able to strip away all the knowledge I have and be like, “Oh, this must be the understanding of the problem they have” and try to figure out how to walk them forward. EMILY: Yeah. DAVE: That's a valuable skill. EMILY: I think that's really rewarding, though because when I see in their eyes that they've understood it, or I watch them solve the problem, then I know that I did it well and that's really rewarding. It's like, okay, cool. I got them to where I wanted them to be. ARTY: Reminds me. I was helping out mentoring college students for a while and I hadn’t really been involved with college for a really long time. I was working with folks that knew very, very little and it was just astounding to me one, just realizing how much I actually knew. That's easy to take for granted. But also, just that if you can dial back and be patient, it's really rewarding I found to just be able to help people, to see that little light go on where they start connecting the dots and they're able to make something appear on the screen for the first time. That experience of “I made that! I made that happen.” I feel like that's one of the most exciting things about software and in programming is that experience of being able to create and make something come to life in that way. Just mentoring as an experience is something, I think is valuable in a lot of ways beyond just the immediate being able to help someone things, like it's a cool experience being a mentor as well. EMILY: And I think it's really important, too as a mentor to have good mentors yourself. I was really lucky to have David just show up in my high school one day [laughs] and I've been really lucky consistently with the mentors in my life. In my internship that I mentioned, I worked with fantastic engineers who are really good teachers. It's difficult to figure out how to good teacher without having first had good teachers yourself and regardless of the level of experience I have, I think I will always want to have that mentor relationship so that I can keep learning. One of the things, too is a lot of my mentors are quite different from mine. Like I am a very quiet introvert person. I would not say I'm very charismatic. I would say David is the opposite of all those things. So wanting to build those skills myself, it's good to have a role model who has them. DAVE: Well, thank you for that compliment. EMILY: Yeah. MANDY: That's really interesting that you said to find mentor that's the opposite of yourself. I literally just heard the same thing said by a different person last week that was like, “Yeah, you should totally find someone who you want to be, or emulate,” and I thought that was really good advice. EMILY: I agree with that completely. There's a lot of conversation around diversity in computer science and that's definitely a problem. Women do not have the representation they should, like I've always gone through classes and been 1 of 3 women in the class. [chuckles] But I think one of the ways in which we can approach this, besides just increasing the enrollment number, is focusing on commonalities—kind of what I mentioned before— from the perspective of mentors who are different than their students. Maybe a male mentor trying to mentor a female student. Focusing on your commonalities rather than naturally gravitating towards people who are like you; trying to find commonalities with people who are different from you. I think that's important. From the student perspective, it's less about finding commonalities more about, like you said, finding the things you want to emulate. Looking at other groups of people and figuring out what they're good at and what things you would like to take from them. [laughs] So. DAVE: Yeah, that's been an interesting challenge I've noticed in the school system is that in the elementary school years, boys and girls are equally competent and interested in this material. By the time they get to high school, we have that 70/30 split of males versus females. In the middle school, the numbers are all over place, but in the formal classes, it seems to be at 70/30 split by 7th grade and I can't really find any single root cause that causes that. Unfortunately, I think I saw some stuff this week with Computer Science Education Week where students as young as first grade are working with small robots in small groups and there always seems to be the extrovert boy that is like, “It's a robot. I'm going to be the one that plays with it,” and he gatekeeps access to girls who are like, “It's my turn.” It's really discouraging to see that behavior ingrained at such a young age. Any attempt I try to address it at the high school level – well, not any attempt, but I feel like a lot of times I can come off as the creepy old guy trying to encourage high school age girls to be more interested in computer science. It's a hard place for me to be. EMILY: Yeah. I don't think you're the creepy old guy. [laughter] I think this is a larger topic in society right now is it's ingrained in women to be meek and to not be as confident, and that's really hard to overcome. That sounds terrible. I don't think people consciously do that all the time. I don't think men are consciously trying to speak over women all the time, but it it's definitely happened to me all over the place—it's happened at work, it's happened in interviews. I think getting over that is definitely really tough, but some of the things that have helped me are to see and celebrate women's accomplishments. Like every time I hear about Grace Hopper, it makes me so happy. I know one time in high school, David took a few other female students and I to a celebration of women's accomplishments and the whole thing, there were male allies there, but the topic of the night was women bragging loudly about the things that they've accomplished. Because that's not something that's encouraged for us to do, but it's something that it builds our confidence and also changes how other people see us. Because the thing is, it's easy to brag and it's saddening that people will just implicitly believe that the more you say you did. So the more frequently you brag about how smart you are, the more inclined people are to believe it because we're pretty suggestible as humans. When women don't do that, that subtly over time changes the perspective of us. We have to, very intently – I can't think of a word I'm trying to say, but be very intentional about bragging about ourselves regardless of how uncomfortable it is, regardless of whether we think we deserve it, or not. MANDY: I also think it's really important for women to also amplify other women, like empowered women empower women. So when we step up and say, “Look at this thing Emily did, isn't that cool?” EMILY: Yeah. MANDY: That's something that we should be doing to highlight and amplify others' accomplishments. EMILY: For sure. I've been to the Grace Hopper conference virtually because it was during COVID times, but that was a huge component of it was there would be these networking circles where women just talk about the amazing things that they've done and you just meet all these strangers who have done really cool things. It goes in both directions, like you said, you get to raise them up and also be encouraged yourself and have something to look forward to. ARTY: It sounds like just being exposed to that culture was a powerful experience for you. EMILY: For sure. ARTY: I was thinking about our conversation earlier about role models and finding someone to look up to that you're like, “You're a really cool person. I admire you.” Having strong women as role models makes it much easier for us to operate a certain way when we interact with other people, and stay solid within ourself and confident within ourself and not cave in. When all the examples around us of women are backing off, caving in, and just being submissive in the way that they interact with the world, those are the sort of patterns we pick up and learn. Likewise, the mixed gender conversations and things that happen. We pick up on those play of dynamics, the things that we see, and if we have strong role models, then it helps us shift those other conversations. So if we have exp more experience with these things, like the Grace Hopper conference and being able to go into these other that have a culture built around strong women and supporting being a strong woman, then you can take some of those things back with you in these other environments and then also be a role model for others. Because people see you being strong and standing up for yourself, being confident and they might have the same reaction to you of like, “Wow, I really admire her. She's really cool.” And then they start to emulate those things too. So these cultural dynamics, they spread and it's this subconscious spreading thing that happens. But maybe if we can get more experiences in these positive environments, we can iteratively take some of those things back with us and influence our other environments that, that maybe aren't so healthy. EMILY: Yeah. I agree. And I think also, it's important to be honest and open about where you started because it's easy, if you're a really confident woman walking into the room, for people to think you've always been that way. I think it's important to tell the stories about when you weren't, because that's how other people are going to connect with you and see a path forward for themselves. Definitely. I'll start by telling a story. I think it's just a million small experiences. I was a strong student in high school. I was very good at math. We had study halls where we'd sit in the auditorium and we'd all be doing homework, and students would often go to the guy in my math class who knew less than I did and ask for help. I would just sit there and listen to him poorly help the other students and mostly just brag about himself, and just be quiet and think about how angry it made me, but not really be able to speak up, or say anything. I'm very different now. Because of the exposure that I've had, I am much more quick to shut that down and to give a different perspective when someone's acting that way. MANDY: But how cool would it have been if that guy would've been like, “Don't ask me, ask Emily”? DAVE: That's a really important point because I hear women talk about this problem all the time and I don't think the solution is a 100% in the women's hands. I think that it's men in the room. My own personal experience, most of my career has been spent in government contracting space and, in that space, the percentage of women to men is much higher. It's still not great, but I think there's a better attempt at inclusion during recruiting. I think that there's a lot of just forces in that environment that are more amenable to that as a career path for women. And then when I started consultancy with my two business partners, Kim and Karen, that was an unheard-of thing that I had two women business partners and at the time we started it, I didn't think it was that big of a deal at all. But then we were suddenly in the commercial space and people thought it was some scam I was running to be a minority owned company and my partner was my wife, or I'd go into a meeting and somebody thought I brought a secretary and I was like, “No, she's an engineer and she's good, if not better than me.” It opened my eyes to the assumptions that people make about what the consulting rates even should be for men versus women and it's in that environment I learned that I had to speak up. I had to represent to be a solution to that problem. I think you can get in an argument with other guys where they aren't even convinced there's a problem to solve. They'll start talking about, “Oh, well, women just aren't as interested in this career path.” It's like, I've known plenty that are and end up leaving. EMILY: I think definitely having support from both sides has been really important because it is typically men in places of authority and to have them be encouraging and not necessarily forcing you into the spotlight, but definitely trying to raise you up and encourage you to speak out means a lot. ARTY: Yeah. I found most of the teams I've been on, I was the only woman on the team, or one of two maybe and early on, when nobody knows you, people make a lot of assumptions about things. The typical thing I've seen happen is when you've got a woman programmer is often, the bit is flipped pretty early on of that oh, she doesn't know what she's doing and stuff, we don't need to listen to what she says kind of thing and then it becomes those initial conversations and how things are framed, tend to affect a lot of how the relationships on the team are moving forward. One of the things that I learn as just an adaptive thing is I was really smart. So what I do, the first thing on the team I'd find out what the hardest problem was, that none of the guys could solve and figure it out, and then I would go after that one. My first thing on the team, I would go and tackle the hardest thing. I found that once you kick the ass of the biggest baddy on the yard, respect. [laughter] So I ended up not having problems moving forward and that the guys would be more submissive toward me, even as opposed to the other way around. But it's like you come into a culture that is dominated by certain ways of thinking in this masculine hierarchy, alpha male thing going on and if that's the dominant culture, you have to learn to play that game and stake yourself in that game. Generally speaking, in this engineering world, intelligence is fairly respected. So I've at least found that that's been a way for me to operate and be able to reset that playing field anyway. MID-ROLL: This episode is supported by Compiler, an original podcast from Red Hat discussing tech topics big, small, and strange. Compiler unravels industry topics, trends, and the things you’ve always wanted to know about tech, through interviews with the people who know it best. On their show, you will hear a chorus of perspectives from the diverse communities behind the code. Compiler brings together a curious team of Red Hatters to tackle big questions in tech like, what is technical debt? What are tech hiring managers actually looking for? And do you have to know how to code to get started in open source? I checked out the “Should Managers Code?” episode of Compiler, and I thought it was interesting how the hosts spoke with Red Hatters who are vocal about what role, if any, that managers should have in code bases—and why they often fight to keep their hands on keys for as long as they can. Listen to Compiler on Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you listen to podcasts. We’ll also include a link in the show notes. Our thanks to Compiler for their support. ARTY: Well, speaking of games, Arty, one of the things that Emily mentions in her bio is playing Dungeons and Dragons and this is an area where as well as I know Emily from her high school years, this is not something I know much about Emily at all. So I'd like to talk about that. Play, or DM, Emily? EMILY: Both. But I really enjoy DMing because it's all about creating problems to solve, in my opinion, like you throw out a bunch of story threads. The way I approach things is I try actually, unlike a lot of DMs, I do not do a lot of world building for places my players haven't been. I pretty much, there are bright light at the center of the world and anything the light doesn't touch doesn't exist. I haven't written it and I don't really look at it that often. So I'm constantly throwing out story threads to try and see what they latch onto and I'll dive into their character backstory to see what they are more predisposed to be interested in. It's like writing a weekly web comic. You don't have necessarily a set beginning and end and you don't really know where you're going to end up in between, but you end up with all these cool threads and you can tie them together in new and interesting ways. Just seeing the connections between those and being able to change what you want something to be on the fly is really cool and just very stimulating mentally for me. So it's like a puzzle exercise the whole time and it is also an interesting social exercise because you're trying to balance the needs of each person. I feel like D&D allows you to know people on a really deep level, because a lot of times, our characters are just – that we’re playing. I guess, I didn't really explain what D&D is; I just made an assumption that people would know. It's a tabletop role playing game where you make a character. You're usually heroic and you're going about on this adventure trying to help people solve problems and these characters tend to be just naturally an extension of ourselves. So you get to see all the things that subconsciously the person doesn't real about themselves, but that show up in their character. I think that's really cool. DAVE: So do you have a weekly game, or how often do you play? EMILY: I try to run a weekly game. College often gets in the way. [laughs] DAVE: How many players? EMILY: It ranges from 3 to 4, sometimes 5. It's really cool because it's also, most of them are people that I met during the pandemic. So we've played predominantly online and this is the way we've gotten to know each other. We've become really close in the year, or so since we started playing together through the game that I DM and through the game that one other person in the group DMs and it's cool. It's definitely a way to kind of transcend the boundaries of Zoom and of video calls in general. DAVE: Hmm. ARTY: How did you end up getting into that? EMILY: It was just a friend group in high school. Someone said, “Hey, I would like to run a Dungeon and Dragons game. Do you want to play?” And I said, “Oh, what's that?” I've always loved books and reading so it was kind of a natural progression to go from reading a story to making a story collaboratively with other people. So that just immediately, I had a connection with it and I loved the game and that's been a huge part of my hobbies and my outside of tech life ever since. DAVE: Yeah. I played D&D as a kid in the late 70s, early 80s, but my mom took all my stuff away from me when that Tom Hanks movie came out that started the whole Satan panic thing. So I didn't play for a long time until my own kids were interested after getting hooked on Magic. Seeing my own kids interested in D&D, the story building, the writing, the math that they had to do, like I don't know why any parent wouldn't encourage their kids to play this game. It's just phenomenal. The collaborative, creative, sharing, math; it's got everything. EMILY: Yeah. I'm an introverted person so it takes a lot to make me feel motivated to be in a group with other people consistently, but D&D does that and it does it in a way that's not, I guess, prohibitive to people who are naturally shy. Because you're pretending to be someone else and you're not necessarily having to totally be yourself and you're able to explore the world through a lens that you find comfortable. DAVE: That’s really cool. EMILY: I guess, also, it kind of goes back to our conversation about teaching. Being a DM, a lot of my players are people who have not played before, or very, very new. Like, maybe they've read a lot about it, maybe they've watched them [43:18] shows, but they maybe haven't necessarily played. D&D does require a lot of math and there's a lot of optimization, like you can get very into the weeds with your character sheet trying to make the most efficient battle machine, whatever and that's not really always approachable. Especially when I started introducing my younger siblings to D&D, I used versions, D&D like games that were similar, but not quite D&D. Like less math, a very similar amplified character sheets so you're looking at fewer numbers, or fewer calculations involved just to kind of get the essence, because there's a few core concepts in D&D. You have six statistics about your character that they change a little bit between different types of role-playing games, but they're pretty universal, I think for the most part. It's constitution, strength, dexterity, wisdom, intelligence, and charisma. Once you kind of nail those concepts down and once a person understands what those skills are supposed to mean, that really opens the gates to understanding a lot more about the core mechanics of D&D outside of the spell casting stuff and all the other math that's involved. I think just simplifying the game down to that makes them fall in love with the narrative and collaborative aspect of the game, and then be more motivated to figure out the math, if they weren't already predisposed to that. DAVE: So if somebody were interested in picking up a game trying to figure it out, where would they start? EMILY: It really to depends on the age group. If you're going to play with high school students, I would definitely say if none of you have played before, then pick up a player's handbook, maybe a dungeon master's guide if you're going to DM, you've never DM before because it gives a lot of tips for just dealing with the problems that arise in a collaborative storytelling game. And then probably just a prewritten module so you don't have to worry about building your own story, because these modules are stories that are written by professional game developers and you can take pieces of them and iterate it on yourself so you don't have to start with nothing. But if you are going for a much younger audience, I can't remember off the top of my head what it was, but it's essentially an animal adventure game. It's very much D&D without using the word D&D because I think it's a different company, it's copyrighted, and whatnot. But you have these little cute dog characters and they're trying to defeat an evil animal overlord who wants to ruin the town festival. It's very family friendly, like there's no death like there is in regular D&D and it's just a chance to engage with the character creation aspect of it. MANDY: That's really cool. So we're about heading towards our time, but I really appreciate you coming on the show, Emily and I wanted to just ask you, if you could give any advice to young girls looking to get into tech, or software engineering, what advice would you give them? EMILY: I think don't be afraid to walk off the path. A lot of my life has been kind of bucking the prewritten path that a lot of people are told is the best one because it didn't work for me, or whatever reason, and I think it's important just to not be afraid of that and to be courageous in making your own path. MANDY: That's great advice. So should we head into reflections, everyone? Who wants to start us off? DAVE: I'll start with one. I mentioned that when asked Emily about her path into college, that I was interested in a similar path for my own kids. I had a really strange college path that I started out a music major, ended up a computer science major, and had a non-traditional path. I've always believed that college is what you make of it, not where you went. Where you went might help you get your first job, but from then on, it's networking, it's personality, it's how well you did the job. Talking to Emily about her path, just reinforces that to me and helps me plot a path for what I might have my own children do. I have triplet boys that are in 9th grade. So we're starting to think about that path and not only would a path through Virginia Community College save us a fortune, [laughs] it would also be a guaranteed admission into Virginia Tech, or one of the Virginia schools so it's definitely something worth to consider. So I appreciate that knowledge, Emily. ARTY: I've been thinking a lot about how we can better teach people that don't have a lot of experience yet. We've got so much stuff going on in this field of software engineering and it's really easy to not realize how far that this plateau of knowledge that we live in and work with every day to do our jobs, and how important it is to bring up new folks that are trying to learn. One of the things you said, Emily was about teaching is being able to find those shared things where we've got a common understanding about something—you used metaphor of male delivery to talk about IP addresses, for example. But to be thinking in those ways of how do we find something shared and be able to get more involved with mentoring, reaching back, and helping support people to learn because software is super cool. It really is! We can build amazing, amazing things. It'd be awesome if more of us were able to get involved and have that experience and having good mentors, having good role models, all of those things make a big difference. MANDY: I just love the conversation that we had about men and women in technology and for me, I love to reiterate the fact that empowered women empower women and I even want to take that a step further by saying especially right now in our field, empowered men also empower women. So I think that that's something that really needs to be said and heard and not perceived as like Dave said oh, he felt like the creepy guy encouraging girls, or women to get involved in tech. I think it's cool. Dave has personally, he's mentored me. He's gotten me more interested. I used to do assistant work and now I'm learning programming and it's because I've been encouraged to do so by a lot of different men in the industry that I've been lucky to know. DAVE: Well, thank you, Mandy. You certainly have a who's who of mentors. MANDY: I am very, very lucky to know the people I know. DAVE: I’m quite honored to even be named on that list of people you know. [laughter] EMILY: I think the thought I keep coming back to is one that I've mentioned, but didn't really crystallize in my head until this morning when I was preparing for this recording is, I listened to David's interview and I thought about like, “Oh wow, he did really well on the podcast, all these things that I wish I did.” It really crystallized the idea that your mentor should be different from you and should have skills you don't, and you should seek them out for that reason. Mentors tend to be the people that I run into and I haven't really thought about it that way before, but that gives me a different perspective to go out and intentionally seek out those people. That definitely gives some food for thought for me. [laughs] MANDY: I love intentionally seeking out people who are different from myself in general, just to learn and get perspectives that I might have never even thought of before. But with that, I guess we will wrap up. Emily, it's been so nice having you on the show. Congratulations and best of luck on your exams. I know being – [overtalk] DAVE: I can’t believe you took the time to do this with your exams coming up. MANDY: I know! EMILY: I'm procrastinating as hard as I can. [laughter] MANDY: But it's been so nice to have you on the show. Dave, thank you for coming and being a guest panelist and Arty, it's always wonderful to host with you. So I just wish everybody a happy new year and we'll see you next week! Special Guests: Dave Bock and Emily Haggard.

