Tag Archives: colleagues

Who we want to be in the world

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Stride recently had our first all company in person gathering Flower on Sidewalksince December 2020. I opened the day with these remarks…

It’s a thrill to see you all. Thank you for coming. I realize we’re skirting the edge of some of our comfort zones. Certainly mine. But the work to put this together has been really thoughtful. Thank you Rebecca and particular Julia for making this possible.

It’s been a really difficult eighteen months. Sad. Lonely. Stressful. We’re not fully through it. But we will come out the other side of this.

So what kind of future do we want? Not a return to normal. The intersection of so many crises has created momentum for change in the world and new opportunities to connect what we do for a living to what gives our lives meaning.

We have to dive into that. We have to join with others to make our society more just and equitable, to reverse our harm to our climate and resources, and to use capitalism’s ability to create wealth to create opportunities and make people’s lives safer more joyous.

To give you a sense of why I know we can do this I want to tell you about my friend Jim. Jim didn’t lead a social movement. He was an entrepreneur, artist, marketer, father, and husband.

I met Jim 30 years ago. I’d been cut from an mfa directing program and was back at home looking for a way to reconnect to my passions and to people. So, I called to this theater to volunteer. Jim answered the phone. Turned out he was the managing director. He welcomed me in. And i spent the next ten years there. Met many of my closest friends. Collaborated to create new work with writers and actors.

At some point, Jim decided to start a consulting business. And hired me. It was my first software developer job and my first Consulting job. He encouraged me to ask out the woman who became my wife. He encouraged me to move out to New York. By the time I did, he was moving back to Seattle so he helped me take over the lease on his apartment – where I still live now.

It wasn’t that he took me on as some project. I’m one of dozens of friends whose life he’d made better. He knew how to use his talents, he knew how to find joy in ‘enough’, he was generous with help, and he knew who he wanted to be in the world.

That’s how I see Stride. That’s actually the floor for how I see Stride because you are all so capable and heartfelt and disciplined. we are capable of creating so much _together_.

So, let’s continue to help each other navigate this present. And let’s start building our future.

Let’s find people to work with who inspire us, challenge us, and are doing meaningful things. Let’s commit to helping them build things that make an impact on the world.

It’s not about grand gestures. It’s about really doing the work. Knowing how to use our talents, how to find joy in ‘enough’, being generous with help, and knowing who we want to be in the world.

Power, dissent, and bullying in software developer communities

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Grassroots developer communities form around shared values in dissent against institutions and norms that dehumanize their work and diminish their efforts. They attack these orthodoxies with humor, heretical thinking, and hard work.

This benefits society when developers defy those with greater power. It harms society when developers bully people with less power.

At the ThoughtWorks sponsored Agile East, Martin Fowler spoke to his post, SmutOnRails.

Part of the community was offended by a presentation at the GoGaRuCo (Golden Gate Ruby Conference). Others fought back saying that no offense was meant, the presenter apologized, and that the tone was in the spirit of the Rails community.

(T)he view of the rails leadership seems to be this: that the objections to the presentation are yet another attempt to foist empty corporate values on the thriving Rails ecosystem… (more)

This debate is not unique to the Rails community. It reminds me of concerns my friend, Luke Melia, raised over jokes and behavior at the first Austin Alt.NET. Martin Fowler links off to a similar controversy in the Flash community.

It is also not unique to developer communities but developers in particular need to be concerned about the outcome.

Women, African Americans and Hispanics are under-represented in IT and even more so in software development. In 2001-2002 74.4% of software developers were men. 78% of those men were white.

In 1986 the percentage of women in CS programs peaked at 37%. The percentage of women in computer science programs has gone down since then.

In 2001-2, only 28 percent of all undergraduate degrees in computer science went to women. By 2004-5, the number had declined to only 22 percent. — What Has Driven Women Out of Computer Science?, NY Times

There were 15,000 women in CS progreams in 1986. Riding natural cycles this number was not matched again until 2003. This latter number contains a higher percentage of non-resident aliens who will not necessarily contribute to the US workforce.

This despite higher percentages and numbers of women acquiring college educations than men. In 2007, 33% of women 25-29 held a four year degree or higher versus 26% of men. 55% of graduates with four year degrees or higher aged 25-29 were women.

