Mandatory Fun: Team Building while Remote

A Little Github Story

Back in 2014, I had the pleasure of learning what happens when you enable 2-factor auth in Github and forget to save your recovery codes. After that harrowing experience, I wrote this short story for fun. A friend recently went through the same thing, and so I thought I'd re-share this..

(Scroll down for tl;dr)

Once upon a time there lived a princess, a software princess. Everyday she would travel to the land of Github, where she would play with exciting, magical things like commits, branches, and pull requests with all the other software princesses and princes from other lands. However to get to the land of Github, she needed to cross two dangerous rivers - the River of Login and the River of Two Factor Authentication (dun dun dun). Although the two rivers had strong, safe bridges the software princess used to cross, there were big scary (internet) trolls that lived under the bridge. One day after crossing the River of Login without any trouble from the trolls, the software princess was stopped at the River of Two Factor Authentication. "I won't let you pass!" thundered the troll. "But I have my authentication code!" protested the software princess. She tried again and again, but the troll refused. She walked back to her castle, defeated. But as she plopped into her bed, she thought of something. She eagerly dug through her treasure chest, grabbed a file, and dashed out the door. She ran all the way to the River of Two Factor Authentication, and triumphantly yelled "Come out, Mr. Troll! I have my recovery codes! Now you will let me cross the bridge!" And sure enough, the troll let her pass, and the software princess made it to the land of Github. The end.

tl;dr - 1) Save your Github recovery codes. 2) Software princesses are awesome.

Women's March SF 2017

Saturday, January 21, 2017. I was bundled up on my couch as the clouds began gathering overhead outside. I was saddened by the events, rhetoric, and dialogue that have been taking place and dominating our attentions and space lately. There was a part of me that truly started to fear that the world was just filled more frustration, anger, and hate than ever before. The rain started to fall and helped encourage my defeated attitude to sink deeper into the couch and stay inside. But then I heard the sound of helicopters and it made me think of how special and significant this could be, especially now, at a time of struggle (absolutely, not only for women). So I got up and made my way towards City Hall. We shouted, we laughed, we smiled, and we marched. And it truly was something special and significant.

The main principle of the Women's March highlights that "Women's Rights are Human Rights". Around the world, millions showed their support. However, what struck me the most was that it felt more like a show of support simply for each other. Men came out and passionately showed their support for women. Women marched fiercely with "Black Lives Matter" signs. Children walked around showing support for the LBTQIA communities. We all came together, and supported one another. And in a time where we feel so broken and disconnected, this show of togetherness felt exactly like what we needed.

HSS Workshop: Owning Your Growth

After sharing my Grace Hopper Conference notes to my team at Hearsay Social, several colleagues reached out to me to start conversations and discussions regarding some of the points I shared, which I thought was wonderful! In hopes of providing a space and time to discuss these topics together and to share some of the useful tools I picked up, I organized a workshop with the help of my colleague Alissa Dos Santos. This video is the workshop session I led with the Hearsay Social team.

The focus of this workshop is to provide ideas and tools that help you take a more proactive position when owning your growth. My goal was to have every participant walk away with a something new they wanted to try or even a new consideration to bring to their efforts of growing in their careers. This specific session was tailored for our team at Hearsay Social, but I hope there are some points you can take away for your teams and your current career goals.

HSOnAir Podcast & Hearsay Social Blogpost of GHC2015

Here's the podcast and blog post covering highlights and takeaways from the Grace Hopper Conference

Grace Hopper Conference 2015

This year I had the pleasure of attending The Grace Hopper Conference (http://gracehopper.anitaborg.org/), and I would like to share my notes and takeaways with you.

This is indeed a conference for women in computing, but there is much value in everyone's involvement in this conversation. Promoting diversity (gender, race, etc.) is a change that involves everyone, not just the minority groups. Furthermore, there are lots of great insights around the industry, success as a team, and personal career growth, so I hope you walk away with something that helps you in your current situations.

As for the central theme of promoting women in tech, my main takeaway from the conference was this: The way to make progress is to support each other and celebrate your successes; only then can we create an environment that empowers women to enter the industry and find opportunities that allow for a long, successful career while remaining active in the industry.