On this day in Paris in 1948, the United Nations issued the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/), a milestone document that sets out the fundamental rights and privileges of all people and all nations. In honor of the anniversary of this document, the panelists of Greater Than Code have come together to share their reading of the document with all of you.

02:26 - Lauren’s Superpower: Remembering Useful Yet Sentimental Facts About People 03:57 - Lauren’s Professional Background 07:35 - Bias in the Downsides of AI * Automation vs. Augmentation * Meredith Broussard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meredith_Broussard) 11:15 - Media and AI/How the Media Affects People’s Perception of AI 14:32 - Concerns of Small and Midsize Businesses Pertaining to AI 18:37 - How to Mitigate Bias in AI 22:23 - Ethics in AI * Loomis v. Wisconsin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loomis_v._Wisconsin) 25:39 - Defining Bias in AI * Georgetown University Law Center (https://www.law.georgetown.edu/) * Unconscious Bias * Harvard Implicit Bias Test (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html) 32:04 - Fairness vs. Accuracy in Algorithms 38:30 - Preventing Bias in AI Resources * Gartner (https://www.gartner.com/en) * Towards Data Science Blog (https://towardsdatascience.com/) * Github (https://github.com/) 41:00 - Working Remotely * Proactively Communicating * Setting Boundaries 50:45 - Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace * Slack (https://slack.com/) * Aubrey Blanche, Atlassian (https://www.atlassian.com/) Reflections: John: Lauren talking about the work she’s doing to pre-educate people so they can prevent themselves from getting in trouble even before they build their models. Chanté: It’s not enough to just be doing this internally. Bias happens in all shapes, sizes, and forms and it’s important to recognize that. Jacob: In a biased society we can’t expect completely unbiased data; therefore we can’t train an algorithm on the theoretical equitable world that we want to create. There will always be a trace of the bias we have now. Lauren: The first step is acknowledging the bias exists in the first place. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps,LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Lauren Maffeo.

01:22 - Ariel’s Superpower: Extreme Irritability * How to Address What is Irritating You 07:30 - Accessibility Needs - Learning What Irritates Others * Disability Simulation in the Workplace * Hot-Keys vs. Mouse Use 16:05 - Rabbinical School * Learning to Ask Complex Questions * Edge Cases (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_case) 20:30 - Developing Company/Corporate Values * Purpose of Company Values * Revisiting the Values * When to Remove a Value * Wording of Values * Aspirational Values * The Right Time to Put Values into Writing Reflections: John: Using the process of establishing and/or revising values as a way of pulling in the experience of marginalized people in the company. Jamey: Think about who your values put pressure on. Jacob: Balance between whether values should be aspirational or should they be a reflection of things that people in the company have already internalized. Ariel: Aspirational vs. Reflective values and when is the right time for each. Also, there is a point of giving too much weight to the values. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Ariel Caplan.

01:12 - Willem’s Superpower: Meta 02:20 - Accelerated Community Learning * Self-Sustaining Communities 12:45 - Reimagining the Education System * Unschooling * Open-Space (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Space_Technology) * Systems of Privilege * Jordan Fink @buildsoil (https://twitter.com/buildsoil?lang=en) 24:20 - Stages of Human Life * Age Segregation in School * Storytelling of Culture 41:10 - The Thermodynamics of Emotion Symposium (https://thermodynamicsofemotion.com) 57:01 - Listening to What the Community Needs The Fall of Civilizations Podcast (https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/) Reflections: Jacob: Local communities can surely agree on and find really innovative ways they can provide for each other. Arty: The magic can only happen with the existing system being out of the way and space being created for the people with the spaces and the people with the programs to work together around the shared interest. Willem: Our culture has all these impediments to navigating complex systems in wise ways. We should get out of the way of people we have more power than and listen to the system and provide resources to the system. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Willem Larsen.

01:30 - James’ Superpower: Spending time chasing his daughter and her robots around. Helping with her robotics club at school. 02:37 - “Just Be Yourself” is Terrible Advice 03:50 - What Are You Trying to Accomplish in the Interview 06:00 - Be Authentic: Which Parts of Yourself to Show Be a Strong Communicator Be an Avid Learner Don’t be a Jerk 07:25 - Turn Your Interviewers into Your Advocates 12:42 - Technical Interviews Saying “I Don’t Know” is OK 16:00 Interviewee as the Interviewer Make Sure You Want to Work Here Answer Questions Honestly 18:53 - Prepare for Common Interview Questions Rephrasing Weakness 23:34 - Intrinsic Motivation Mastery by Robert Greene (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastery_(book)) 29:29 - Storytelling in the Interview Being Confident in Your Accomplishments Interviewers Explain Why You Are Asking the Question 37:15 - Management Techniques Richard Cook (https://www.adaptivecapacitylabs.com/richard-cook/) Herbert Simon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_A._Simon) 45:00 - Why Technical Interviews are Challenging Cracking the Coding Interview (http://www.crackingthecodinginterview.com/) Reflections: John: Setting the context for being approachable as an interviewer is important. Rein: Some of this advice works all the time, and some of this advice only works when you have been able to develop a personal connection with the interviewer/interviewee. James: Think about if this is a place you want to work while interviewing. Avdi: Turning your interviewer into your advocate can help them also be able to tell you if this place will be a good fit for you. Jessica: It’s not just about being able to interview well as the interviewee, but we need to choose a company that can interview well too. Ask your personal contacts about what it is like to work at a certain company. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: James Edward Gray.

01:10 - Don’s Superpower: He is a generalist. He has lots of skills he can bring together in one place. 02:25 - Ethics and Open Source Open Source is Broken (https://medium.com/@degoodmanwilson/open-source-is-broken-d836efbceb4f) OSI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_Initiative) How Can we Make Sure Our Code isn’t Weaponized 08:34 - Consequentialism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism) vs Contractualism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contractualism) OSI FAQ (https://opensource.org/faq) Free Software Foundation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Foundation) 18:15 - The Paradox of Tolerance/Paradox of Openness 19:15 - Is Licensing the Right Mechanism for Bringing Ethics into Open Source 23:40 - Enforceability of Open Source Licenses (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_license) 28:40 - Compensation as an Ethical Consideration 34:30 - Quantifying the Value the Open Source Software Gives 38:24 - Empowering People Who Participate in Open Source It’s OK to Question Authority Not Everyone Has the Privilege to Participate in Open Source Ethics in Open Source Licenses 48:31 Tierney Cyren @bitandbang (https://twitter.com/bitandbang) This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Don Goodman-Wilson.

01:12 - Ambreen’s Non-Technical Superpower: She is Very Good at Zoning People Out Learning necessary information from conversations 03:20 - Ambreen’s Technical Superpower: Any Challenge She is Given She Will Try to Just Do It Comfort with Uncertainty 06:03 - Fixed Mindset vs. Growth Mindset It’s OK to Not Know Everything Using Resources to Your Advantage 08:40 - Ambreen’s Hobbies Outside of Software 10:10 - Thinking About Things in a Molecular Way Taking Chunks at a Time When Learning Something New Breaking Down Big Concepts into Small Things You Can Learn Being Comfortable Being Uncomfortable 13:45 - Ambreen’s Journey to Software Engineering C++ Turning a Love Into a Career Ruby, Rails, Go, Docker 20:30 - Self-Advocating for New Work Experience 22:00 - Empathy in Engineering Auditory Fatigue (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_fatigue) Pair Programming (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_programming) vs Mob Programming (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mob_programming) Reflections: John: Intentionally recognizing uncomfortable learning situations and be okay with it. Jacob: Your emotional state does matter at work and we as professionals need to recognize that this has relevance to one’s ability to do work. Arty: It is important to help others to be able to come out of their comfort zone and be ok with not knowing everything. Ambreen: Likes Jacob’s idea of being productively lost, but there is progress being made. There are many different styles of learning. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Ambreen Hasan.

01:16 - Mannah’s Superpower: He is Comfortable in His Own Skin Being Yourself 02:17 - Assessing Identity and Evaluating Sense of Self in New Culture What a Philosopher is 03:42 - Quoting Beyoncé and Using the B Word Who Takes Offense? Is Everyone Given the Same Consideration? 06:25 - Moments of Self Doubt When Someone Doesn’t Believe You Simone de Beauvoir (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_de_Beauvoir) Addressing Terms of Identity with Conversation Botham Jean (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Botham_Jean), Forgiveness, and Role Reversal 09:14 - Empathy Who is Your Favorite Philosopher Having the Ability to Consider and Alternative Viewpoint 11:22 - Retaliation is a Thing Impeachment Whistleblower (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%E2%80%93Ukraine_controversy) Kavanaugh Investigation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brett_Kavanaugh) Rowena Chiu (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/new-harvey-weinstein-accuser-rape-rowena-chiu_n_5d767361e4b0fde50c2ac3c9) Colin Kaepernick (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Kaepernick) 16:33 - How to Deal With Coming Across a Viewpoint You Don’t Think Has Merit It is Healthy to Have a Level of Empathy for Your Enemies Assigning Value to Situations 18:56 - The Supreme Court Voting on Protections Systemic Hatred Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_Liberty_and_the_pursuit_of_Happiness) 23:23 - Origins of Thoughts and Root Causes 28:57 - Recognizing Privilege Rowena Chiu: Opinion | 'Harvey Weinstein Told Me He Liked Chinese Girls … (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/05/opinion/sunday/harvey-weinstein-rowena-chiu.html) This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Mannah Kallon.

02:35 - Philip’s Superpower: Being Not Afraid of Mathematics 04:07 - Programming Language Foundations in Agda (https://plfa.github.io/) Propositions as Types (https://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/wadler/papers/propositions-as-types/propositions-as-types.pdf) Isomorphism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isomorphism) Software Foundations by Benjamin C. Pierce (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13413455-software-foundations) The Coq Proof Assistant (https://coq.inria.fr/) 15:32 - Using a Proof Assistant 22:57 - Human Creativity + Insight QuickCheck (http://hackage.haskell.org/package/QuickCheck) CompCert (http://compcert.inria.fr/) 30:02 - Specifications Use of Formal Methods at Amazon Web Services (https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/tla/formal-methods-amazon.pdf) The Evolution of Testing Methodology at AWS: From Status Quo to Formal Methods with TLA+ (https://www.infoq.com/presentations/aws-testing-tla/) How Amazon web services uses formal methods (https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2699417) 35:25 - How To Translate Abstract Concepts So Practitioners Can Use Them Reflections: Rein: The way we are taught math makes us hate it. Jess: There’s a difference between learning the foundations of programming and learning the skills of programming Chanté: How do we make conversations like this more accessible? Jacob: Ways of getting quick and seamless feedback as you are writing a program. Joint Cognitive Systems: Foundations of Cognitive Systems Engineering (https://www.amazon.com/Joint-Cognitive-Systems-Foundations-Engineering/dp/0849328217) This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Philip Wadler.

There's a point in life, somewhere around the halfway mark, where the reality check hits -- you're going to die. There's a future without you in it. There's a new generation of children growing up, learning their way through the world, and humanity will keep moving forward without you. On one hand, this is depressing. Everyday, we go through the motions. Everyday, we play the game. And suddenly, it all seems so meaningless. The characteristic period of "mid-life crisis" starts with falling into a pit of nihilistic despair, and a quest to answer the most basic existential questions. Does anything really matter? Who am I? What do I live for? On the other side of these questions, something magical happens. The finiteness of Life is also what gives it meaning. Every breath is something to cherish. Every joyful memory is a gift. And right now, in this moment, we have the opportunity to live and be, whoever it is we want to be. Who are your heroes? Who do you admire? What character do you want to play? How can you use your special gifts to lift the people around you? Like a cacoon-shattering phase change, a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly, we become an Elder, a steward, and a leader that works on behalf of the children of our future. This audio clip is a conversation between Claire Lew (https://twitter.com/clairejlew), CEO of Know Your Team (https://knowyourteam.com/) & Arty Starr (https://twitter.com/janellekz) about the journey of becoming an Elder, and why Arty decided to change her name. If you want a bit more backstory, you can also check out this thread:

this is great stuff! Artemis is a badass.

