software development
We are hiring a ruby developer
We are an established, six developer Scrum/XP team. We have a dedicated scrum master and we collaborate closely with our product team.
Our team contains experienced rails developers who pair program, extensively test and deploy predictably on a weekly iteration cycle. We emphasize work/life balance, sustainable pace and collaborative feature development in a collegial environment.
Work entails creating and maintaining Ruby on Rails websites and other consumer digital products for Simon & Schuster, a leading English Language trade publisher. Position reports directly to VP Engineering for Simon & Schuster Digital. Simon & Schuster is a women-run organization, an equal opportunity employer and a part of CBS Corporation.
We mostly code in Ruby on Rails 3, Bootstrap, Sass, CoffeeScript, JavaScript, CSS, HTML with RSpec, Jasmine testing.
Join a good team. Get a full-time job with benefits. Help us figure out the future of trade publishing. Gain access to Simon & Schuster’s thousands of books through our employee physical and ebook programs.
See the full posting at http://smsch.us/Xeq9JH
No recruiters please.
Short link: http://jkat.me/KGGl2F
Session at agile 2012 on thursday 9:30am
My session: Agile Values, Innovation and the Shortage of Women Software Developers
Is scheduled Thursday August 16, 2012 9:00am – 10:30am @ Austin 4-6
This session is in the Leadership track but it’s leadership with a lowercase “l”. Not Innovation and Intrepreneurship — as valuable as they are — but day to day individual integrity.
It is about what we as practitioners should do and the workplaces we should strive to create around us.
It is about how our embrace of Agile development informs our values and provides us tools to make change happen.
Here’s what I hope attendees come away with:
- Awareness of research establishing the shortage of women developers and the material and cultural factors that contribute to it.
- Agreement that a way of working that discourages women from entering our field and drives them out mid-career is not a collaborative, effective, agile way of working.
- Belief that agile practice provides a value system and tools that can help us change our workplace to be more tolerant, humane, and creative.
- Optimism that we as individual workers can do more than we think to make this happen.
Here’s the outline I’ve worked out:
- Presentation: the shortage of women developers (15 min.)
- Table discussion: what antigens exist in your workplace? (20-25 min.)
- Presentation: agile principles demand we address the shortage of women developers (15 min.)
- Table discussion: how is your current agile practice failing to address this impediment (20-25 min.)
- Presentation: change your team to change the world? (5 min.)
Short link: http://jkat.me/PaqJWb
The limits of advice – outside experts and your agile adoption
It takes something near wisdom to pinpoint the obstacles in your workplace.
By achieving this, you evidence rare concern to improve the work life of peers and improve their work products in ways your organization may not yet appreciate.
But having articulated a problem, you will often find no clear solution or an answer that is obvious but painful.
So you look to others for advice: peers, coaches, and thought leaders.
Don’t be surprised if the advice is unsatisfying. But this is no surprise.
Your challenges may look like a thousand examples but they are uniquely your own. At their root, they source from the people who make up your organization. People with a unique set of preconceptions, decisions, and values systems.
More essentially, you are a unique set of experiences, relationships, strengths and weaknesses and you are the essential agent for tackling this problem.
Be wary of any advice that doesn’t acknowledge this — that fails a test of respect and humility. No outside expert truly understands your situation or is deeply invested in solving it for you.
The best you can come away with is things to try, things to research, new questions to ask, analogies, fellowship and most importantly hope to persevere.
A worthy coach or advisor must approach your situation with patience and empathy. Listen and question as much as advise. Not fill the void of an answer with tangential descriptions of practice. Not pretend an answer that celebrates their abilities more than embraces your circumstances, “What you need to do…”
If you get the sense the coach or advisor is failing to listen or speaking more out of their own needs. Gleen what you can. Thank them. Move on.
But keep trying.
Don’t let the failings of the people in our community discourage you or diminish you. They are just peers with a different context. They are human too. And they are not you.
Short link: http://jkat.me/LnLJXR
Presentation: Agile Values, Innovation and the Shortage of Women Software Developers
Presentation notes: http://khj.me/KLKm0u
Judy, K.H.; , “Agile Values, Innovation and the Shortage of Women Software Developers,” System Science (HICSS), 2012 45th Hawaii International Conference on , vol., no., pp.5279-5288, 4-7 Jan. 2012
Abstract: The percentage of women software developers in the U.S. has declined from 42% in 1987 to less than 25% today. This is in a software/internet marketplace where women are online in equal numbers to men, directly or indirectly influence 61% of consumer electronics purchases, generate 58% of online dollars, and represent 42% of active gamers. Women avoid careers in software due to hostile environments, unsustainable pace, diminished sense of purpose, disadvantages in pay, and lack of advancement, peers or mentors. Agile Software Development is founded upon values that challenge such dysfunction in order to build self-organizing, collaborative and highly productive teams. In a high functioning Agile practice, developers engage each other, product owners and sponsors in a shared concern for quality, predictability and meeting the needs of end users. Can Agile values and practice drive changes in the workplace to better attract and retain women software developers?
URL: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6149534&isnumber=6148595
Short link: http://jkat.me/ME1khS