DAY 1

Keynote: Hilary Mason, Founder and CEO at Fast Forward Labs

• What it means to be a computer engineer is changing
• It’s hard to plan your career because you don’t know what the world will look like in the future. So rather than telling yourself “I want to be x when I grow up”, think “I want to head in this direction, because this creates the world I want to live in”.
• Think about what you believe the industry will look like in 5-10 years and ask yourself where do you want to be in it? What role do you want to play?
• http://blogs-images.forbes.com/anthonykosner/files/2014/12/shivon-zilis-Machine_Intelligence_Landscape_12-10-2014.jpg

Professional Development Workshop: Communicating for Impact and Influence
Denise Brosseau (http://www.thoughtleadershiplab.com/AboutDenise)

• Effective communication let’s us feel, think, or act differently
• Need to quit things in order to make space for things you want to do
  • Biggest mistake we all make - "We believe that a quitter never wins and a winner never quits. In truth, knowing what to quit, when to quit, how to quit, and why you are quitting are the hallmarks of an authentic, youthful life.” - Mary LoVerde
  • Stop doing:
    • Trauma Sharing: “Can you believe..”, “He never..”, “She always.."
    • Pining: “If only.."
    • Whining: “How come I never.."
    • Talking about how busy you are
• Negotiations
  • In simulation, when women negotiated for themselves, they asked for an average of $7,000 less than men. But when they negotiated on behalf of a friend, they asked for just as much as men.
  • Stop thinking of negotiation as “adversarial putting on the armor, getting ready to do battle.” Instead, think of it as solving a problem.
• Exercise: Amplify.
  • Always amplify others

Professional Development Workshop: Build your brand as an emerging leader or technical expert
Jo Miller (http://www.beleaderly.com/ghc15/)

• Figure out your “brand” - what you want to be known for and what to focus on as you take charge of your career trajectory
• What’s your career superpower? Combination of:
  • What are you passionate about
  • What are your skills & talents
  • What does your industry/company need and value? Note this will constantly be changing
• Consider what form your brand will take in your next step in your career
• Make your brand visible by:
  • working less
  • communicating it to others
  • working hard on the right projects
  • promoting your accomplishments

Afternoon Plenary: Transforming the Culture of Tech
Clara Shih, Blake Irving, Megan Smith

• Own what makes you different
• Incorporating consciousness of diversity efforts in every organizational decision allows for the trend to grow and continue
• Cyber-bullying is a digital manifestation of an analog problem. We need to educate and speak up about this issue

DAY 2

Keynote: Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube. Hadi Partovi, CEO code.org

• Only 26% women in tech jobs is both a pipeline issue AND a retention issue
• Misconceptions that prevent women from entering tech:
  • It’s boring
  • I’ll be bad at it
  • Don’t want to be caught dead w a CS nerd
• “Men don’t have special skills to better run tech companies; there’s just more of them, and they’re more aggressive"
• When Google went to 18 weeks paid maternity leave, retention went up 50%
• US is the only country besides Papua New Guinea that doesn’t have paid maternity leave
• We need to start requiring teaching code in schools

Mindbugs: Solving Implicit Bias in Gender and STEM
Brian Nosek

• McGurk Effect
• http://www.antiquespectacles.com/games/images/frog_horse.gif
• Once first impression is made, it takes more time and effort to revisit and reset
• Baby reactions to jack in the box. When participants were told the baby was female, the word most used to describe the baby’s reaction was “afraid”; when told the baby was male, baby’s reaction was “angry"
• Stronger association of “science” with “female” not only promotes engagement in career, but also performance.
• Showing implicit bias != endorsements.
• College Calculus course with female instructors showed female students with less bias against “science” and “female”, and better performance.

Retain and Advance Your Top Talented Women Technologists
Lauren Antonoff, Molly Gantz, Christine Goldberg

• 56% women leave industry at mid-level
• 2x women leave industry as men
• Having women in leadership roles promotes more women at all levels of the organization. Organizations need advancement programs
• “you can’t advance women you don’t retain"
• Lauren Antonoff while at GoDaddy:
  • Found herself looking to hire managers and ended up not hiring any women, and wanted to explore how to help this.
  • Goal: Increase # women in manager of managers role
  • Set up program with :
    • Monthly meetings
    • Homework for participants around self-development
    • Coaching. Have conversations about “Would I hire this person, if not why”. Promotes visibility. Helps coach understand how they can help.
  • If you find things you want to change, find specific metrics, come up with a plan, and execute.