— Miko Matsumura ㋡ (@mikojava) October 13, 2019

00:54 - Pariss’ Superpower: Being Vocal and Transparent * #BlackTechTwitter (https://twitter.com/ParissAthena/status/1068873547005812737?s=20) * The Villian Origin Story * Deadpool (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadpool_(film)) 08:01 - #BlackTechTwitter (https://twitter.com/ParissAthena/status/1068873547005812737?s=20) & Black Tech Pipeline (https://blacktechpipeline.com/) * Job Board (https://blacktechpipeline.com/jobs) * Labor Compensation 15:56 - Being Okay with Losing Opportunities * Announcing Success * Criticism & Privilege * The Great Resignation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Resignation) * Generational Wealth (https://www.investopedia.com/generational-wealth-definition-5189580#:~:text=The%20term%20%E2%80%9Cgenerational%20wealth%E2%80%9D%20refers,real%20estate%20and%20family%20businesses.) * Hustle Culture * Hustle Culture: Why Is Everyone Working Too Hard? (https://medium.com/the-post-grad-survival-guide/hustle-culture-why-is-everyone-working-too-hard-69f9f5331ab5) 28:57 - UX Design vs Software Engineering (What would you do if you weren’t in tech?) * Thinking About Vulnerable Communities * Coding For Work * Foley Artist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foley_(filmmaking)); Working Behind the Scenes * Tech Supporting People’s Real Passions 35:11 - Pariss’ Passion for Acting & Being On Set * Behind-the-Scenes * Watching Marginalized People Succeed: “BE BOTHERED!” 43:38 - Growing & Evolving Community * @BotBlackTech (https://twitter.com/botblacktech?lang=en) * A Note to #BlackTechTwitter (https://twitter.com/ParissAthena/status/1068873547005812737?s=20)/Black Tech Pipeline (https://blacktechpipeline.com/) Potential Successors Reflections: Chanté: Being intentional about community. John: The impact an individual person can have on culture. Jamey: Be bothered. Ways that marginalized communities share some things and not other things. Tim: Having these discussions because people who are not Black do not understand the Black experience; Making sure the Black experience is changed for the better moving forward. Pariss: Being an ally vs being a coconspirator. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Transcript: JOHN: Hello and welcome to Greater Than Code, Episode 264. I'm John Sawers. My pronouns are he/him. And I'm here with Chanté Thurmond. CHANTÉ: Hey, everyone. My pronouns are she/her and ella. And I'm here today with Jamey Hampton. JAMEY: Thanks, Chanté. My pronouns are they/them. And I'd like to also introduce Tim Banks. TIM: Hey, everybody. My pronouns are he/him. And I would like to introduce today's guest, Pariss Athena. PARISS: Hey, everyone. I'm Pariss Athena. My pronouns are she/her. I'm founder and CEO of Black Tech Pipeline and creator of the hashtag movement and community, #BlackTechTwitter. JOHN: Welcome to the show! We're going to start off with the question that we ask every guest that we have. What is your superpower and how did you acquire it? PARISS: This is such a downer, because I really don't know. I don't have one. I don't have a superpower, I don't think. JAMEY: Just because you don't know does not mean that you don't have one. CHANTÉ: One of them that I think is obvious to me, when I found you on Twitter, was your ability to see the problem, see the opportunity, and obviously, to find the talent. So those are three clear distinct talents you got there. PARISS: Yeah. Okay, I didn't consider them as superpowers, but we can definitely go with that. CHANTÉ: Sure! TIM: I will tell you; it was interesting to me because Pariss and I don't interact very often on Twitter, but I've been a follower and a fan for a while. The one thing that I've noticed about you is that you are always unapologetically yourself and I think that is a huge thing that cannot be underestimated. Because your ability to do these things, and your ability to inspire and empower others is because you first inspire and empower yourself. That's something that myself as a Black man, especially as a Black woman, we don't see that a lot and we don't see that a lot in a way that uplift others as well. So I've always been super, super impressed with your ability to do that and to do it unapologetically, and to stand there against all the people that level hate at all of us just to be there, complete yourself and let it go off. So always been inspired by that and I don't think you should underestimate that as a superpower. PARISS: Thank you! See, I didn't consider these things superpowers, but I guess, now I do. [laughs] JOHN: There you go. PARISS: Thank you. You're making me realize things about myself. [chuckles] TIM: Oh, yeah. That's one thing; we'll tell you about yourself. Whether it's good, or bad, we'll still tell you. PARISS: I love it. I love to hear the feedback. CHANTÉ: The other thing you might want to do now is we can ask #BlackTechTwitter what they think your superpowers are. I'm sure that they'll give you lots of insights of interacting with you over the last few years. PARISS: Yeah. I think the whole saying kind of what I want to say no matter what will probably be a big one. JOHN: Yeah. CHANTÉ: Yeah. PARISS: For me, I like doing that. I guess, I don't mind losing opportunities because I wanted to be honest, like it just is what it is, but I feel like I've always been that way. Maybe because I've been bullied for so many years and I'm just one day I just had it. I was like, “You know what? I'm fed up.” I'm done trying to appease people and I didn't care if I didn't have any friends, or whatever. I was like, “I was tired being a pushover,” and from there, I've just always been very vocal and transparent. CHANTÉ: Ah, there it is. It's like the superhero wound that turns into your superpower. PARISS: Yeah. Some people will say that. Some other people will be like, “Oh, that’s my villain origin story.” But I don’t know, I’m at a breaking point [chuckles] and I was like, “All right, I'm done. This is just whatever.” TIM: See, I always thought that was interesting because the “villains,” or “heroes;” any character in a story is most sympathetic when you understand where you're coming from. It's interesting that we talk about the villain origin story. It's because my favorite villains would be heroes in a different setting. You take like Magneto and I take Magneto because for me, the X-Men comic books, for those of you don't follow, has always been about civil rights. PARISS: Yeah. TIM: Always from the get go. Always about civil rights, always about the marginalized, and always about the people who are different. Sometimes they're different in ways that you can't tell and sometimes there's different in very, very obvious ways. I think that I always spoke to marginalized folks because some of those mutants had powers that you wouldn't know by looking at them. So some people are marginalized in ways where they're neurodivergent, where they have disabilities that you can't see, and some of them are very, very obvious about what they are. But the big thing that made the villains sympathetic is you understood why they did what they did. You may not have agreed with the methodology, but you could understand and were sympathetic to those costs. It’s like I said, Magneto from the X-Men was a great one. The heroes oftentimes had to endure the same kinds of problems that the villains did, but they went about it by a different approach and I think that's what makes a real big difference in our society today. It's not that whether folks are marginalized, or not, it's not whether folks have been bullied, or anything like that. It's how they choose to use that experience to go forward from that. PARISS: Right. TIM: So people who haven’t had those kinds of experiences say, “Yeah, it's a choice.” People can simplify it, or oversimplify it and say, “Oh, well they just had a choice to do good, or bad,” and it's like, no, it's never that easy. It's never that easy. In the right circumstances, all of us would probably do something that we would consider and the privilege that we do enjoy now—bad, or wrong, or whatever. But it was a thing that was necessary at the time. So I think we, as folks, especially as Black people, or other marginalized folks in this industry, need to be able to look back and to reach down and pull folks up and say, “Hey, there's a different way to go about it.” Because sometimes they just don't know that they have options and that's why it's important for us to inspire and empower folks to be that. PARISS: Yeah, and I feel like there's always that argument of yes, there is this problem, but the way you're going about solving it is not okay. But that's one perspective and then there's another perspective. At the end of the day, you're like, “Who's really right, who's really wrong,” and it's like that type of war. It's hard. TIM: Yeah. We don't live in an actual right/wrong, like very black and white thing. PARISS: Mm hm. TIM: Not to delve too far into it, one of the things I always liked about some of the Sergio and Morricone movies, the spaghetti westerns, was that they were never really heroes. Everybody was just shades of gray and it's like, did they do the right thing this time? Yeah. They may have been despicable people, but they did the right thing and I see that. We see that when we look through our history, regardless who it is, every “hero” has got some darkness to them and so, they didn't do everything right. That's all of us and none of us has ever done everything. It's just a matter what is our aggregate. So we always try and do the best we can. But like I said—not to steal the spotlight. I apologize for going off on this. But one of the things I've always looked at you, Pariss for is because you never claim to be always right. You never have said, “Everything I do is right,” or you follow me like that. It's always like, “Hey, look, I'm just doing the best I can.” When we are very open and transparent about that and vulnerable about that, that's what's inspiring. PARISS: Yeah. It's funny he brought up superheroes. I guess, he says he's not a hero, or a villain, which is why I love him so much, but Deadpool. I absolutely love Deadpool because he doesn't claim one, or the other. He's like, “I'm a guy making my own decisions and that's that.” I love that because you're not asking people to side with you, you're just this one person and you're going about life the way you want to do it, or go about things. I feel like that's just sort of what I do. I'm just doing what I do and like it or not, I don't know. I don't want to claim to be a role model, or like you said, that I'm always right. I'm not. I'm a human and that's that. CHANTÉ: Pariss, I'd love to take that as our cue to ask you. Let's talk about what you do, how you started #BlackTechTwitter and the Black Tech Pipeline. Tell us about what inspired you, what you were going through at that moment, and give us high level overview of where you've come from and where you are now. PARISS: I'll start off with #BlackTechTwitter. So I got onto Twitter in September, or August of 2018 because I had just been laid off for my first job as a software engineer and I wanted to just talk about my journey, finding a new role. When I got on there, that's when I noticed that there was a really small community of Black technologists and up until that point, first of all, I was new to tech so it's not like I really knew the industry, but also, I never worked with anyone who looked like me since I entered the industry. So when I saw that there was a community, I was excited about it. So one day I just posted a tweet asking what does Black Twitter in tech look like. I wasn't trying to start anything. I didn't even have followers. I just posted a tweet. That was it and then that tweet just ended up taking off and it gained so much traction. I didn't expect that. Black technologists from all over the world posted themselves into that tweet and it just created that really long thread with their pictures and captions of what they do in the industry and overnight, it really formed this movement community in #BlackTech Twitter. Again, that was not my intention. It just kind of happened. Black Tech Pipeline then also fell into my lap pretty much just because that tweet and the traction that it gained; all of these employers were DMing me on Twitter. It was weird to have all these really big-name companies just in my Twitter DMS. I'm like, “Oh, wow.” Like, [chuckles] “[inaudible]. That’s so cool.” And they’re like, “Hey, we saw that. There's no pipeline problem. You brought exposure to this community. We want to hire people. Can you send us candidates?” Now I wasn't a recruiter at all. I didn't have recruiting experience. I didn't know what to do, but I was just like, “You're just connecting people. It's not that hard.” So what I did was I created a Discord community. I moved a lot of the members from Twitter into there and that's what I used to ask people like, “Hey, are you looking for work? I'm working with this employer.” I wasn't actually working with anyone in terms of having a contract. I was helping people for free. [laughs] So I was like, “Hey, let me connect you to this guy at Amazon, this guy at Google, this guy at Etsy,” that's just what it was. I was connecting people just like that and people were getting jobs and so, it was working. But I formed this entity, Black Tech Pipeline, after a lot of the candidates that I “recruited”—I'm doing air quotes for people who can't see—recruited into these companies. I started Black Pipeline because they came back to me and let me know that they left the companies that I recruited them into. When I asked why, it was like the typical just, “They weren't actually inclusive. It was very performative. It was a negative environment. They didn't really have any goals for me. It's like I was a diversity hire.” I felt horrible because I didn't vet these companies. I just was like, “Yeah, sure. I'll bring you candidates,” and that was it. So I felt horrible about that, especially being a Black woman enduring so much negativity within the industry. I was like, “If I'm going to do this type of work, then I want to do it right.” So I formed Black Tech Pipeline and I created this recruitment model, which was inspired by my bootcamp model. Anytime someone got hired from Black Tech Pipeline, I would stay on the job with them for 90 days and that meant I would biweekly virtual check-ins with those hires just to ask, “Hey, how's it going? What's your experience been like? Do you have the tools and resources that you need?” Those hires would give me feedback on their experience and I’d take that feedback and I'll relay it to the employer. So it was this feedback loop for 90 days to ensure that everyone's being set up for success, they have what they need, and they're happy and healthy in their environment. And then I eventually launched a job board. CHANTÉ: Yeah. I remember actually when you started off this conversation, because I was a headhunter at the time and looking for tech talent. So I stayed, I followed, watched, and I was so excited. One of the things that, as you were telling back that story, but I remember now that you're retelling it. Initially, I was like, “I love what Pariss is doing. It's very organic, it's real, it's needed. It's an opportunity that had been long overlooked.” I was so grateful that you were just building this movement, but I was also a little sad that you weren't necessarily getting paid. I know it was a labor of love, but I felt like all of a sudden, people started coming to you. I remember just all this activity and I was like, “Dang, that's a lot to take on,” and as a person in this industry, too. I feel like I'm oftentimes like, “Let me go help you.” I take on this role of being a Black woman caretaker of my community. I feel like I have this obligation to look out for people, which I think is pretty common in our Black community specifically. But it just feels like this problem that was so pervasive to technology and quite frankly, in a lot of other industries, became now this responsibility of you. People were like, “Hey, can you –?” They're sliding into your DMS and they're like, Hey, can you connect us with talent?” And then the fact that they didn't say, “And let us compensate you equitably for the labor that you are doing on our behave that we don't even have the capacity to do, or to maintain, sustain.” So just want to say I hope that now, as you're getting into this work and understanding the game of it, the business and the economic model that you are charging what you're worth on behalf of doing this labor. PARISS: Yeah. So that wasn't even – when I thought about that later on, I did it for free for 2 years. I wasn't thinking about it then, but now that I think about like, wow, I really build these companies up with Black technologists and no one offered to pay me at all. No one mentioned money at all and I'm like, “That's performative within itself.” I had to really think about that and it made me upset. I've actually even had a few of those companies come back to me after I launched Black Tech Pipeline and they expected work for free again. I was like, it just gives me insight into who's just here for the check the box and who's not. I've had tons of different experiences. I've even had companies – like I said, I do that recruitment model where I stay on the job with people for 90 days. I've even had companies offered to pay me more money to not stay on the job with the hires and just place them and I was like, “That's not, no. That's mandatory. I have to stay on the job.” JOHN: Yeah. Red flag. PARISS: Right, and I ended up not working with them anyway, but it's just like, so much is revealed in this work and it's frustrating. It’s emotional all the time. TIM: I think that underlies the whole problem of around diversity and inclusion in tech is that companies are willing to do it as long as they're not out anything. But as soon as they have to make an investment that's going to determine whether, or not they see the value in it. So if someone else is going to do the work, if someone else is going to do the labor of getting the talent to them, they don't have to pay nothing for it. Great. Well, that's just easy, but when you tell them, they actually have to invest in that, that's when they balk. PARISS: Right. TIM: Because it's not actually worth it for them. And the companies that will pay, or offer to pay, the companies that will pay Black speakers, the companies that will pay Black talent equivalent to the other ones, the companies that will pay to go and look for talent out of marginalized folks, those are the ones, they may not always do it right. But they're doing it better than the ones that just – if we happen upon some inclusive, great. PARISS: Right. Exactly. Yeah. JAMEY: One thing you said earlier when we were talking about your superpower of saying what you mean all the time was that you're not afraid to lose opportunities because of the things you say and stuff. I thought that that was really interesting because folks from marginalized backgrounds have to think about what they're doing and if it's going to lose them opportunities in a way that other people don't have to think about. So I guess, I was kind of wondering what your feelings are about that. I know I've talked about this with people in my network and the way I feel about if a company doesn't want to work with me, or an opportunity wants to overlook me because of this, this, or that about myself, then maybe I didn't want to work with them. I'm wondering what your philosophy is on that and how you came to that conclusion about it. PARISS: Yeah. So for me, I do not judge. I've had a few candidates who, they got hired at Google, but they were scared to announce it because of all of these issues with Google internally when it comes to their Black and brown hires. I was like, “No, you got hired at Google. That's a big deal. Say it. I know Google has issues. Trust me, even the smallest businesses have these issues and I don't think it's something we can actually escape, but you accomplished something, you got thing that you wanted, you should be proud of that so, say it.” That doesn't mean that you're here claiming like, “Oh, Google is the gods of technology.” No, but you got hired at your dream job and that's great. Announce that. For me, there are certain things I wouldn't do, but that's just me. Personally, like I said, I'm not scared to lose opportunities and I think that's because I'm so angry, I'm fed up, and I'm tired of needing to think of something before I say it, when people in privilege, they can just say whatever they want with no repercussions. I understand that other people aren't like that and that's totally fine. If you don't want to say something because you're scared you might lose opportunity, then don't say it. I would hate for someone to be like, “You know what, let me try this,” and then they can't sleep that night because they didn't really want to do it. They felt pressured to. If you don't want to do it, don't do it. If you want to, then do it. But I'm not going to judge you based off of that. You do what you want. JOHN: Yeah. I think a number of times on the show, we've talked about companies that have less than stellar reputations for the way they treat their people, places like Shopify and Google. Pretty much like you said, any company's going to have some issues like that. Some people have the privilege and the place where they can quit that job on principle based on that sort of thing. But we also don't want to criticize the people that have to stay there, that they need that job. They don't feel like they can just pick up the next one immediately. So you can criticize the company and all the things, but we want to separate that from criticizing individual workers who are working that job. Like you said, you’re going to be proud of getting a job at Google. That's a hard thing to do. That's something you should be proud of regardless of what other crap they're doing in their other departments, or at various levels. PARISS: Exactly. Yeah. I feel like the only people I criticize are the employers themselves because they’re the ones making the policies, they’re the ones making these roles and these changes. If they're only benefiting you, or the people in power and people in privilege, then I have no problem just roasting you, it's fine. You'll be fine. You still make your money. JAMEY: The way I kind of see it sometimes when someone that I care about takes a job with a company, Google is a good example, where I have this simultaneously, “I'm really happy for you that you accomplished this big thing and it's not that I'm judging people, but also, I'm a little worried for you.” Like, “I hope that that works out for you.” [laughs] PARISS: Well, yeah, same. I feel that way, too all the time, but I don't tell them that. [laughter] But I don't want to raid on your parade, but in the back my mind, I'm definitely like, “God, I really hope they do have a really good experience and if not, at least you got Google on your resume, you can go somewhere else.” But I try not to rain on anyone's parade. I think my negative thoughts, but outward, I’m like, “I’m so proud of you. Congrats.” JAMEY: [laughs] Absolutely. CHANTÉ: Yeah. As you all were talking, it reminds me, too. I think for the last few days, or week, I've seen some pieces around the great resignation and just people having privilege to quit their job and what that means about your social location and your circumstances. Many times, the people who have the privilege to quit are folks who have other things in the pipeline, or other means to cover their expenses and just the cost of living, or they have opportunities galore. I'm just curious if you've had any conversations with folks about that in the past several weeks, or months, given all the things we've seen with COVID and just how the economy's being playing out. PARISS: No, people are not – well, this is only true for me and the conversations I've had. No, people are not leaving their jobs without having another one lined up just because it's not like you need the money, right? You still have to pay your bills whether you have a job, or not. So no, they're staying and it sucks that you have to stay in a toxic situation. Like it sucks. That's just what you have to do and yet, that's kind of just what I'm seeing and I let them know like, “Obviously, I'll help you out.” Like, “I have a job board. I'm connected to all these employers. I'll help you as much as I can. I also don't even encourage them. I'm like, “Unless you want to quit, then go ahead and do that, and I'll help you as much as I can. Otherwise, yes, I understand at the end of the day, things still need to be paid. You have to put food on the table and regardless of what your situation is, just kind of hold out for as long as you can.” It sucks. It's like being between a rock and a hard place. CHANTÉ: Yeah, and it’s hard, especially, I feel like what I've seen is folks who have taken the plunge and broken into tech. They're like, “Well, I work so hard to get here. You think I'm just going to quit?” Like, there's a lot of hype with my tech team right now to quit and the stuff that happened at Netflix, it was a lot of hype and it's like, that's great that people can quit and walk out and do whatever. And then there are people who just absolutely cannot. They want to fight and they want to be in solidarity with their coworkers on things, but they might not have the privilege, or ability to really do that in such a way. It's not just performative. It's like, this is their livelihood, too. Doesn't mean that they're not in solidarity. PARISS: Yeah. No, I haven't talked to anyone who's felt comfortable enough to literally just up and quit because they're angry, or something. CHANTÉ: Right. PARISS: Like for them, they just got to go with it. It is what it is. CHANTÉ: Yeah. TIM: I think, too, there's a certain amount of almost protest, or hate working where it's like, I know some folks, who were civil servants, work for federal state governments that they detest it. Especially our parents’ generations, baby boomers, they worked for the federal government. Even though the federal government was doing them dirty, they were still going to get their money. They were going to get paid. They were going to use the government that they couldn't stand to set them up. They were going to take them for all their work. I think there's a lot of that sentiment, too among Black tech workers. Like, look, this company may be treating me wrong, but I'm going to soak them. I'm going to get every penny and dye my can out of these people and when I'm driving around in my Jaguar and going on vacation, they can eat it. When I buy that house, when I have something to leave my kids, that is what I'm doing this for. They can detest the company and you see them every day. They get home, they're like, “What’s up, man. Look, I'm just trying to get this paycheck, dog.” PARISS: Right. TIM: And that’s legit. That is a very legitimate reason. I've worked for companies whose ethics I didn't necessarily agree with. But you know what, when I came home and I was driving a nice car, I had a big house, and my kids get fed, I'm like, “Look, man, that's all I'm here for.” That’s especially for marginalized folks, especially for folks that don't have generational wealth, never mind the actual privilege of being able to quit myself. But when you are set up with generation of wealth and you know you have something to leave the next generation, it's a whole different story than this is my opportunity for generational wealth. This money that I am making, it's a lot and I can hate the fucking company, but you know what, when I have something to leave my progeny, that's what I'm here for. PARISS: Oh, yes. I cannot stand when people are like, “If you're not here for passion, you're not going to last. You have to do it because you're passionate.” It's like maybe for you. I think this is really for marginalized communities, but we don't have the luxury of doing something for passion. I'm passionate about acting. I wish my mom could take care of my bills while I'm out chasing my dreams. But that can't happen for me. I have to work a 9:00 to 5:00, work on my little skits afterwards. That's the reality of my life for me. I can't just quit this company because unfortunately, even if they're just a terrible company, I can't just up and quit because I bills to pay. I have a child to feed. I have family to take care of. I don't have that privilege. So I think especially just Black people, we're so used to just living like this, it’s like this is just our reality every day. We have to deal with the way the world is and then still grow and thrive. Just going into a company and dealing with that is nothing new for us. CHANTÉ: Yeah. Real talk and I really appreciate you all talking about this because I actually faced the same situation not too long ago where I had two jobs and people were like, “Oh wow. It must be nice.” I'm like, “Must be nice? You think I'm working two jobs because it's a luxury, yo? Like, “It's actually because I'm making up for lost ground and for time.” This is equitable, this is reparations. In order to actually have a savings account, I have to have two jobs to be able to help my family during COVID. Are you tripping? I got to the point where I actually did need to make a decision because it was so unhealthy. I was getting so sick at work and I lost my dad. Suddenly, he got really sick and then that kind of forced me. The life circumstances forced me. But I was ready and committed to work two jobs just because my parents both have always worked more than one job. They always have multiple incomes. That's all I know. That's all I know. It's interesting seeing some of this play out in technology. What I noticed was, as I got into more technologically advanced, or well-funded companies and stuff, talking to people, they're like, “You can just quit,” and I'm like, “What are you talking about?” [laughs] That is not my reality. PARISS: Right. TIM: Yeah. It's funny that people talk about the hustle culture, whatever, having this and having that, having this thing on the side. Look, Black people have been doing this from the jump, from the get go. We've been having two, three jobs. We had a side hustle. We've been doing this; we're doing that on the side. We have been doing that forever because that's what we had to do that and then second of all, if we wanted to have anything more than the basics, that's what we needed to do. Both my parents work two jobs. I had two jobs since the time I was 16, since the time I was 35. I had two jobs and that was my present to me was when I made enough that I could only have one job and I was like, “Man, I can see my kids and stuff like that.” It's crazy, right? But that thing is the thing that people say, “Oh, well, now you can do things like that.” “That has how our existence has been for a long time. For a long, long time and that's not new to us. So for us, it is a privilege. For us, it's a privilege to just have one job, never mind to be able to quit that job. People say, “I'm going to go on and fund unemployment. I'm going to take a few months off to figure out what I want to do.” That doesn't register with me. That is not something I could ever do comfortably. That's not never going to see me do. Unless you're going to pay me to be gone. When people say, “Oh, I'm going to quit and I'm going to go take a vacation to Europe and then I'm going to come back in six