Women are even receiving the majority of degrees in science and technology. They have shown steady progress in biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics and engineering.

Metrics can be misinterpreted but these quantitative measures support a stunningly obvious anecdotal observation. US software developers are a white male enclave.

This is a power imbalance and we developers are part of the problem.

Isolation is a key factor for a higher attrition rate among women and minorities, said Teresa Dahlberg, director of the Diversity in Information Technology Institute at UNC Charlotte. People tend to associate with “like communities,” where people have similar backgrounds and interests, she explained. — Computer science lacks women, minorities, SD Times

So when we behave in a way that marginalizes and intimidates talented women and minorities, we abuse power. We become bullies. We are oppressors.

“There is a good amount of research that shows that women are judged more harshly than men, for hiring, evaluations and promotions,” she added. “Virginia Valian [author of “Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women”] shows this for women in science, technology, engineering and math faculty jobs.” Virginia Valian is a professor at Hunter College. — SD Times

Part of the problem may be a perception that software development doesn’t contribute enough to society. To the degree this perception is true it is damning. To the degree it is just a perception we have work to do as advocates.

Our actions need to be judged not by our intentions but by the outcome.

Requisite variety within our teams remains an essential enabling condition for sustained innovation.

Access to technology is growing across all tiers of class, race and gender both in the US and overseas. Diverse teams can better address our market and build software better adapted to our end users.

A more diverse workforce provides the kind of social change that will help us create a more humane workplace for developers.

Finally, anything that limits the number of able US software developers hurts our ability to compete.

When developer communities marginalize women and minorities, we conspire to isolate ourselves from the larger society. We defeat our own attempts to change the power structures around us and improve our lot and our output.

Wendy and Oksana discuss pair programming

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Two of our developers, Wendy Friedlander and Oksana Udovitska are taking “The Gentle Art of Pair Programming” on the road to DevTeach in Montreal on May 16th.

A description is on Scott Bellware’s blog.

Our team consistently pair programs both in the office and remotely. Oksana and Wendy’s introduction to this practice made enough of an impact at NYC CodeCamp that they were urged to repeat it at DevTeach.

I’m not surprised. They are smart and talented and a blast to work with. Such engaging personalities you might see them on Oxygen online sometime.

Building a Reputation

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DonXml has a review of NYC Code Camp presentations by three of our team: Oksana Udovitska, Wendy Friedlander, and Luke Melia.

But besides being a media outlet for women, Oxygen has been building up a reputation in the Agile community, especially in NYC. So, I was very pleased to hear that they were presenting 3 sessions at the NYC Code Camp …

Love of Craft

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My wife is a trained Ringling Brothers Clown College Clown.

Clowning is a difficult profession. It doesn’t receive much respect. It’s hard work. Physical comedy can easily wreck your health as quickly as it drives you broke. Material success means getting to work.

But clowning is a craft with roots as old as performance itself. True practitioners bring great discipline and joy to their work. A talented clown relates to their audience with the spontaneity and innate intelligence of a child while employing a mastery of performance honed by years of training. Good clowning is surprising, stunning, human and hilarious.

However, the level of talent, skill and training vary to extremes. There is no official apprenticeship process. When people think of clowns, they’re often thinking about amateurs who’ve had very little exposure to the work of veteran performers.

It’s easy to be a frighteningly bad clown. Many amateurs paint both the top and bottom of their mouth with a broad stripe of red makeup. They turn their character’s mouth into a gaping maw large enough to devour a child’s head.

If you ever get a chance to hang out with experienced clowns you’ll find out how embarrassed they are by bad performers with horrifying makeup and costume, few skills and little respect for the history and rituals of clowning.

I’d say the difference between what I do and what my wife does is that software developers earn a lot more money and are a lot less fun to watch. Still, what I do is also a craft. To do it well requires aptitude, discipline and apprenticeship. Just as in clowning, there are common mistakes perpetrated by bad or inexperienced developers.

Similar to my wife’s clown college class mates, I feel great pride in my craft and in those who take it up with talent and integrity. I also feel frustration, disappointment and a little outrage at peers who strive for less.