Fixing the Leaky Pipeline: Unleashing the Power of Community
Chelsea Clinton, Maxine Williams, Jack Dorsey

• Pipeline problems start at 4th grade for many reasons including media representation of women
• Over 70% of team at Square rolls up to 3 women executives
• Should we revisit referral bonuses? Does it promote an already existing bias to hire people like you?
• “Culture fit” is a lazy way of saying they’re not like you
• Policies need to change, and attitudes too. Leaders with platforms need to be able to talk openly about things like breastfeeding.
• Next year bring a male colleague to the Grace Hopper Conference

Plenary w Sheryl Sandberg

• Be ambitious
• Pure support. lean in circles
• Stay in tech
• Say “I need this not only for myself, but because it’s fair, for all women"
• http://leanincircles.org/

Full presentations from the conference can be found here

Calibrate Conference SF 2015

A couple weeks ago I attended the Calibrate Conference in San Francisco. The Calibrate Conference was intended for engineering managers who made their transition from an independent contributor. It covered topics around keeping your team happy and productive, as well as keeping yourself happy and productive. As a lot of conversations around management go, there were many differing opinions, but also many great points of consideration and tips from those who have been managing for many years. Here are some of the notes I took as well as some key takeaways I thought were important to adopt or at least consider incorporating.

@rands
- being a great manager is a lot about staying true to the basics
- start/stop meetings on time. promotes responsibility and accountability
- delegate. it is an opportunity for someone else to learn
- write down the plan
- define your principles and apply them w consistent judgement
- be unfailingly kind
- always have 1:1s

@dloft
- own your education. don’t just read the books, talk to your peers.
- ask yourself, are you happy in this job?
- going from IC to manager is not a promotion, it’s a transition. if you don’t like being a manager, you should be able to be an IC, it’s not a demotion.
- focus on enhancing strengths rather than fixing weaknesses
- the industry seems to overemphasize the technical skills over the management skills.

@heddle13
- agile management. think of managing people the way we build software.
- iterating is such a given in software, solving management problems should be no different

@textio
- many ICs who transition into the manager role feel as if they need to be the expert in all the areas, not possible. want to be able to go deep at a moments notice
- you want to be around when your team needs, when it makes sense for your team
- your job is to identify and align the work, not to do the work
- there are 2 kinds of people who will sink your team: 1) the non-performers, 2) strong performers that don’t want to be on your team

unconference
- people don’t want levels, they want feedback

crunchtime
- engagement promotes creativity and innovation
- avoid giving bonuses, it buys you compliance not engagement

@sangeetan
- you establish the team culture
- build valuing continuous feedback into the culture
- lead by example. be candid, receptive, prompt.
- decouple feedback from incentives. should be focused on improvement not promotion
- non-anonymous 360s

@megsa
- important to be empathetic and support people who may be affected by things that are happening outside the office (recently Trayvon Martin case). provide support, a safe space in the office, and a clearer leave policy.
- advocate on behalf of your minority reports

@marcyswensen
- good practice: Think of the person on your team you are most frustrated with. Ask yourself: How would you feel if they left today? What do you see them doing in the future on the team? How will this decision affect you, them, the team? Might they be better elsewhere? Will the team be happier if this person left?

The 2 main takeaways, worth highlighting:

1. "the industry seems to overemphasize the technical skills over the management skills."
   New managers are trained engineers, not trained managers. The skills it takes to be a great engineer are not the same as those to be a great manager. The industry’s tendency to value technical skills over management skills can cause many issues in team productivity and happiness. It’s important to be aware of this bias and understand that these are two growth paths available to us as engineers. Management is a transition of role, not a promotion.
2. "advocate on behalf of your minority reports”
   I thought this was an interesting and helpful point to consider that I hadn’t actively thought about before. There is an abundance of proof that supports the tangible difficulties minorities face in this industry. As a manager, it is important to be aware of these trends as well as be empathetic of the effects the happenings outside of work may have on these individuals. For example, we shouldn’t pressure individuals to “be more engaged” when such incidents outside the workplace may affect them. We must figure out how to best support them in these times. Do they need a quiet place to work? Do they need to work from home? Having clear leave policies and dedicated office facilities are important when creating supportive workplaces because it allows for managers to provide this kind of support when necessary. Supporting teammates in everyday situations are just as important as supporting them in times of need. By being aware of some of the biases your minority reports face on a day-to-day basis, you will be more sensitive and aware of habits you may have not recognized before. It’s important to help change these disadvantages from the inside out; call it out, try to change it, defend your team, advocate for them when need be.