months.” I'm like, “Bro, that is not a world in which I live.” PARISS: Sounds amazing, though. TIM: I know it does. I love that for you. PARISS: I wish I could do that. [laughs] MID-ROLL: This episode is supported by Compiler, an original podcast from Red Hat discussing tech topics big, small, and strange. Compiler unravels industry topics, trends, and the things you’ve always wanted to know about tech, through interviews with the people who know it best. On their show, you will hear a chorus of perspectives from the diverse communities behind the code. Compiler brings together a curious team of Red Hatters to tackle big questions in tech like, what is technical debt? What are tech hiring managers actually looking for? And do you have to know how to code to get started in open source? I checked out the “Should Managers Code?” episode of Compiler, and I thought it was interesting how the hosts spoke with Red Hatters who are vocal about what role, if any, that managers should have in code bases—and why they often fight to keep their hands on keys for as long as they can. Listen to Compiler on Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you listen to podcasts. We’ll also include a link in the show notes. Our thanks to Compiler for their support. TIM: So I guess, Pariss, I want to know when it gets to a point where you get in demand, what people want to hire not just your company, when they want to, “I want to hire Pariss Athena to work for my company.” What role are you going to work? What role do you want to be in? PARISS: Now? That's hard because I do Black Tech Pipeline full-time and I'm always like, “If this doesn't work out.” Sometimes I feel like I should be in a DEI role, but then I don't want to, because I know what DEI officers go through working at one company and it's just a shitshow. It's really hard. And sometimes, maybe I'll just leave this industry altogether, I don't know, because I don't want to be a software engineer anymore. I think I'd start over and be a UX designer, probably. Literally just start over as a junior in UX design. CHANTÉ: Tell us more about that because that was actually a question I had. If you weren't doing this, what would you be doing? So tell me more about why UX design instead of software engineering. PARISS: So I'm a person who loves research a lot, especially with UX because I just think it's cool. You're really thinking about such intricate things to make sure someone's having a good experience and you're thinking of all these different communities, especially the very vulnerable communities. I love that. You're using that to build a product that people are going to use, whether it's a digital, or a physical product. I think that's amazing. I think it also makes you more empathetic and aware of things and I love that. I just think there's a lot of opportunity to grow as a human. I just really love UX design and so, I would get into that. JOHN: And what is it about software that you're moving away from? PARISS: Software engineering is not fun to me when I'm doing it for work, but it's fun if I have a personal project. When I learned to code, I started coding my own – like I thought I was building this app that was going to make me a billionaire. So I loved coming home from work and building it every day. It was a React native application. Turns out, now that I think about it, it probably would have made me no money at all. The social media platforms would've killed me early. So whatever, but back then, I thought it was this golden egg idea and it just had me excited. But doing it for work 9:00 to 5:00, I just didn't enjoy it and that could have been because of the companies I was at, or the mentorship that I lacked. I don't know. It could have been a bunch of different reasons, but I've never really had a good experience coding for work. And then honestly, if I could snap my fingers altogether and be literally anything I wanted, I would definitely work on set of movie films. I wouldn't have to be an actor, or anything. I would really enjoy pulling curtains if I had to. I just like people on set and watching everything come to life, it's like this feeling I can't describe. It makes me very, very happy. I would probably do that, too. TIM: I think that's interesting. That part, so many people I know have similar things like that. PARISS: Oh really? TIM: Whether it’s they want to do lighting, whether it's they want to do the board. For me, I want to be a Foley artist. For those of you don't know, a Foley artist is when you have a scene where somebody's walking through gravel. Well, they don't actually have a microphone at the feet of the person walking through gravel, they have somebody out there who's taking a block and smashing it in gravel in the place where they walk so, they make those sounds. That's what Foley artist does. PARISS: Oh. TIM: But so many people in tech that I know that have super diverse sets of interests, always come back to that portion of working behind the scenes. PARISS: Yeah. TIM: To make something that's very visible. People enjoy it. Whether it's music, or whether it's movies, that kind of same emotional things. I love that answer. I think is really cool. PARISS: That's so interesting. I didn't even know that. I feel like what's funny. A lot of software engineers that I've met, they didn't start off wanting to be a software engineer. They did start off with going to art school and stuff. I'm like, “What happened?” JAMEY: I went to art school. [laughter] TIM: I'm a musician by trade. I started off, when I joined the Marine Corps, I joined the Marine Corps to be a musician and play a bunch of music. PARISS: Oh wow. JAMEY: That's really interesting. PARISS: Right? TIM: Yeah. PARISS: What happened? CHANTÉ: Yeah. That's a story you don't hear every day. [laughter] PARISS: Like, did we all grow up and realized that we have bills? Like, why did we stop? TIM: Oh. So I stopped because the Marine Corps that I was too smart to be a musician and made me an avionics tech instead. [laughter] PARISS: Oh my God. TIM: They changed my MOS in bootcamp. PARISS: Wow. JAMEY: I stopped because I realized that if I wanted to do big film movie kind of stuff, I would have to move to either New York, or LA and I didn't want to do that. [chuckles] JOHN: I did actually a lot of dance in college, but I also did software and then obviously, software pays a lot more than dance so I kept doing it. But I think unlike everyone here, I actually enjoy the software for the software and then so that's what's kept me in it for so long. Although, now I'm doing management. I'm not actually writing much software these days. But I feel like software is great because like you said, you can do it, make a ton of money, and then go do something else that you enjoy more, or that you really want to do. So it's nice in that respect, but it's also interesting that there's so many people in it that are doing it 9:00 to 5:00 and then they go do the thing they really enjoy afterwards. PARISS: Yeah, no, it pays well and it pays to support your actual dream. So it works out. CHANTÉ: Right. And I do think that a lot of the people in tech that I – as a recruiter, one of the things I always enjoy is well, how did you get into this field. I think that the trend is that most people don't actually to get into software engineering, but they have all this array of skill, talent, interests that actually make them much better at their jobs, or make it feel like I can come here, do this work, pick it up, put it down, and then I have the emotional and the bandwidth to go do the things that I really love. Whereas, if I was doing that other thing I love, that might get burnt out. So I always find that that's an interesting – specifically, it seems like in tech that I admire about people that they have that ability to do that. JAMEY: Pariss, you've mentioned a couple of times about acting and being on set. I can tell how much you love it because the tone of voice that you have when you talk about it. Now we're talking, getting into people's real passions and how tech supports that and stuff. I was wondering if you could just talk a little bit more about what got you into acting and what you love about it. PARISS: Yeah. So I'm going to say it started with home videos. My mom has so many home videos of just doing what I do and I was always part of the drama class ever since middle school. I was always in the plays. I was always main character. I was doing that. And then high school came and I really got into YouTube. So I was doing videos and I don’t know, I always really loved it. Once high school came, that's actually when I started getting bullied a lot and then I was like, “Oh, I'm going to show them. Once I graduate, I'm going to get into my top university and become an actress.” I did get into my top university in New York. I moved there to become an actress and then that's where – no, I didn't, I lied. I went there for film and screen studies. I lied, but I wanted to be an actress, too. But when I went to New York, that's when I realized everybody wants to be famous. Everyone wants to do this work. I was like, “Okay, let me go to LA.” Go to LA, it's even worse. First of all, I saw 80 people who looked just like me. I was like, “Okay, it's going to be really hard to make it in this industry.” It killed my dream a little bit, but I have still always really loved it, but I don't think it's one of those things I want to pursue whole time to get in front of the camera and that's when I started loving just simply being on set. I was like, “Oh my God.” I love just watching because I just think it's so cool. I really enjoyed being a background actor on set because you get to see the actors walk by and how they build these things. It's just like this vibe. Another thing I loved was watching – I would go on YouTube and I would buy the extra DVDs for movies. They don't do that anymore. I don't think. But DVDs for movies, they would come with watch the bloopers and how we put all this together. I'd watch that more than the actual movie. I'd watch it for hours and hours. I'd go on YouTube and watch behind the scenes of all my favorite movies. Everything was just so amazing behind scenes. It's just so fun seeing humans in this amazing job and that's what I fell in love with it, really. I also realized I don't think I want to do acting. I just like be there. JAMEY: I relate to that a lot about watching the behind-the-scenes stuff. I totally get it. PARISS: Yeah. [laughter] JOHN: Yeah. I always like that feeling that sense of knowing what's going – for example, if you work at a theme park and you know what all the trails are behind the scenes and how they set up the things, even then when you're attending, or whatever, you still know all the stuff that's going on as part of supporting the façade of the experience. I really always have enjoyed having that experience. I can even remember that back in high school, because my parents were faculty at the school, so I got to go into the places that most of the students never got to go and talk to people in a different way. So I always had that sense of being on the inside a little bit. PARISS: Right. JOHN: And that knowledge of more about how things operate and that's always very satisfying to me. PARISS: Yeah. Yeah. JAMEY: It's really interesting because I've had people ask me before like, “Oh, you know a lot about –” I was going to do film editing was what I was studying in school and they're like, “Oh, you know a lot about cinematography and editing and how that stuff gets done. Doesn't that ruin watching movies for you because that's what you're thinking about when you're watching them?” I guess, I get why people ask that, but I'm like, “Not at all.” Like, it's great. [laughs] PARISS: Yeah, I do that, too. I'm like, “Oh.” I'll point things out and I'm sure it's really annoying to people, but I'm like, “But I never did that!” [laughter] I even do that now. As someone who used to be a software engineer, I'd be like, “Oh, I know what they use. Oh, they use these –.” I just know all these things and I know it's annoying to people. JAMEY: I got a GraphQL error in the wild on Facebook the other day and I was like, “Look at this GraphQL error,” and all my friends were like, “I don't care about that at all.” [laughs] PARISS: That’s [inaudible]. TIM: I think it's interesting though, because as we're talking about these things, about understanding how the sauce is made and understanding what goes into the things increases our enjoyment on it. To bring this back a little bit, it's like when I see marginalized people, especially Black folks, succeed in tech—I'm happy for my friends and they do well—but I am over the moon for my Black friends, for Black women, for Black transwomen for anything like that when they succeed. Because I know what all it took. I understand the things they had to go through to get there and it's not the same as everybody else. So me having understand, because I have that common experience to understand that what it took to get there, I am like, “Yes.” So if you do get that high paid job at Google like, “Yeah man, fuck Google, but yes, get that bag.” PARISS: Right. TIM: Because I know what it took to get to that point and a lot of people don't appreciate that. Especially if they don't have the common experience because they don't understand it's not just about knowing the code. It's not just about getting the interview. It's so much more to even get to that point to get that. If you go to the Google, if you go to even Facebook, whatever they call themselves now, and you get that bag, I'm happy. You get that bag because I understood what it took to get there. PARISS: Right. Yeah, and you understand how it's going to change your lives dramatically and that's the most exciting. Anytime I see someone just got their first – someone from #BlackTechTwitter, anytime I see that they just got their first job, or whatever it is, I'm like, “I am so excited that you're about to start this life-changing journey,” because I was on it, too. I know. It’s like ah, it's so exciting and you know they're going to have these super amazing experiences that they probably wouldn't have and been able to have had they got a job like a 9:00 to 5:00, I don't know, as an administration person, or something. It’s the financial aspect of it is life-changing. It's exciting. TIM: Yeah. It's like, I remember the first time I ever flew first class. PARISS: I still have to do that! TIM: First person in my family, in my whole family, to ever fly first class. PARISS: Yeah. TIM: And I remember texting my parents and my parents cried because their kid got to fly first class and people don't understand what all goes into that. They're like, “Oh, you're in first class.” Somebody on Twitter, they came at me sideways for mentioning I was in first class. I'm like, “You know what, I am going to talk about being in first class.” PARISS: Right. TIM: “Because ain't a lot of people like me in first class, you go hear about it and I don't care it bothers you. You're just going to have to be bothered.” PARISS: Yeah. people are like, “Get over it.” People don't realize that, it is. It's a big deal. Again, these are experiences that we might not have ever been able to have. But luckily, we got into this industry and we became successful in it. Like I said, it's life-changing and we might be the first ones in our family to experience these sort of things and I would hope we're not the last, but that's a big possibility, unfortunately. So it is a big one and I think you should talk about it. Who cares? JAMEY: Can I tell you how much I love, “You're just going to have to be bothered”? I'm like, [laughs] “I'm keeping that one.” TIM: Oh no, it's funny because I've had to read somebody in-person and it's like, you're just going to have to be bothered and it goes like – [laughter] If I could turn that into a t-shirt, or whatever, it’s be bothered. JAMEY: I would wear that t-shirt. [laughter] PARISS: Have it into a – [overtalk] CHANTÉ: I want that t-shirt. PARISS: Go for a gift, whatever. TIM: Yeah. Because I mean, that's the way we do people come at us sideways for all kinds of stuff like that whether it's been our hair, whether it's been the way we dress, whether it's because the codeswitch to back to how we really talk instead of having to codeswitch to that white professional talk, whatever it is. We say y'all, we eat spice, whatever it is, people come at sideways and I'm not apologizing anymore. CHANTÉ: Good for you. Don't. TIM: And again, that's something I've always appreciated about you, Pariss is that you don't apologize to that. You’re just like, “You don't like it. I'm not even sorry. You're just going to have to be bothered by it.” PARISS: Yeah. I just tell people to unfollow me, or block me. It's fine. [laughter] CHANTÉ: Yeah, Pariss. One of the questions I have for you is just in this journey, what has been the most surprising thing you've learned? PARISS: It's not really something I learned because there's a lot of things I already knew. Especially just working with employers, really teaching white people about diversity, equity, inclusion. Certain responses I've gotten, it's not surprising to me, or anything. Maybe things within my own community, but that doesn't really surprise me either. I think it's maybe the experiences I've had, but coming from my own community. Anything happening within my own community is more shocking, or I just feel more when it's from my own people, but I'm also like this happens in every community. It doesn't matter. But of course, this is my community so it affects me more. CHANTÉ: And then the other question that maybe this will help to prompt that, too. But for me, it's been a lot to experience and to hold and sometimes I feel like I don't want to do it anymore, but I look for things that sustain me, or things that inspire me. So I'm curious, what are those things for you right now in this season? PARISS: So I follow, I think it's called @BotBlackTech. It's a Twitter account and they retweet all these hashtags, including the #BlackTechTwitter one. So I get to see every – and anytime someone hashtags #BlackTwitter, I see what that announcement is and I get happy seeing that people are just asking questions to #BlackTechTwitter. “Hey, how should I build this?” “Hey, I did that.” I love seeing that. I just love seeing that the community has grown. I love knowing that people don't know how #BlackTechTwitter started, because that shows the progress. It means that community has grown a ton and that’s the whole point. You want it to continue standing and later on people find out the origin story of it. That’s not the priory. The priority is there are just more people here now and that's what's most exciting and I think that's just what really keeps me doing this work because I never wanted to do – what I'm doing now, I never wanted to do it. I actually promised myself I wouldn't do this work. Yet I'm here. But seeing all the good that's come from it, I'm like, “Wow, this is really, really dope.” I feel really blessed and lucky and it just makes me very happy. CHANTÉ: That's dope. And do you ever give thought about if you ever want to step away, or you need to step away, how this would proliferate, how it would continue to grow, and evolve with, or without you? Have you given any consideration to that? PARISS: Oh yeah. I don't know if I would want to do this forever, but I know I'd want it to stay around forever even if I'm not the one running it. I'd love to hand it off to someone else. That's something we're thinking about now, because I think the issue with Black Tech Pipeline is that the business – if I were to die, or something, that would be it for Black Tech Pipeline and that's not a good business model. It needs to be able to run with, or without me. So that's something we're currently figuring out right now, how to make that happen. As for the community on Twitter and the just social media period, it's fine. There's no face to #BlackTechTwitter. It's just a community and it's good. It's set for life. CHANTÉ: I'm glad you have given that a consideration. I thought about the same thing and I'm always here if you ever want to chat about it, or just have a jam session about it. I'd love to be in community with you and help you explore what that would be. PARISS: That'd be awesome. Thank you. CHANTÉ: Of course. JAMEY: There's something really beautiful about doing something that you care so much about that you feel like you want to worry about what will happen to it, even if you weren't there for it. PARISS: Yeah, no, this is necessary. Again, #BlackTechTwitter and Black Tech Pipeline have created an immense impact. It has to continue, especially for the Black community. It has to continue, no matter what. Whoever's turning that wheel, it shouldn't matter like that. Like I said, there shouldn't be a face, or just one person, or one designated area. It just needs to be decentralized. In any community. There's so many different communities and companies that have grown out of the #BlackTechTwitter movement and I hope they're thinking of the same thing. It has to run forever. This is extremely important, especially digitally, perfect. Must continue forever. TIM: So I guess with that in mind, what are you going to say to the next generation? Let's say, somebody calls on you to give the commencement speech at Howard and there's always that quota. What do you tell the up-and-coming folks, the folks who are going to take up your work? PARISS: That this cannot ever be personal. I think the number one most important thing to me is not being afraid to say no and not being afraid to, again, lose opportunity. I think that is so important because so many people can be swayed by money and we cannot—I cannot stress this enough—this cannot happen in the Black community period. We cannot be swayed by money. I don't want to take money and then need to be silenced, or follow someone else's rules that don't benefit my community, or impact it negatively. We can't be swayed by that. We have to do what's best for our community and that's number one and money, or just that benefit even if, I don't know if it's monetary, or not, you can't be swayed by that. And that takes hiring really good humans, really genuine, good, strong humans, which is really, really hard. But I think for me, that's the most important thing. CHANTÉ: I really appreciate that. I'm having a reflective thing, but I actually want to save it. So I want to prompt us to move to reflections, if it's okay and I'm willing to go first, because what you just said really elicited something in the end. What I heard you say, Pariss is that we need one, as a Black community, a Black and brown community, solidarity, and also, shared values and vision. We have to be on the same page about what we care about and also, what we want people to understand about our experience and why we're so valued and why we are that token of the month, or year, or era. I think that means that we need to be intentional about community and just building a container and having culture around what we are now and who we want to be in the future. I've been giving myself a lot of time and space to really think about time as a spiral, connecting with my ancestors, connecting with the present, and connecting with the future and just remembering that I can heal all of those parts if I'm present. I'm in community with people who understand that, that we have an opportunity together. So again, extending the olive branch and just saying I'm hoping that we can be intentional about building community and anybody who might catch this episode today, let's build community intentionally. JOHN: So what's something to me is the rather remarkable impact that an individual person can have on the culture, really. Like you started this organically out of just what you were seeing and the way you were talking and then now you've built this into a company that you're running and now you're working on how to make sure this company is perpetuates itself even without your work. So you're creating an institution here that's generating all this opportunity for your community. I think that's an amazing amount of power that you've harnessed there just with your own caring, that you've put this time in to build something and that you're going to eventually build something that can run for however long it needs to run. That's absolutely amazing, absolutely remarkable that one person can start that and bring more people in. It's not just you doing the work, but you're guiding that work. Collecting, focusing it in, and making it into something that’s going to have this fantastic impact. So it’s amazing to see one person can do that. PARISS: Thank you. I’m telling my community none of this would have happened if each individual in this community didn’t really bring exposure to it, care about it, and bring awareness to it the way that they did. So it's a collective effort, and a collective care and love for the community and its members. JOHN: Yeah. JAMEY: I keep coming back to this, my brain keeps coming back to this, “You're just going to have to be bothered,” because I love that so much. But it's got me thinking, this whole conversation has gotten me thinking about it's really meaningful to be able to listen to you all talk about your experiences in the Black community in tech. It's striking to me how some aspects of it resonate with me as someone in the trans community. Like what Tim was saying about people will come at me and I feel that. But then there's other aspects of it that are not the same and I hadn't thought about in the way of generationally. My parents aren't trans and they didn't have this experience and it's not this pathway of time where that kind of marginalization is happening. So I think it's interesting and important to think about the ways that different marginalized communities share some things and not other things. Because I think that's what we really have to understand and internalize if we're going to have different intersectionalities of marginalized folks like coming together to build community together and I think that that's really important. TIM: So I think it's important for us to have these conversations because people who are not Black do not understand the Black experience and the Black experience in America has always been difficult. The doors have not always been open to us. We have not had warm welcomes. We've had our time, our freedom, our money, and our land stolen from us from the jump. We are getting now to a point where we can establish ourselves a little bit and we've got forces and powers in this country who are trying to cover their tracks on what they've done to us so that they can do it again. It's important for us to have these discussions so that people understand same with the Black experiences and it's important for folks like Pariss to do that work so that we can become established. So that we're not only just citizens, but we have influence with our money, our power, and our position so that the we, as the fruits of the Black experience, can make sure that the Black experience has changed for the better in this country going forward. That is going to take us, as Black people, helping each other and relying on, unfortunately – I don’t want to say not unfortunately relying on, but relying on folks who are not marginalized to recognize that we do need your assistance and your allyship and your being an accomplice to changing the Black experience for the better in this country. Because if we don't the people who want to change the Black experience back to what it used to be will win and I'm not here for that. JAMEY: I love accomplice instead of ally, I have to say it. That's so good. That's such a good way to describe the mindset that you want people to be in in a more descriptive way. PARISS: Yeah. CHANTÉ: Yes. Thank you for that, Tim. PARISS: I like that. There's what is it, co-conspirator. There's being an ally and a co-conspirator. My mom does DEI work full-time. She's done it her whole life. So from what I've learned from her, she's for an ally, they're saying like, “Yes, Black lives matter.” They're doing very subtle work. For a co-conspirator, they're getting in front of the Black person when a cop has a gun to their face. They're like, “Do not pull that trigger.” Like, “This is wrong.” You’re really in it actively. So I always prefer a co-conspirator, or accomplice. TIM: An ally will film it; an accomplice will jump in front. PARISS: Mm hm. Yes. CHANTÉ: Yes. Yeah, for sure. And it's important, we need all of them. Everyone does play a part, but if we're going to dismantle systemic and institutionalized racism and oppression, then that is what it takes is to have multiple people willing to play multiple roles and you don't have to stay in one. You can change as your privilege, power, and your resource changes, or maybe it increases over time because you do gain strength and understanding by being in community with people, or maybe you have more money and opportunities. So you're like, “Yeah, I can fund this.” But Pariss, I'd love to hear your reflection. Bring us on home. PARISS: This conversation right here about accomplice, co-conspirator, and ally just because I think that conversation was really talked about when George Floyd was murdered, especially on Twitter. There were just so many different expectations coming from the Black tech community, then you have tech Twitter, which is kind of the more white tech community, and just wishing that more things were being done, or people not understanding their role, or not understanding what to say and things like that. I like what you said about people being able to play their part and then maybe learning more and then growing into other roles. I think that's really important. For me, I always want people to jump right in. Because that's what I have to do, period. It doesn't really matter. That's what I'm forced to do because I am Black. So for me, I'm always like, “Oh, I respect the people who are just like, ‘Fuck you. This is what it is and whatever.’” For me, I'm more so like, I didn't like when people were coming into my DMs like, “Hey, I don't know if I should say this. Should I say this?” I'm like, “I don't have time to educate you. Just do what you want to do. Just say it.” But sometimes, I have to – not that I have to educate them, or take time to respond to them. But for me, I have to understand that people need to learn how to play which roles because maybe they're good at some versus others and you're right. They can grow into other roles and it's not something I've really thought about just because like I said, I'm one of those people who wants to jump right in. So I'm just reflecting on that. It's something I'll continue talking about and thinking about and becoming more understanding of. CHANTÉ: Thank you. That's a perfect endcap to our conversation. I'll look for some, unless you have a favorite resource, but I'll share some so that folks can have more learning to learn about the difference between what it means to be an ally, an accomplice, and a co-conspirator because I think this is just beautiful and definitely needed. JOHN: Yeah. CHANTÉ: Pariss, thanks again for joining us today. We can continue the conversation so we welcome you back if you want to come and have part 2. But really appreciate all that you have said and of course, all that you're building and doing for the Black and actually, the BIPOC tech community, but specifically the Black folks. Thank you so much. Special Guest: Pariss Athena.

02:27 - Amir’s Superpower: Sensitivity to Development Pain A Picture of Amir’s Keyboard and Battlestation (https://twitter.com/amirrajan/status/1172565179806224384) Eye Tracker (https://www.tobii.com/) 06:59 - Developer Productivity and Breaking Constraints Magic Leap (https://www.magicleap.com/) 16:58 - Idea Flow 21:00 - Building an Environment That Enables You File Watching Automating Leverage 28:18 - Optimizing Local Maxima Bret Victor: The Future of Programming (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pTEmbeENF4) Delta Time 41:01 - Questioning Fundamental Assumptions Continuity of Design™️ Gradual Stiffening 46:55 - Game Development Unity (https://unity.com/) 56:05 - Extremeness and Pushing Boundaries: Being a Weirdo/Being an Outlier/Thinking Differently Off Meta, Super Smash Brothers Melee Gods (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJrEhy4ya74) Meta and Off Meta DragonRuby Game Toolkit Sandbox (http://fiddle.dragonruby.org) Reflections: Jess: “A pin on my upkeeps.” Avdi: Meta and off meta. John: Continuity of design. Rein: Continuity and discreteness. Janelle: Process-oriented thinking. Amir: Being consistent with philosophies. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Amir Rajan.

01:34 - Brian’s Superpower: Communicating and Listening 02:36 - The Role of Empathy in Teaching/Communicating * Process Empathy * Empathetic Report 04:11 - Learning and Teaching Functional Programming * Lawful Composition Thinking Functionally with Haskell (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1107452643/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=therubyrep-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1107452643&linkId=b8c8bcf8f27165517d6b53a2b87fedd6) Compositional Thinking Category Theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_theory) 11:13 - Compositional Programming in JavaScript 16:02 - Problems That Can Be Solved by Learning Functional Programming Livable Code by Sarah Mei (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI77oMKr5EY) Scalable program architectures (http://www.haskellforall.com/2014/04/scalable-program-architectures.html) 25:03 - Category Theory Categories for the Working Mathematician (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0387984038/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=therubyrep-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=0387984038&linkId=0aa85e8a54efad0135dbd75f39abe43c) Reading Papers Finding Applications for Concepts 32:41 - Machine Learning and AI Generative AI L-Systems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-system) Do be do be do (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1611.09259.pdf) 53:54 - Discrete Representations of Continuous Phenomena 56:17 - Making Teaching Fun, Engaging, and Interesting Learning as a Conversation Reflections: Brian: Looking into L-systems further and thinking in terms of ranges. Rein: Dimensionality is imperative. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Brian Lonsdorf.

01:49 - Jesse’s Superpower: Empathy by Learning to be Empathetic * Taking a Step Back * Mental Triggers * Neurodiversity and Empathy 07:51 - Culture * What is culture? * Culture Fit * Creating/Building/Forcing Culture * Culture as a Descriptor * Affecting Culture * Culture as an Ongoing Process * Agile Methodologies for Culture * Culture Facilitators * Improving Heuristics * Meta Heuristics * Cultures Evolve Rapidly * Alienation * Survival Rules * Problematic Performance Reviews * Derision of Management * Manager Contribution Reflections: Jacob: Community: The Structure of Belonging by Peter Block (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1523095563/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=therubyrep-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1523095563&linkId=0b9c9b297df4c215fa20049e47bdde89): Community isn’t defined ahead of time. They define themselves. Rein: The more important aspect of any organization is the structure of the relationships between the people in that organization, including and especially, power relationships. Jesse: Personally taking effort in taking effort in finding third-party resources and sharing them with others. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Jesse James.

00:43 - Jacob’s Superpower: Being Obsessive Re: Specificity; Allergic to Ambiguity on Teams 02:09 - Talking About Neurodiversity in Workspaces * Self-diagnosis * “Masking” * Jacob’s Background and Intro to Software Development 13:49 - Driving Desire to Learn About Things 22:04 - Automating Boring Work * Personal Automation * Cognitive Outsourcing 34:41 - “Floober Feature” 36:07 - Passing On Strategies and Data Organization CodeStream (https://www.codestream.com/) 47:37 - Storycrafting and Succession Planning Reflections: Jessica: Consult a human when you don’t know, but often from the context of what directory you’re in and what branch you’re on the computer CAN figure it out. Chanté: Sociotechnical systems and thinking about personal automation. Jacob: What can I do to better organize to be a positive legacy? Arty: What are the ingredients to light your spark and your fire about software? This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks!

00:52 - Jennifer’s Superpower: Seeing Inefficiencies in Processes 02:56 - Coaching Clients to Reorganize Their Organizations Due to Growth Jean Hsu: Re-structuring a growing team (https://medium.com/better-programming/re-structuring-a-growing-team-3ac30d93b637) Communicating Change and Values Encouraging Thoughtfulness Asking Questions + Questions as a Form of Communication Say What You Mean: A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication by Oren Jay Sofer (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/161180583X/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=therubyrep-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=161180583X&linkId=404f89e44474ffefe366cb2dc0990ec8) Jennifer’s Podcast: Storytime with Managers (https://www.wecohere.com/podcast-storytime-with-managers/) 25:24 - Deleting Old Code; Being Emotional Over Code 30:34 - Avoiding Non-Consensual Teaching and Assumptions 40:50 - Learning Sucks Fixed Vs Growth Mindset (https://www.developgoodhabits.com/fixed-mindset-vs-growth-mindset/) Reflections: John: Questions and what they reveal about the question-asker. Jacob: Hiring for a growth mindset could be difficult. Jamey: The people who have the most control over the situation are also the people who are going to have the least anxiety. Jennifer: Learning to ask better questions isn’t something that you can do easily in a vacuum. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Jennifer Tu.

00:50 - Amber’s Superpower: Adaptability 01:48 - Self.conference (https://selfconference.org/) -- Coming again next year in early June! * Background/Origin * Evolution of Diversity * Transparency of Metrics (https://selfconference.org/metrics) * Partnering with Organizations * Focusing on the Detroit Area 10:29 - The Detroit Tech Community * tech[inclusive] (https://www.meetup.com/Tech-Inclusive/) * Detroit Speaker Group (https://www.meetup.com/Detroit-Speakers-in-Tech/) 12:50 - The Future of Self. * Self.learn * Self.work * Conf Conf 14:35 - title of conf (https://selfconference.us5.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=e629a43dedc6cbed53830761c&id=c4bf6bba5c) - An Upcoming Musical Conference! * Aisha Blake (https://twitter.com/aishablake) 15:48 - Navigating the Conference Organization World * Advice * Cost 19:41 - Attending the Conference * Sponsor Support 23:13 - Human Potential + Emerging Technology + The Future of Work + Radical Inclusion * The Darkest Horse (https://www.thedarkesthorse.com/the-darkest-horse-podcast) (Chanté’s Podcast) 26:56 - Conference Highlights * ahmed jalloh (https://twitter.com/AhmedJalloh614): Coding out the Clink * The Sense of Community This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Amber Conville.

01:17 - Brandy’s Superpower: Adaptability 02:22 - Codes of Ethics Facial Recognition Technology Fear Detection Software / Emotion Recognition AI "emotion recognition" can't be trusted. (https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/25/8929793/emotion-recognition-analysis-ai-machine-learning-facial-expression-review) Royal Oak police stop Black man for 'looking suspiciously' at white woman (https://www.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2019/08/14/royal-oak-police-stop-black-man-for-looking-suspiciously-at-white-woman?fbclid=IwAR37U926wxDEFSTCqkngkIyLVAThpCI0oX_OY5hnMoUHaW8wHXdpRwoB38g) The Fear Response to African Americans: A Summary of an fMRI Study on Amygdala Activation and Race (https://nccc.georgetown.edu/bias/docs/FINAL%20PHELPS%20ET%20AL.,%20STUDY%20SUMMARY%2011.1.12.pdf) 11:09 - The Role of Diversity and Inclusion in Solving These Problems Unintended Consequences The diversity and inclusion revolution: Eight powerful truths (https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/deloitte-review/issue-22/diversity-and-inclusion-at-work-eight-powerful-truths.html) The Truth About Diverse Teams (https://www.inc.com/greg-satell/science-says-diversity-can-make-your-team-more-productive-but-not-without-effort.html) 24:18 - Balancing Hierarchies and Equity in Organizations The Spoken Value System Vs The Lived Value System Doing Meaningful Work / Showing Appreciation Founder and Executive Support Ethical HR Owning Up To Mistakes Treating Trauma of the System 50:27 - Racism and Unlearning How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0525509283/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=therubyrep-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=0525509283&linkId=cf704b0b3583a5f32409b4a389abf769) Reflections: Jamey: If you know there’s spots on your team with missing demographics, seek out those people. John: The culture of a company comes from the top. Rein: Helping teams work better together. Brandy: Improving manager boards to ensure that there is accountability when moving people up in hierarchical organizations. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Brandy Foster.

01:53 - Jamison’s Superpower: Moving swiftly between layers. 03:59 - Being An Engineering Manager * Context Switching * lftm (https://github.com/CoralineAda/lftm) * Career Advancement as an Engineer * Title Inflation * Providing Team Members with Growth Opportunities * Psychological Safety (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_safety) * Challenging People with Goals * Comradery via Video Conferencing * Latent Learning 23:44 - Starting the Soft Skills Engineering (https://softskills.audio/) Podcast My Brother, My Brother and Me Podcast (https://www.maximumfun.org/shows/my-brother-my-brother-and-me) Engaging with People of All Backgrounds All Over The World The Emphasis of Soft Skills 35:42 - The Evolution of Tech Culture and Bootcamp Practices 39:54 - Conference Organization Balancing Technical and Interpersonal Talks Making Connections and Friendships Encouraging Speaker Choice Reflections: Jamison: Zone of Proximal Development (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_proximal_development). This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Jamison Dance.

01:20 - Keoni’s Background and Superpower: Building things quickly. 03:57 - Respect for Indiginous Cultures + Community + People 08:55 - Ownership of Data 14:52 - Learning Māori 18:59 - Indigenous Data Sovereignty Data as a Strategic Resource: Self-determination, Governance, and the Data Challenge for Indigenous Nations in the United States (https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/iipj/vol8/iss2/1/?referer=https%253A%252F%252Fwww.google.com%252F) Indigenous Data Sovereignty: Toward an agenda (Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR)) (Volume 38) (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1760460303/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=therubyrep-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1760460303&linkId=9cd9195683e4d4bc43a30e4b0c1bf156) 31:16 - History: The U.S. Occupation of The Kingdom of Hawaii 36:58 - Creating a License to Protect Data Sovereignty 41:45 - Sharing Data Responsibly 47:37 - Building and Having A Sense of Community 54:38 - Mauna Kea Protests (https://www.civilbeat.org/tag/mauna-kea/?gclid=CjwKCAjw1rnqBRAAEiwAr29II8k8G97yzuG50Sod4wuOAw_8xR0kpN8GmkurMpMFhGG8riW7_-vzkhoCLPgQAvD_BwE); Cultural Fit Reflections: Rein: If we want to organize successfully in our communities, shared culture and deep connection of people enables solidarity. Amy: Look back through history for examples of groups of people sharing skills and industry knowledge. Keoni: Go to and experience Mauna Kea if you have the chance. Also, connecting to community. What enables to do the right thing? What is the right thing? Do the right thing. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guests: Amy Newell and Keoni Mahelona.

00:48 - Will’s Superpower: 1) The ability to take something complicated and to find simple ways to think about it that work most of the time. 2) A rigorous love of structure. Thinking in Systems: A Primer (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1603580557/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=therubyrep-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1603580557&linkId=2f955f8b81a88700bdf8f1cd379e0c70) 02:30 - Systems Thinking/Theory Stella (https://www.iseesystems.com/store/products/stella-architect.aspx) 08:48 - How do you know when to stop modeling? 10:12 - How do you figure out what your team’s rate of change is? Organizational Changes Process Changes Changes to the Software Systems You’re Managing Virginia Satir’s Change Model (https://expertprogrammanagement.com/2018/10/satir-change-model/) 19:30 - Focusing Attention Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0061339202/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=therubyrep-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=0061339202&linkId=e9faa7b9d66edbae1e2c610f55ebde4c) 20:31 - Impacting Systems 24:47 - Patterns of Dysfunction The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter, Updated and Expanded (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1422188612/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=therubyrep-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1422188612&linkId=70478b6c58e8a4a81afa96d2fa80fe1e) 32:13 - Sharing Ideas and Contributing with Systems Thinking The Portal Podcast (https://podtail.com/en/podcast/the-portal/) 38:59 - Having Adaptive Capacity 44:30 - Taking Bets (Risks): Cheap vs Expensive 48:10 - Systems Having Properties and Behaviors and Building Useful Missing Tools Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307886239/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=therubyrep-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=0307886239&linkId=6e73e7f9b9bd877daeb787de395da471) Reflections: Jessica: The difference in reasoning about properties vs reasoning about behavior. Will: It’s easy to look at yourself sometimes as the lone practitioner trying to pull the industry forward. But, it’s exciting to have conversations like these to know there are other people out there trying to do the same thing. Arty: Systems thinking as a way to think about how to optimize the quality of decisions. Rein: A problem is a reduction of the system. One of the most important skills for a systems thinker and a problem solver is the ability for form a problem with a complete understanding of the complete mess that we’re choosing to not think about right now. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Will Larson.

02:01 - Kat’s Superpower: Terrible Puns! * Puns & ADHD; Divergent Thinking (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divergent_thinking) * Punching Down (https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=punching%20down) * Idioms (https://www.ef.edu/english-resources/english-idioms/) 08:07 - Security Awareness Education & Accessibility * Phishing * Unconscious Bias Training That Works (https://hbr.org/2021/09/unconscious-bias-training-that-works) * Psychological Safety * 239: Accessibility and Sexuality with Eli Holderness (https://www.greaterthancode.com/accessibility-and-sexuality) * Management Theory of Frederick Taylor (https://www.business.com/articles/management-theory-of-frederick-taylor/) * Building a Security Culture For Oh Sh*t Moments | Human Layer Security Summit (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=21&v=d2girBtrbCQ&feature=emb_logo) * Decision Fatigue 20:58 - Making the Safe Thing Easy * (in)Secure Development - Why some product teams are great and others aren’t… (https://tldrsec.com/blog/insecure-development-why-some-product-teams-are-great-and-others-arent/) * The Swiss Cheese Model of Error Prevention (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1298298/) 22:43 - Awareness; Security Motivation; Behavior and Culture (ABC) * AIDA: Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDA_(marketing)) * Inbound Marketing (https://www.hubspot.com/inbound-marketing) 33:34 - Dietary Accessibility; Harm Reduction and Threat Monitoring * Celiac Disease (https://celiac.org/about-celiac-disease/what-is-celiac-disease/) * A Beginner’s Guide to a Low FODMAP Diet (https://www.benefiber.com/fiber-in-your-life/fiber-and-wellness/beginners-guide-to-low-fodmap-diet/?gclsrc=aw.ds&gclid=Cj0KCQiAnuGNBhCPARIsACbnLzqJkfl2XxxUQVSAGU96cmdVl5S7gn6GXnOQAHf-Sn0zEHvBBKINObUaAlOvEALw_wcB) * Casin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casein) * DisInfoSec 2021: Kat Sweet - Dietary Accessibility in Tech Workplaces (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG1DApAlcK4&feature=youtu.be) Reflections: John: Internal teams relating to other internal teams as a marketing issue. Casey: Phishing emails cause harm. Kat: AIDA: Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDA_(marketing)) Unconscious Bias Training That Works (https://hbr.org/2021/09/unconscious-bias-training-that-works) The Responsible Communication Style Guide (https://rcstyleguide.com/) This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Transcript: PRE-ROLL: Software is broken, but it can be fixed. Test Double’s superpower is improving how the world builds software by building both great software and great teams. And you can help! Test Double is hiring empathetic senior software engineers and DevOps engineers. We work in Ruby, JavaScript, Elixir and a lot more. Test Double trusts developers with autonomy and flexibility at a remote, 100% employee-owned software consulting agency. Looking for more challenges? Enjoy lots of variety while working with the best teams in tech as a developer consultant at Test Double. Find out more and check out remote openings at link.testdouble.com/greater. That’s link.testdouble.com/greater. JOHN: Welcome to Episode 263 of Greater Than Code. I'm John Sawers and I'm here with Casey Watts. CASEY: Hi, I'm Casey! And we're both here with our guest today, Kat Sweet. Hi, Kat. KAT: Hi, John! Hi, Casey! CASEY: Well, Kat Sweet is a security professional who specializes in security education and engagement. She currently works at HubSpot building out their employee security awareness program, and is also active in their disability ERG, Employee Resource Group. Since 2017, she has served on the staff of the security conference BSides Las Vegas, co-leading their lockpick village. Her other superpower is terrible puns, or, if they're printed on paper—she gave me this one—tearable puns. [laughter] KAT: Like written paper. CASEY: Anyway. Welcome, Kat. So glad to have you. KAT: Thanks! I'm happy to be here. CASEY: Let's kick it off with our question. What is your superpower and how did you acquire it? KAT: [chuckles] Well, as I was saying to both of y’all before this show started, I was thinking I'm going to do a really serious skillful superpower that makes me sound smart because that's what a lot of other people did in theirs. I don't know, something like I'm a connector, or I am good at crosspollination. Then I realized no, [chuckles] like it, or not, terrible puns are my actual superpower. [laughter] Might as well just embrace it. I think as far as where I acquired it, probably a mix of forces. Having a dad who was the king of dad puns certainly helped and actually, my dad's whole extended family is really into terrible puns as well. We have biweekly Zoom calls and they just turn into everyone telling bad jokes sometimes. [laughter] But I think it also probably helps that, I don't know, having ADHD, my brain hops around a lot and so, sometimes makes connections in weird places. Sometimes that happens with language and there were probably also some amount of influences just growing up, I don't know, listening to Weird Al, gets puns in his parodies. Oh, and Carlos from The Magic School Bus. CASEY: Mm hmm. Role models. I agree. Me too. [laughter] KAT: Indeed. So now I'm a pundit. CASEY: I got a pun counter going in my head. It just went ding! KAT: Ding! [laughter] CASEY: I never got – [overtalk] KAT: They've only gotten worse during the pandemic. CASEY: Oh! Ding! [laughter] Maybe we'll keep it up. We'll see. I never thought of the overlap of puns and ADHD. I wonder if there's any study showing if it does correlate. It sounds right. It sounds right to me. KAT: Yeah, that sounds like a thing. I have absolutely no idea, but I don't know, something to do with divergent thinking. CASEY: Yeah. JOHN: Yeah. I’m on board with that. CASEY: Sometimes I hang out in the channels on Slack that are like #puns, or #dadjokes. Are you in any of those? What's the first one that comes to mind for you, your pun community online? KAT: Oh yeah. So actually at work, I joined my current role in August and during the first week, aside from my regular team channels, I had three orders of business. I found the queer ERG Slack channel, I found the disability ERG Slack channel, and I found the dad jokes channel. [laughter] That was a couple of jobs ago when I worked at Duo Security. I've been told that some of them who are still there are still talking about my puns because we would get [laughs] pretty bad pun threads going in the Slack channels there. CASEY: What a good reputation. KAT: Good, bad, whatever. [laughs] CASEY: Yeah. KAT: I don't know. Decent as a form of humor that's safe for work goes, too because it's generally hard to, I guess, punch down with them other than the fact that everyone's getting punched with a really bad pun, but they're generally an equalizing force. [chuckles] CASEY: Yeah. I love that concept. Can you explain to our listeners, punching down? KAT: So this is now the Great British Bake Off and we're talking about bread. No, just kidding. [laughter] No, I think in humor a lot of times, sometimes people talk about punching up versus punching down in terms of who is actually in on the joke. When you're trying to be funny, are you poking fun at people who are more marginalized than you, or are you poking at the people with a ton of privilege? And I know it's not always an even concept because obviously, intersectionality is a thing and it's not just a – privilege isn't a linear thing. But generally, what comes to mind a lot is, I don't know, white comedians making fun of how Black people talk, or men comedians making rape jokes at women's expense, or something like that. Like who's actually being punched? [chuckles] CASEY: Yeah. KAT: Obviously, ideally, you don't want to punch anyone, but that whole concept of where's the humor directed and is it contributing to marginalization? CASEY: Right, right. And I guess puns aren't really punching at all. KAT: Yeah. CASEY: Ding! KAT: Ding! There goes the pun counter. Yeah, the only thing I have to mindful of, too is not over relying on them in my – my current role is in a very global company so even though all employees speak English to some extent, English isn't everyone's first language and there are going to be some things that fly over people's heads. So I don't want to use that exclusively as a way to connect with people. CASEY: Right, right. JOHN: Yeah. It is so specific to culture even, right. Because I would imagine even UK English would have a whole gray area where the puns may not land and vice versa. KAT: Oh, totally. Just humor in general is so different in every single culture. Yeah, it's really interesting. JOHN: Yeah, that reminds me. Actually, just today, I started becoming weirdly aware as I was typing something to one of my Indian colleagues and I'm not sure what triggered it, but I started being aware of all the idioms that I was using and what I was typing. I was like, “Well, this is what I would normally say to an American,” and I'm just like, “Wait, is this all going to come through?” I think that way might lead to madness, though if you start trying to analyze every idiom you use as you're speaking. But it was something that just suddenly popped into my mind that I'm going to try and keep being a little bit more aware of because there's so many ways to miss with communication when you rely on obscure idioms, or certain ways of saying things that aren't nearly as clear as they could be. [chuckles] KAT: Yeah, absolutely. I'm sure that's definitely a thing in all the corporate speak about doubling down, circling back, parking lots, and just all the clicking, all of those things. [laughter] But yeah, that's actually something that was on my run recently, too with revamping one of the general security awareness courses that everyone gets is that in the way we talk about how to look for a phishing – spot a phishing email. First of all, one of the things that at least they didn't do was say, “Oh, look for poor grammar, or misspelled words,” because that's automatically really exclusive to people whose first language isn’t English, or people who have dyslexia. But I was also thinking we talk about things like subtle language cues in suspicious emails around a sense of urgency, like a request being made trying to prey on your emotion and I'm like, “How accessible is that, I guess, for people whose first language is English to try and spot a phishing email based on those kind of things?” Like how much – [chuckles] how much is too much to ask of…? Like opinions about phishing emails, or the phishing training anyway being too much to ask of people to some degree, but I don't know. There's so much subtlety in it that just is really easy for people to lose. JOHN: Yeah. I mean, I would imagine that even American English speakers – [overtalk] KAT: Yeah. JOHN: With a lot of experience still have trouble. Like actually, [chuckles] I just got apparently caught by one of them, the test phishing emails, but they notified me by sending me an email and saying, “You were phished, click here to go to the training.” And I'm like, “I'm not going to click on that!” [laughter] I just got phished! KAT: Yeah. JOHN: But I think my larger point is again, you're talking about so many subtleties of language and interpretations to try and tease these things out. I'm sure there are a lot of people with a range of non-typical neurologies where that sort of thing isn't going to be obvious, even if they are native English speakers. KAT: Exactly. Myself included having ADHD. [laughs] JOHN: Yeah. KAT: Yeah. It's been interesting trying to think through building out security awareness stuff in my current role and in past roles, and having ADHD and just thinking about how ADHD unfriendly a lot of the [laughs] traditional approaches are to all this. Even like you were just saying, “You got phished, take this training.” It seems like the wrong sequence of events because if you're trying to teach someone a concept, you need to not really delay the amount of time in between presenting somebody with a piece of information and giving them a chance to commit it to memory. ADHD-ers have less working memory than neurotypical people to begin with, but that concept goes for everyone. So when you're giving someone training that they might not actually use in practice for several more months until they potentially get phished again, then it becomes just information overload. So that's something that I think about. Another way that I see this playing out in phishing training in particular, but other security awareness stuff is motivation and reward because we have a less amount of intrinsic motivation. Something like, I don't know, motivation and reward system just works differently with people who have trouble hanging onto dopamine. ADHD-ers and other people's various executive dysfunction stuff. So when you're sitting through security training that's not engaging, that's not particular lead novel, or challenging, or of personal interest, or is going to have a very delayed sense of reward rather than something that immediately gratifying, there's going to be a limitation to how much people will actually learn, be engaged, and can actually be detrimental. So I definitely think about stuff like that. CASEY: That reminds me of a paper I read recently about—I said this on a previous episode, too. I guess, maybe I should find the paper, dig it up, and share. KAT: Cool. [laughter] CASEY: Oh, but it said, “Implicit bias awareness training doesn't work at all ever” was an original paper. No, that's not what it said of course, but that's how people read it and then a follow-up said, “No, boring! PowerPoint slide presentations that aren't interactive aren’t interactive.” [laughter] “But the interactive ones are.” Surprise! KAT: Right. That's the thing. That's the thing. Yeah, and I think there's also just, I don't know. I remember when I was first getting into security, people were in offices more and security awareness posters were a big thing. Who is going to remember that? Who's going to need to know that they need to email security at when they're in the bathroom? [laughs] Stuff like that that's not particularly engaging nor particularly useful in the moment. But that DEI paper is an interesting one, too. I'll have to read that. CASEY: Do you have experience making some of these trainings more interactive and getting the quicker reward that's not delayed and what does that look like for something like phishing, or another example? KAT: It's a mixed bag and it's something that I'm still kind of – there's something that I'm figuring out just as we're scaling up because in past roles, mostly been in smaller companies. But one thing that I think people, who are building security awareness and security education content for employees, miss is the fact that there's a certain amount of baseline level of interaction and context that you can't really automate a way, especially for new hires. I know having just gone through process that onboarding weeks are always kind of information overload. But people are going to at least remember more, or be more engaged if they're getting some kind of actual human contact with somebody who they're going to be working with; they’ve got the face, they've got some context for who their security team is, what they do, and they won't just be clicking through a training that's got canned information that is no context to where they're working and really no narrative and nowhere for them to ask questions. Because I always get really interesting questions every time I give some kind of live security education stuff; people are curious. I think it's important that security education and engagement is really an enhancer to a security program. It can't be carrying all the weight of relationships between the security team and the rest of the company. You're going to get dividends by having ongoing positive relationships with your colleagues that aren't just contact the security team once a year during training. CASEY: And even John's email, like the sample test email, which I think is better than not doing it for sure. But that's like a ha ha got you. That's not really [chuckles] relationship building. Barely. You’ve got to already have the relationship for it to – [overtalk] KAT: No, it's not and that's – yeah. And that's why I think phishing campaigns are so tricky. I think they're required by some compliance frameworks and by cyber insurance frameworks. So some places just have to have them. You can't just say we're not going to run internal phishing campaigns, unfortunately, regardless of whether that's actually the right thing for businesses. But I think the angle should always be familiarizing people with how to report email like that to the security team and reinforcing psychological safety. Not making people feel judged, not making people feel bad, and also not making them sit through training if they get caught because that's not psychological safety either and it really doesn't pay attention to results. It’s very interesting, I remember I listened to your episode with Eli Holderness and at some point, one of the hosts mentioned something about human factors and safety science on the evolving nature of how people management happens in the workplace. How there was this old model of humans being a problem to be managed, supervised, and well, just controlled and how the new view of organizational psychology and people management is more humans are your source of success so you need to enable their growth and build them up. I think a lot of security education approaches are kind of still stuck in that old model, almost. I've seen progress, but I think a lot of them have a lot of work to do in still being, even if they're not necessarily as antagonistic, or punitive, they still feel sometimes paternalistic. Humans are like, “If I hear the phrase, ‘Humans are the weakest link one more time,’ I'm going to table flip.” First of all, humans are all the links, but also – [overtalk] JOHN: Yeah. KAT: It's saying like, we need to save humans, which are somehow the security team is not humans. We need to save humans from themselves because they're too incompetent to know what to do. So we need, yeah – which is a terrible attitude. CASEY: Yeah. KAT: And I think it misses the point that first of all, not everyone is going to become a security expert, or hypervigilant all the time and that's okay. But what we can do is focus on the good relationships, focus on making the training we have and need to do somewhat interactive and personal and contextual, and let go of the things you can't control. [chuckles] JOHN: Yeah, I think Taylorism is the name for that management style. I think it came around in the 40s and – [overtalk] KAT: Really? JOHN: Yeah, ruined a lot of lives. [laughs] Yeah, and I think your point about actually accepting the individual humanity of the people you're trying to influence and work with rather than as some sort of big amorphous group of fuckups, [laughs] for lack of a better word. Giving them some credit, giving them, like you said, something that's not punitive, somewhere where they don't get punished for their security lapses, or forgetting a thing, or clicking the link is going to be a lot more rewarding than, like you said, just making someone sit through training. Like for me, the training I want from whatever it was I clicked on is show me the email I clicked on, I will figure out how it tricked me and then I will learn. I don't need a whole – [overtalk] KAT: Yes. JOHN: 3 hours of video courses, or whatever. I will see the video, [chuckles] I will see the email, and that is a much more organic thing than here's the training for you. KAT: Exactly. Yeah, you have to again, give some people a way to actually commit it to memory. Get it out of RAM and into SSD. JOHN: Yeah. [laughter] KAT: But yeah, I love that and fortunately, I think some other places are starting to do interesting, innovative approaches. My former colleague, Kim Burton, who was the Security Education Lead at Duo when I was there and just moved to Texas, gave a webinar recently on doing the annuals security training as a choose your own adventure so that it could be replicated among a wide group of people, but that people could take various security education stuff that was specific to their own role and to their own threat model. I really liked that. I like being able to give people some amount of personalization and get them actually thinking about what they're specifically interacting with. JOHN: Yeah, yeah. That's great and it also makes me think about there are undoubtedly things I'm pretty well informed in security and other things that I'm completely ignorant about. I'd rather not sit through a training that covers both of those things. Like if there's a way for me to choose my own adventure through it so that I go to the parts where I'm actually learning useful things. Again, a, it saves everybody time and b, it means I'm not fast forwarding through the video, hoping it'll just end, and then possibly missing things that are actually useful to me. CASEY: I'm thinking of a concrete example, I always remember and think of and that's links and emails. I always hover and look at the URL except when I'm on my phone and you can't do that. Oh, I don't know. It has never come up in a training I've seen. KAT: Yeah, you can click and hold, but it's harder and I think that speaks to the fact that security teams should lead into putting protections around email security more so than relying entirely on their user base to hover every single link, or click and hold on their phone, or just do nothing when it comes to reporting suspicious emails. There's a lot of decision fatigue that, I think security teams still put on people whose job is not security and I hope that that continues to shift over time. JOHN: Yeah. I mean, you're bringing up the talking about management and safety theory that probably came from Rein Henrichs, who is one of our other hosts. But one of the things he also has talked about on, I think probably multiple shows is about setting the environment for the people that makes the safe thing easy. KAT: Right. JOHN: So that all the defaults roll downhill into safety and security rather than well, here's a level playing field you have to navigate yourself through and there's some potholes and da, da, da, and you have to be aware of them and constantly on alert and all those things. Whereas, if you tilt the field a little bit, you make sure everything runs in the right direction, then the right thing becomes the easy thing and then you win. KAT: Exactly, exactly. I think it's important to put that not only in the technical defaults – [overtalk] JOHN: Yeah, yeah. KAT: But also process defaults to some degree. One of my colleagues just showed me a talk that was, I think from perhaps at AppSec Cali. I'll have to dig it up. But there was somebody talking about making I guess, threat modeling and anti-abuse mindsets more of a default in product development teams and how they added one single line to their sprint planning—how could this feature potentially be misused by a user—and that alone just got people thinking just that little process change. JOHN: Yeah. That's beautiful. But such a small thing, but constantly repeated at a low level. It's not yelling at anyone to… KAT: Yeah. JOHN: Yeah. KAT: Yeah. And even if the developers and product designers themselves weren't security experts, or anti-abuse experts, it would just get them thinking, “Oh hey, we should reach out to the trust and safety team.” CASEY: Yeah. I'm thinking about so many steps and so many of these steps could be hard. The next one here is the security team responsive and that has a lot to do with are they well-staffed and is this a priority for them? Oh my goodness. KAT: Yeah. [laughs] So many things. CASEY: It's layers. But I'm sure you've heard of this, Kat. The Swiss cheese model of error prevention? KAT: Yeah. Defense in depth. CASEY: Yeah. [chuckles] I like to bring it up on the podcast, too because a lot of engineers and a lot of non-security people don't know about it. KAT: Hmm. CASEY: Do you want to explain it? I don't mind. I can. KAT: Oh, yeah. Basically that there are going to be holes in every step of the process, or the tech and so, that's why it's important to have this layered approach. Because over time, even if something gets through the first set of holes, it may not get through a second set where the holes are in different spots. So you end up with a giant stack of Swiss cheese, which is delicious, and you come out with something that's hopefully pretty same. [laughter] CASEY: Yeah, and it's the layers that are – the mind-blowing thing here is that there can be more than one layer. We don't just need one layer of Swiss cheese on this sandwich, which is everybody pay attention and don't ever get phished, or it's your fault. You can have so many layers than that. It can be like a grilled cheese, really, really thick, grilled cheese. [laughter] KAT: Yes. A grilled cheese where the bread is also cheese. CASEY: Yes! [laughs] MID-ROLL: This episode is supported by Compiler, an original podcast from Red Hat discussing tech topics big, small, and strange. Compiler unravels industry topics, trends, and the things you’ve always wanted to know about tech, through interviews with the people who know it best. On their show, you will hear a chorus of perspectives from the diverse communities behind the code. Compiler brings together a curious team of Red Hatters to tackle big questions in tech like, what is technical debt? What are tech hiring managers actually looking for? And do you have to know how to code to get started in open source? I checked out the “Should Managers Code?” episode of Compiler, and I thought it was interesting how the hosts spoke with Red Hatters who are vocal about what role, if any, that managers should have in code bases—and why they often fight to keep their hands on keys for as long as they can. Listen to Compiler on Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you listen to podcasts. We’ll also include a link in the show notes. Our thanks to Compiler for their support. CASEY: Earlier, you mentioned awareness, Kat as something interesting. You want to talk about awareness more as a term and how it relates to this? KAT: Oh, yeah. So I – and technically, my job title has security awareness in it, but the more I've worked in the security space doing employee security education stuff as part of all my job. I know language isn't perfect, but I'm kind of the mindset that awareness isn't a good capture of what a role like mine actually should be doing because awareness without behavior change, or action is just noise. It's just we're all very aware of things, but if we don't have an environment that's friendly to us putting that awareness into some kind of action, or engagement, or response, we are just aware and scared. [laughs] CASEY: Yeah, awareness alone just makes us feel bad. We need more than that. KAT: Yeah. So I think security awareness is sometimes just a product of a term that got standardized over several years as it's in all of the compliance control frameworks, security awareness is a part of it. I don't know it's the best practice thing. I hope over time it will continue to evolve. CASEY: Yeah. KAT: As with any other kind of domains. JOHN: Yeah. I think that maybe security motivation might be a better term for it. KAT: I've seen a bunch of different ones used. So I end up speaking in terms of, I don't know, security education and engagement is what I'm working on. Security culture is my vision. I've seen things like security awareness, behavior, and culture, ABC, things like that. But all this to say security awareness not being in a vacuum. CASEY: I like those. This reminds me of a framework I've been thinking about a lot and I use in some of my DEI workshops. AIDA is an acronym. A-I-D-A. The first one's Awareness, the last one is Action, and in the middle is Interest and Desire. KAT: Nice. CASEY: So the questions I use to frame is like, are they aware of, for example, if they're misgendering someone? That's the context I'm using this in a lot. Are they aware of this person's pronouns in the first place? Are they interested in caring about this person and do they want to do anything about it and did they do it? Did they use their proper pronouns? Did they correct their actions? It's like 4 stages – [overtalk] KAT: I like that. CASEY: AIDA. It's used in marketing a lot for like a sales funnel, but I apply it to all sorts of how do you get someone from aware to action? KAT: I like that a lot. It's been interesting working at a place that makes a product that's more in the sales and marketing space. Definitely learned a lot because a couple of previous roles I've had been with security vendors. I think one of the interesting ideas that was a new concept to me when I started was this idea of inbound marketing, where instead of just cold contacting people and telling them, “Be interested in us, be interested in us, buy our stuff,” you generate this reputation as being of good service by putting out useful free nuggets of content, like blog posts, webinars, and things. Then you get people who are interested based on them knowing that you've got this, that you offer a good perspective, and then they all their friend. They are satisfied customers, and they go promote it to people. I think about this as it applies to security teams and the services they provide, because even though corporate security teams are internal, they've still got internal customers. They've still got services that they provide for people. So by making sure that the security team is visible, accessible, and that the good services that they provide are known and you've got satisfied customers, they become promoters to the rest of their teams. Think about like security can definitely learn a lot from [chuckles] these sales and marketing models. CASEY: I can totally imagine the security team being the fun team, the one you want to go work with and do workshops with because they make it so engaging and you want to. You can afford to spend your time on this thing. [laughter] KAT: Oh yes. CASEY: You might do it. [laughter] JOHN: Yeah, and I think marketing's a great model for that. Marketing sort of has a bad reputation, I think amongst a lot of people because it's done badly and evilly by a lot of people. But it's certainly possible and I think inbound market is one of those ways that you're engaging, you're spreading awareness, you're letting people select themselves into your service, and bring their interest to you. If you can develop that kind of rapport with the employees at your company as a security team, everybody wins. KAT: Yeah, absolutely, and it can absolutely be done. When I was working at Duo a couple jobs ago, I was on their security operations team and we were responsible, among other things, for both, the employee security education and being the point of intake; being the people that our colleagues would reach out to with security concerns to security and it definitely could see those relationships pay off by being visible and being of good service. CASEY: So now I'm getting my product manager hat on, like team management. KAT: Yeah. CASEY: I will want to choose the right metrics for a security team that incentivizes letting this marketing kind of approach happen and being the fun team people want to reach out to have the bigger impact and probably the highest metric is like nobody gets a security breach. But that can't be the only one because maybe you'll have a lucky year and maybe you'll have an unlucky that's not the best one. What other metrics are you thinking of? KAT: That's the thing, there's a lot more that goes into not getting pwned than how aware of security people are. There's just way too many factors to that. But – [overtalk] CASEY: Yeah. I guess, I'm especially interested in the human ones, like how come – [overtalk] KAT: Oh, yeah. And I mean like – [overtalk] CASEY: The department allowed to do the things that would be effective, like incentivized and measured in a sense. KAT: Yeah, and I think a lot of security education metrics often have a bit of a longer tail, but I think about not – I don't really care so much about the click rates for internal phishing campaigns, because again, anyone can fall for a phish if it's crafted correctly enough. If it's subtle enough, or if just somebody's distracted, or having a bad day, which we never have. It's not like there's a pandemic, or anything. But for things that are sort of numbers wise, I think about how much are people engaging with security teams not just in terms of reporting suspicious emails, but how often are they reporting ones that aren't a phishing simulation? How much are they working with security teams when they're building new features and what's the impact of that baseline level before there's, I don't know, formal process for security reviews, code reviews, threat modeling stuff in place? What does that story look like over time for the product and for product security? So I think there's quite a bit of narrative data involved in security education metrics. JOHN: Yeah. I mean you could look at inbound interests, like how often are you consulted out of the blue by another team, or even of the materials you've produced, what's the engagement rates on that? I think that's a lower quality one, but I think inbound interest would be fantastic. CASEY: Yeah. KAT: Yeah, exactly. I was thinking to some degree about well, what kinds of vulnerabilities are you shipping in your code? Because I think there's never 100% secure code. But I think if you catch some of the low-hanging fruits earlier on, then sometimes you get an interesting picture of like, okay, security is being infused into the SDLC at all of these various Swiss cheese checkpoints. So think about that to some degree and that's often more of a process thing than a purely an education thing, but getting an education is an enhancer to all of these other parts of the security programs. JOHN: So in the topics for the show that you had suggested to us, one of the things that stood out to me was something you called dietary accessibility. So can you tell me a little bit more about what that means? KAT: So earlier in this year, in the middle of all of this pandemic ridiculousness, I got diagnosed with celiac disease. Fortunately, I guess, if there was a time to be diagnosed with that, it’s I'm working remotely and nobody's going out to eat really. Oh, I should back up. I think a lot of people know what it is, but just in case, it's an autoimmune disorder where my body attacks itself when I eat gluten. I've described it in the past as my body thinks that gluten is a nation state adversary named fancy beer. [laughter] Ding, one more for the pun counter. I don't know how many we're up to now. [laughs] CASEY: I have a random story about a diet I had to do for a while for my health. I have irritable bowel syndrome in my family and that means we have to follow over really strict diet called the low FODMAP diet. If your tummy hurts a lot, it's something you might look into because it's underdiagnosed. That meant I couldn't have wheat, but not because I had celiac disease; I was not allergic to the protein in wheat flour. I was intolerant to the starch and wheat flour. So it would bother me a lot. People said, “Do you have celiac, or?” And I was like, “No, but I cannot have wheat because the doctor told me so, but no, it's not an allergy.” I don’t know, my logical brain did not like that question. [laughter] That was an invalid question. No, it's not a preference. I prefer to eat bread, but I cannot, or it hurts my body according to my doctor. KAT: [chuckles] So you can't have the starch and I can't have the protein. So together, we can just – [overtalk] CASEY: Separate it! KAT: Split all of the wheat molecules in the world and eat that. [laughs] CASEY: That's fair. I literally made gluten-free bread with gluten. [laughs] I got all the gluten-free starches and then the gluten from the wheat and I didn't have the starch in the wheat and it did not upset my stomach. KAT: Oh man. JOHN: Yeah. I've got a dairy sensitivity, but it's not lactose. It's casein so it's the protein in the dairy. CASEY: Protein, uh huh. KAT: Oh, interesting. CASEY: I apologize on behalf of all the Casey. [laughter] Casey in. KAT: Who let Casey in? CASEY: Ding! KAT: Ding! No, but it’s made me think a lot about as I was – first of all, it's just I didn't fully appreciate until I was going through it firsthand, the amount of cognitive overload that just goes into living with it every day. [laughs] Speaking of constant state of hypervigilance, it took a while for that to make it through – I don't know, me to operationalize to my new life that's going to be my reality for the [laughs] rest of my life now because it was just like, “Oh, can I eat this? Can I eat that?” All of that. Something that at least helped ease me out of this initial overwhelm and grieving period was tying some of the stuff that I was dealing with back to how would I do this in my – how would I approach this if this were a security education and security awareness kind of thing? CASEY: Oh, yeah. KAT: Because it's a new concept and it's a thing that is unfamiliar and not everyone is an expert in it. so I’m like, “How would I treat myself as the person who's not an expert in it yet?” I, again, tried to get myself back to some of those same concepts of okay, let's not get stuck in thud mode, let's think about what are some of the actual facts versus what’s scaremongering. I don't need to know how much my risk of colon cancer is increased, because that's not how helpful for me to actually be able to go about my day. I need to know what are the gluten-free brands of chips? That's critical infrastructure. CASEY: I love this parallel. This is so cool. KAT: And so I thought about to – I've mentioned earlier, decision fatigue as a security issue. I thought about how can I reduce the decision fatigue and not get stuck just reading all the labels on foods and stuff? What are the shortcuts I can take? Some of those were like okay, let me learn to recognize the labels of what the labels mean of a certified gluten-free logo and also just eat a lot of things that would never have touch gluten to begin with, like plain and raw meat, plain potatoes, plain vegetables, things like that. So just anything to take the cognitive load down a little bit, because it was never going to be zero. It's interesting. Sometimes, I don't know, I have tons of different interests and I've always interested in people's perspective outside of security. A lot of that stuff influences the way I think about security, but sometimes the way I think about security also ends up influencing other stuff in my life, so. CASEY: Yeah. I think that's brilliant. Use – [overtalk] KAT: And interesting to connect with those. CASEY: The patterns and you're comfortable with, and apply them. KAT: Exactly. CASEY: A lot of really cool ideas come from technology. KAT: Yeah, and go for harm reduction, not nothing because we don't live in a gluten-free world. It’s like I can try to make myself as safe as possible, but at some point, my gut may suffer a data breach and [laughs] when I do, should be blameless and just work on getting myself recovered and trying – [overtalk] JOHN: Yeah. I mean, thinking about it as a threat model. There's this gluten out there and some of it's obvious, some of it's not obvious. What am I putting in place so that I get that 95th percentile, or whatever it is that you can think of it that way? I like that. KAT: Exactly. It's an interesting tie to threat modeling how the same people – even if people have the same thing that they can't eat, they may still have a different threat model. They may, like how we both had to avoid wheat, but for different reasons and with different side effects, if we eat it and things like that. CASEY: I love these parallels. I imagine you went into some of these in that talk at DisInfoSec. Is that right? KAT: Yeah. A little bit. So DisInfoSec, it's a virtual conference in its second year of existence, specifically highlighting disabled speakers in the InfoSec community run by Kim Crawley, who's a blogger for Hack the Box. There was a really interesting lineup of talks this year. Some people, I think about half of them touched on neurodiversity and various aspects of security through lenses of being autistic and ADHD, which is really cool. For mine, I focused on those of us who have disability-related dietary restrictions and how that affects our life in the tech workplace, where compared to a lot of other places I've worked, there's a lot of free food on the company dime hanging around and there's a lot of use of food as a way to build connection and build community. CASEY: Yeah, and a lot of stuff, a lot of people can't eat. I'm with you, uh huh. KAT: Yeah. I just took stock of all of the times that I would take people up for lunch interviews, go out to dinner with colleagues when they're in town, all of these things. Like snacks in the office. Just there not being a bathroom on the same floor as me for multiple jobs where I worked. [laughs] Things like that. So I really wanted to – the thing that I wanted to highlight in that talk in general was systemic level accommodations to be made for people with be they celiac IBS, food allergies, diabetes rather than relying on people individually requesting accommodations. This universal design model where you've got to make sure that your workplace is by default set up to accommodate people with a wide range of disabilities including dietary needs and a lot of times it doesn't come down to even feeding them. It comes down to making sure their health insurance is good, making sure people can work remotely, making sure that – [overtalk] CASEY: Higher levels of Swiss cheese on that. They are various levels. KAT: Yeah, the levels of Swiss cheese. A lot of stuff cascades from lunch interviews, making sure that if you do them at all, that you're really flexible about them. JOHN: Yeah. I can definitely relate to the being able to work from home, which I've done for the last decade, or more, has been huge for being able to have a solid control of my diet. Because it's really easy to have all the right things around for lunch rather than oh, I've only got half an hour, I can run out to the sub shop and I'll just deal with the consequences. Because that's what's nearby versus, or trying to bring food into the office and keep it in the fridge, or the free – that's a whole mess. So just like you said, good health insurance, working from home, these are things that allow for all sorts of different disabilities to be taken care of so well that you don't – that's the base, that's table stakes to formatting kind of inclusion. KAT: Exactly, exactly. CASEY: Yeah. KAT: Exactly. Yeah, and I think what sometimes gets missed is that even there are other things that I need to – the ability to just sometimes lay down, the ability to be close to a bathroom, and things that are not food related, but definitely are my reality. [laughs] CASEY: And companies went out, too. By accommodating you, they get all of your expertise and skills and puns. In exchange for flexibility, they get puns. KAT: [laughs] And I still make puns about gluten, wheat, rye, and barley even though I can I eat them anymore. That will never go away. CASEY: They just keep rising. KAT: Wheat for it. Wait for it. [laughter] CASEY: Ding! KAT: That's just my wry sense of humor. CASEY: All right. We're getting near end of time for today. This point, let's talk about reflections and plugs. JOHN: I can go first. I think the thing that's definitely sticking with me is thinking about the internal teams relating to other internal teams at a company as a marketing issue. Security is obviously one where you need to have that relationship with pretty much every team. But I'm thinking all sorts of all the way around development, DevOps, tech QA. Everyone can think this way and probably gain something from it as a what are we presenting to the rest of the company, what is our interface, and how do we bring more things to it such that people like working with our interface a lot so that we have great relationships with the rest of the team? I think I’m going to keep thinking about that for a while. CASEY: I'll share a reflection. I liked noticing that those phish emails can cause harm to people—they can feel bad and then make them less receptive. I've always been a fan of them overall. But thinking about that impact, I might have even been the one to say that, but it was still surprising to me when that came out of my mouth. Say, oh yeah, it hurts people in a way, too. We don't have to have that painful experience to teach people. It can be done in a safer environment. I wonder what else we can do for training of things like that to make it more positive and less negative. I'm going to be thinking on that. KAT: Yeah. And I wrote down AIDA. Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action. Did I get that right? CASEY: Yeah. KAT: I'm definitely going to look into that. I think that's a great model for education of all kinds. CASEY: Yeah. If you want to go even deeper, there's like 6 and 7 tier models on the Wikipedia page links to a bunch of them. That's just the most common. KAT: Awesome. CASEY: For plugs, I just want to plug some homework for you all. Everyone listening, there's this Unconscious Bias Training That Works article that I've mentioned twice now. I hope you get to read that. And I guess, the AIDA – It'll be in the show notes for sure. And then the Wikipedia page for AIDA marketing just so you have a spot to look it up, if you forget about it. Try to apply that to situations, that's your homework. KAT: I think something I plugged on Twitter quite a bit over the years and a lot when we were talking about the language that we use earlier, I'm a huge fan of the Responsible Communication Style Guide, which was put out by the Recompiler, which is a feminist activist hacker publication. So they've got guides on words to avoid, words to use instead for when talking about race, gender, class, health, disability status. It's written for a tech audience and I really like that as a resource for using inclusive language. JOHN: Yeah. It's great stuff. CASEY: I love it. All right, thanks so much for are coming on our show today, Kat. Special Guest: Kat Sweet.

02:37 - Interpersonal Neurobiology (https://insightcenter.org/somatics/interpersonal-neurobiology/) and Emotionally Meaningful Experiences + Feelings Working on Software Code Smells (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_smell) 05:42 - Postmortems and Incident Reviews 09:05 - Blaming People / Blamelessness From Safety-I to Safety-II: A White Paper (https://www.england.nhs.uk/signuptosafety/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2015/10/safety-1-safety-2-whte-papr.pdf) 15:25 - Systems Are Benign: Equalizing Humans and What They Can Do to What Our Systems and Machines Can Do 22:47 - Survival Rules 27:37 - Perspectives on Blame The Agile Prime Directive 35:44 - Survival Rules (Cont’d) Personal Iceberg Metaphor of the Satir Model (http://www.healingplace.info/resources/virginia_satir/208.pdf) 37:48 - Gaining EQ and Inward Exploration Reflections: John: Handling blame in a healthy way and not blaming people for blaming people. Chanté: Read The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1878424319/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=therubyrep-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1878424319&linkId=cca2a854e8ef0a97eae346428eab999d). Jessica: Software teams are sometimes able to push back against the system because it can point to something tangibly not working. Also, as an individual, it is not your job to change your whole company. Astrid: The importance of having these conversations with your team. Rein: Dealing with a manager who blames through solidarity with coworkers. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks!

01:29 - Running a Mail Server qmail (https://cr.yp.to/qmail.html) Sendmail (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sendmail) Postfix (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postfix_(software)) Daemon-tools (https://cr.yp.to/daemontools.html) Istio.io (https://istio.io/) 08:49 - Amitai’s Superpower: Squirrel Power! and Orienting Himself in a New Problem Space (And Helping Others to Orient Them in Their Own Problem Spaces) 15:03 - Refactoring 23:15 - Managing Developer Time Global Day of Coderetreat (https://www.coderetreat.org/) Brooklyn November 2018: Global Day of Coderetreat (https://schmonz.com/2018/11/18/brooklyn-november-2018-global-day-of-coderetreat/) Conway’s Game of Life (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life) 28:57 - Feedback and Systems 33:38 - Email Servers 35:46 - Predictability WeCamp (http://we-camp.us) 40:39 - Quality and Collaboration 45:47 - Orienting and Problem Space Reflections: Jessica: Having useful questions. John: The bounded perfectionism concept and the tests as questions. Rein: What are the minimum possible criteria for progress? Amitai: “Make hidden things visible. Make abstract things concrete. Make implicit things explicit.” ~ Virginia Satir (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Satir) This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Amitai Schleier.

02:43 - First Conference Experiences 08:31 - The Importance of Networking + Stickers!! 14:56 - Conference Fashion 16:51 - Approaching Speakers After Talks and Tricks to Remembering Names + Faces 18:49 - Speaking At Conferences Handling Anxiety Lightning Talks Toastmasters (https://www.toastmasters.org/) Practice at Company Lunch and Learns and Meetups 31:38 - Conveying Information in a Talk 34:59 - Crafting Proposals, What Selection Committees Look For, and Writing Talks The Purpose of Outlines OmniOutliner (https://www.omnigroup.com/omnioutliner) Narrative Structure Bad/Cliche Talk Titles Shitposting 52:03 - Gathering Conference Talk Topic Inspiration Reflections: Coraline: Join our Greater Than Code Slack Community for friendly talk feedback! Sam: Being a conference speaker is an awesome introvert hack. It gives people a reason to come talk to you! Rein: You shouldn’t feel like you have to attend conferences or give talks at conference to have a career in the industry. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks!