[Intro Music]
Hello, and welcome to Making Tech Better – Made Tech’s fortnightly podcast, bringing you content from all over the world on how to improve your software delivery.
My name is Clare Sudbery, my pronouns are she and her, and I am a lead engineer at Made Tech.
On Saturday January 15th 2022, I spoke to Dr. J. Harrison. I used to word with J, so I know just how incredibly passionate they are about building teams. Their official role is ‘Harbinger of Change’ at Thoughtworks. Best job title ever! And J has been ‘out transgressive non-binary genderqueer’ – which J informs me is now on their passport, and I love it! – for over 10 years. I like what J’s written on their LinkedIn profile, which is that “Dr. J. brings queer theory with a slice of humour into the tech space”.
Clare: Hello J!
Dr J: Hello Clare!
Clare: It’s fantastic to have you here with me for this episode. I’m going to leap straight in. I’m going to ask you the same first question that I ask everybody at the start. Who in this industry are you inspired by?
Dr J: Ooh! So, one of the people that I’m most inspired by is Kief Morris – which sounds weird for somebody who is non-technical, cannot code, has never coded, uses GitHub very, very rarely and cries when I have to use it – to be inspired by somebody who was so almost extremely technical. But when I started at Thoughtworks, it was just when he released his book “Infrastructure As Code”. I listened to an hour-long talk – I will say, I don’t understand the codey-codey technical bit – but I understand why he’s doing it and what’s going on. And to me, that kind of showed that there was a communication ideal that everyone had of making stuff, even if it’s complex, sound simple.
Oh, by the way, the birdsong is actually birdsong! Because I sit by a window all day every day in a little one-bedroom flat. So I have a whole pile of bird feeders hanging, and you’ve just hit the point where the parakeets have come past. So that birdsong is not me swearing or anything like that [censored], where you’re gonna be filtering me out!
Clare: [laughs] Fantastic!
Dr J: But yeah, the thing that inspires me is a thought leader who was wonderfully technical, has come up with this amazing technical idea, but it’s also able to describe not just what it is but why it’s important, in a way that a very non-technical person can understand and can continue to be inspired. And I’ve worked with him a few times. He’s just a lovely guy.
Clare: Great. I love it! Okay, so we’re here to talk about inclusive teams, but that word ‘inclusive’ can sometimes be confusing. So let’s start by – what is the difference between diversity and inclusion?
Dr J: So somebody says “diversity is being invited to the party, and inclusion is being asked to dance”. I’m more like – real inclusion is being asked to organise the party, getting to choose the music that you dance to! So diversity is often about… I can build a team that’s made up of different characteristics. Inclusion is about creating spaces where those characteristics are not seen as barriers, they’re seen as enhancers. People seek you out forthat difference of opinion, and go – We’re a team of people who assist white straight men. What else is there out in the world that might make this app not work, or this thing not work, or this technology not work? And to me, that’s super, super important.
There is still fear about revealing those adversities. There is fear about revealing your mental health status. And that’s what inclusion is about, is allowing those discussions to happen where there’s no fear, where people can be open and feel cared for. When you say – I’m having a bad mental health week – you don’t want to be told – Well just go away and come back when you’re better. You want to be told, here’s our EAP, let us know what you need. Let’s work together on it.
Clare: Tell us what EAP is
Dr J: EAP is usually Employee Assistance Programme, and you’re supposed to be able to call them about anything confidentially. And the better ones will also offer a certain amount of counselling, and that’s really good sometimes for just getting that check- in of – Is this real or is this my brain misinterpreting things? I find it really, really useful.
Clare: So we talked a little bit about mental health and employee assistance programmes.
What other things can we do to make our teams more inclusive?
Dr J: So one of the things that I talk about is that ability to share openly, to give your lived experience without the fear of it ever being used against you by the team in a review or something. One of the other ones is consensus decision-making. So the ability to talk about a problem, get everyone’s opinion around the room, and then collectively arrive at the right way forward. That to me is one of those keys of an inclusive team.
The other one is taking care of the people on the team. So when somebody shares something, reveals something about their life, it’s taking it on, and it’s holding that safe. If somebody says look, I’m having a rough day, you know, COVID’s got me a bit panicked this week, I’m just feeling the ugh… It’s like, what can we do? Would you like to do something that’s not pairing, for the day? Is that going to increase your stress or not? But in a very caring way. One of the other ones is listening before talking. And this is weird, because it’s that mindset… So when you listen, you’re listening to empathise, you’re listening to understand, you’re not listening just for a gap in the conversation. So it’s listening to understand.
And there’s a fifth one, and if I can remember it… and I even wrote [censored] talk about it! So this is all for my TEDx talk. I’ve covered the big ones. But yeah, literally J’s brain cannot remember five points! I remember three to four consistently but never five!
Clare: I sympathise very much with the whole not being able to remember stuff, but there you go. We find ways of coping! Okay, so we’ve talked about making teams inclusive.
One of the big topics around diversity and inclusion is unconscious bias. So I’m going to start by just saying: “What’s unconscious bias, J?”
Dr J: It is the thing that every human has, of looking at somebody and going you don’t necessarily belong to what I consider to be my team, and therefore you’ve got an unconscious bias against them. And it’s ‘unconscious’ bias because you’re generally unaware of it. Now a lot of unconscious bias training people go and become aware of their unconscious bias, and like… Okay, I know I’m unconsciously biased towards people who practise a faith. It’s just a weirdness that comes from my background. I deal with it. What they don’t tell you and a lot of their unconscious bias training is what to do after. So I know that I will have a reaction to somebody who tells me or shows me in some ways that they are a person of some faith, and that literally comes from a history of homophobic and transphobic abuse from people within different religions. So it’s just one of those things that my brain jumps. And what I need to do is go – Okay, that’s my first thought, there’s nothing I can do about it. What’s my second thought? – And be very conscious about what my second thought is. And it’s like, is this person doing any of that? No. What similarities do I have to this person? How can I connect with this person? I can ask them about their lives, and just seek to empathise and find things that we connect on.
And that second part is what’s missing from most unconscious bias training. I’ll use a very simple example: If you’ve got an unconscious bias against people who are black and people who are women, when you meet a black woman you’re not going to be judging them in your mind on the same grade as you would a white man. If they did the same thing, you would think one is assertive, and the other is aggressive. And that’s a really, really common one.
So you need to be aware of that bias and look at how you’re reacting to it. Take control of that second thought, and of that first action, and really, really think about what you’re doing in that hiring process. And this is the thing that’s going to make such a big difference if people start to get hold of it. But just doing unconscious bias training doesn’t get you anywhere!
So, also, just to be really clear, if you ever accidentally find yourself hired as the ‘diversity hire’ – which has happened to me – it is the most soul-destroying confidence-destroying moment that somebody can have, if you even suspect that you’re the diversity hire. Because you suspect you have been given an easier run just because of who you are. And that you’re actually not up to the job, which means you end up with massive amounts of imposter syndrome to deal with. And it just means that after six to twelve months, you’re like – Nah, sod this job, I’mgoing elsewhere. Because you’re just constantly over-pressuring yourself, and you’re not in a supportive environment.
Clare: Yeah, I agree. But it is a really interesting one. Because let’s say that you’re aware of your unconscious biases, you’re taking conscious action to address it, so you’re looking at a pool that you’re hiring from, that you’re aware that there are people in that pool that are potentially going to fall foul of your unconscious biases. What do you do about it?
In the context of… I guess, there’s at least two places that you need to think about: One is – how do you respond to a candidate in an interview? And another is – how do you then have conversations behind the scenes with people, when you’re looking through a whole pool of candidates you, for instance, just interviewed, and you’re talking to each other about which you prefer?
Dr J: So it starts even before you’ve set up the pool of candidates. It starts with talking about what you’re looking for. There is this notion of norm, and ‘Norm’ is a lovely person! Norm is a cis, white, straight man. Middle-aged, middle class, went to a good school, is married but doesn’t have any children. No caring responsibilities, doesn’t need to look after elderly parents or anything like that. Educated in this country, English is his first language, all of those things. That’s Norm – lovely, lovely person! When you try to hire away from that notion, it becomes really, really hard.
If you’ve got a team made up of Norms, and one of them’s called Bob, and Bob leaves, and you have a shape that fits, that looks a particular way inside your head, you will end up hiring another Bob. Even if you met Khadija, and Khadija is a fantastic candidate, and could be Bob plus extra… You’re like – or I can hire another Bob! And people end up just hiring for the same. And it’s about – okay, I’ve got a gap in my team. What does the team currently do? How does the team currently mix, currently work? Who wants to grow in particular places? What shapes would be good for the team? What shapes might not work for the team? And then you can go out and you’re not just looking at a replacement Bob. Because with that mindset, anyone who doesn’t look like Bob is going to run up against it. And by replacing a ‘Bob-shaped-Bob’ you don’t allow that team to collectively come together and say –
Actually, I’d like to try the stuff that Bob was doing. Can I get some support to do it? And that just enables people to grow and to build themselves as technologists or just as team members. So the problem is right the way back when you write the job description, that then becomes, how you interview people, how you look at people. And one of the things is if you hire in somebody who’s different to the rest of the team, and after six months, they’re like, I just don’t feel like I fit, I’m gonna go… Your question isn’t why didn’t you fit? The question should be of the team. Why didn’t you let this person fit in? Not what is wrong with the diverse person?
Clare: Yeah!
Dr J: And Clare can see that I’m really passionate about this. I’ve fallen foul of this so many times! People have hired me instead of a ‘Bob’ and then go – Why don’t you fit in with a team of straight white cis men who talk about their children and their cars? – and I’m like, I’m NOT a straight white cis man who talks about children and cars!
Clare Yeah! [laughs]
Dr J: And, if we opened out the pool of candidates, you need to allow that diversity of team culture, get the team to rebuild itself anew, because bringing new people in isn’t just them fitting into the team. If you don’t make space for those conversations when a new person comes in, you say to the person – Right you’re joining our team. This is how we do stand-up because this is how Bob liked it. This is how we do quality because this is how Bob liked it. And the person’s like – Oh, so you just want me to play Bob? Okay, I’ll play Bob. You don’t give them the chance to bring themselves. They could see a ginormous security flaw, but just not feel – Oh, no, Bob must have known about that, and Bob must have thought it’s not important. Therefore I’m not going to bring it up because it would disrupt the team.
Clare: So what we’re saying here is that you really want to create an environment where if somebody new joins, you say – Yeah! We’ve got a new person with a new perspective. Let’s ask them about that perspective, listen to it and see whether that’s going to be useful to us, and we might actually gain something as a result. Let’s actively encourage that.
So another thing that comes up when you’re hiring for diversity is that you want to actually keep an eye on how well you’re doing, and you want to pay attention to the diversity of your hires. And that’s when things can get problematic, because if you’re actually operating some kind of blind sifting, which personally I’m a fan of – and I’d love to hear you talk about it too – where you don’t actually know the identifying characteristics of the people that you’re hiring. You don’t know whether they’re black, you don’t know whether they’re women, you don’t know how old they are… If you’ve deliberately removed that information from your pipeline, then how can you be aware of whether or not you are doing a good job? How do you gather data on that?
For me – I’m always just gonna preface everything with “for me”… Actually, I realised we didn’t do pronouns at the start of this. Because I know that you introduce your pronouns.
Clare: I do!
Dr J: Because I was going to give a story of how that builds up that trust.
Clare: That is absolutely my bad because I always record an extra bit that gets put on afterwards, where I do my pronouns, but I forgot to ask you about your pronouns. So wait a minute, let’s just put a pin in what we were talking about. We were talking about gathering data for diversity. But yeah, I want to talk about pronouns. J, what are your pronouns?
Dr J: So the pronouns I like to use? They, them or theirs. I usually say I’m Dr. J, my pronouns are they/them – when I do an introduction, and that way it just kind of opens the door to people to state their pronouns, or to have a reaction to me stating mine, and I know exactly where I stand from there on. So to come back to the thing that we put a pin in, something as simple as stating your pronouns, when you’re the recruitment coordinator calling a candidate to organise an interview, something as simple as – on the form – you say, what’s your name, and what pronouns do you prefer? Now, I always say ‘prefer’; it’s not a preference. I just use the word ‘prefer’ there as a softener. And I use it as a softener. Because as somebody who grew up with a lot of passive aggression, there’s a way of asking a question, and by putting ‘preferred’ there stops that question becoming a passive aggressive statement. So “which pronouns do you prefer?” can never be said passive aggressively. Whereas “which pronouns do you use?” can sound very aggressive.
There’s something about tone of voice and playing around with that was really important, because it’s never a preference. It’s like asking Bob if he likes to be called Robert or Bob. If he says, Robert, you’re never gonna call him Bob ever again. And it’s the same thing of like, it is a preference but it’s not a preference. Anyway, something as simple as putting that on your forms lets people know that you’re thinking in the right space. You can explicitly say these things are going to be kept anonymous, because coming out as LGBT can limit your employment chances. It totally does. People will look at you and go – You’re queer? No. I don’t want that in my company. So it’s thinking about things like that.
But then it’s setting up that trust of saying, we want to know this information to help us monitor and ensure that we get diverse candidates. And then you can ask some of these questions and you can anonymise it so that it’s never connected to somebody’s name. So you just know that in this pool of candidates, you had a candidate who identified within the LGBT spectrum; you had a candidate who identified as black; you had a candidate who identified as having some neurodiversity, ADHD, autism, anything like that; you had a candidate who identified as a carer.
Clare: There is a perception that you can’t ask somebody for those diversity characteristics on the same form that is the application form, because then there’s a worry that you might actually use that information against them. And that I’m sure is true because as you just said, it needs to be anonymous. But if you can say – we want you to fill this in, but this is the anonymous bit, this is not going to be stored in the same place as the data that you answered in the other bit.
So can you ask those questions at the same time, as long as you make it clear that they are anonymous?
I think you can, as long as you make clear that they’re anonymous, and you say things like – we are using this to measure our performance against diversity targets to ensure that we are being fair to our diversity candidates. I used to build a tracker for an unnamed engineering firm to track their recruitment, and you could literally see there was a huge drop-off of women once the CV’s were read. And this is why, dear candidates… sometimes you are asked to enter all of the stuff on your CV into a form so that we can strip out anything on your CV that identifies your gender or anything like that. Occasionally that candidate’s gender would come through. But also the moment the interviews got set up, there’d be another big drop. So you’d end up with a very, very small number of women even making it past the screening interviews. It was really… just being able to track that you could actually start to go and challenge those hiring managers and go – Why is Khadija no good? – and they’re like – they didn’t go to the right school, or they would say, Oh, they have childcare concerns. And it’s like, what? None of the men on your team do?
Yeah, you know, it’s understanding those perceptions and using that tracking to understand why this breakdown, finding those hiring managers who are bringing that unconscious bias – or even just bias! – to the filtering, to the sifting. And those people are fewer and fewer in the industry, but they’re [censored] senior, they’re older than me and you, they’ve been around for a long time, and they influence what gets hired a lot. They also influence what the younger, newer people will want to hire because they want to impress the senior manager. You want to say – Hey, I hired somebody who went to the same school as you! – Oh, fantastic! You run into that a lot and it’s about being able to measure it. It’s about being able to see it.
I also have an entire thing around the bias in this industry. If you’d like a rant I can give you a rant!
Clare: Give me a rant! Yeah, let’s have a rant!
[music]
While I’ve got your attention, let me tell you a bit about Made Tech. After 21 years in the industry, I’m quite choosy about who I work for. Made Tech are software delivery experts with high technical standards. We work almost exclusively with the public sector. We have an open-source employee handbook on GitHub, which I love. We have unlimited annual leave. But what I love most about Made Tech is the people. They’ve got such passion for making a difference, and they really care for each other. Our Twitter handle is Made Tech. That’s M A D E T E C H. We have free books available on our website at https://madetech.com/resources/books. We’re currently recruiting in London, Bristol, South Wales, and the North of England via our Manchester office. If you go to https://madetech.com/careers, you can find more about that.
[music]
Clare: Before the break, Dr. J was about to treat us to a rant!
Dr J: We are totally biased in this industry, and especially in the non-tech roles. For example – and this comes back to that hiring a Bob-style person – Bob as project manager who grew up on PRINCE2 and therefore had a PRINCE2 qualification. So when hiring for Bob we will say – Oh despite working AGILE, I will ask that you’ve got a PRINCE2 qualification. and can also work AGILE because that makes a thing like Bob.
One of the things that really, really frustrates me is there’s so many good people out there who, for whatever reason, didn’t get to go to university or college, didn’t get to finish their education for all kinds of reasons, who have the skills that we want, that we’re screaming out for, but they will never apply for the jobs because we ask for them in the wrong way. And we will never – if they ever apply – we will nevern interview them, because they don’t have that PRINCE2 magic piece of paper, which nobody cares about, nobody uses, and nobody’s used [censored] Prince 2 for years.
So you end up with these people who are working as assistant managers in coffee shops, who are working in retail, who are doing all of these things, who have the things that we want, which is that ability around logistics, that ability to stakeholder manage, that ability to schedule, that ability to figure out and work out trade-offs. If you’ve ever tried to work out the schedules in a bar, you have gotten very, very good at doing trade-offs, having discussions, reaching a collaborative decision. Why are we not saying to people, this is a valuable skill we’d like and tick? We have just lost ourselves!
We talk about inclusion, we talk about lifting people up, we talk about changing people’s lives. And yet we say, to get into tech, you’ve either got to go through a coding camp, which if your brain doesn’t suit coding, it’s biasing us in such ways of just saying we’ll only take these particular types of brains, or we’ll only take people who finished university. And I’m like, what skills do you learn that somebody who’s worked 10 years after leaving school hasn’t also learned? And they’ve learnt in a different way, and they’ve probably learnt the hard way. And they may not even describe it in the right way. But give them that chance.
Clare: I don’t know if you know, but we run an academy at Made Tech where we explicitly are hiring people who don’t have qualifications, who haven’t been to university, who may have done a little bit of coding, when we’re hiring for engineers, but we’re not you know, who cares? What difference does that really make? And it’s not just that they don’t have to have a degree at all, but also they could have a degree in another subject.
So I happen to know you are “Doctor J” – You actually have a PhD in some fancy science thing! So what is it again?
Dr J: [laughs] I have PhD in the immunology of multiple sclerosis. So I studied for 10 years and it was about how the immune system crosses into the brain where it’s not supposed to go during multiple sclerosis.
Clare: Yeah, ‘fancy science stuff’ like I said!
Dr J: …which bears no relationship to my job!
Clare: Well, I mean, maybe I’m wrong, but I would imagine that you learnt some stuff during that time which you have been able to transpose, transferable skills, you know, to do with the rigour, to do with the way that you think about things. I would imagine that that stuff has not been completely useless to you?
Dr J: No, no. So I’m a business analyst slash service designer. I’m the random hand wavy person who goes – how do we make this technology and the people and the processes fit together? And process mapping is something that I’m particularly good at. But that comes from what I was doing in the lab. My ability to absorb a large amount of data and summarise it. That’s just from doing a PhD. I just had to read so many thousands of papers and be able to go – this 25 page document had one important thing that I needed to know, and this is it! And just being able to do that for a team. And those are skills that I didn’t know were useful for a long time because I was working in call centres as a call centre jockey, which is why I’m slightly deaf because I’ve got selective loss and a couple of frequencies thanks to the beat that you put through call centre headphones. You don’t know that what else you can do is useful.
And this is why I’m so passionate about finding other ways to get people into tech. Because technology has been a great career for me. And I want more people to be able to get into it who come from different backgrounds, and you don’t need a PhD to get into tech. You don’t need a Masters. You don’t need a Bachelor’s degree. You just need a curiosity. Anyone who can organise stuff, you’re probably going to be a good project manager. Anyone who’s curious about stuff, you’re probably going to be a decent VA and anyone who constantly tries to break stuff, you’re probably a brilliant QA. And anyone who just keeps on picking locks and breaking their way in is probably going to be brilliant at security.
You know, there are some really, really key non-tech things that people don’t know that they could be good at because they’ve never been told. Your career people at school don’t tell you – Hey, you’re a wonderfully curious person. You could become a business analyst in a large consultancy, that’s global, and then eventually make yourself up to become a principal… and be like, woah! No-one tells you those things!
Clare: One thing I just wanted to return to briefly was the thing about asking for pronouns, because I do generally ask people for their pronouns. I love… I’ve written it down your new phrase, ask them what pronouns they prefer, but I do ask them about what pronouns they use, and I tell them what my pronouns are, when I do job interviews, when I’m interviewing people. But sometimes I forget, and also sometimes I feel slightly uncomfortable about it. Because quite a common response is that people just look a bit bewildered, because it’s not a question they’re used to being asked, and they think it’s obvious. And so that can prevent me from asking it because I think that’s going to put them on the back foot.
But the thing that kind of convinces me that it’s worth doing is first of all, thatm actually what it tells them is this is something that we care about at this place. I always make great pains throughout an interview to put people at their ease, make sure that I’m not judging them. This isn’t supposed to be a difficult question. There isn’t a right or a wrong answer. This is just something that I’m interested in. But what really makes it for me are the times when – I’ve got a lovely example – we were hiring for our academy, the one that’s about to start. I asked somebody who may well have been a cis white straight man, and his face lit up and he told me that his pronouns were he and him. But he then said, “I’m so glad you asked me, because this is what I thought that I would get from Made Tech. I’ve kind of looked you up and I’ve been really impressive what I’ve seen, and nobody has ever asked me that question before. And it really excites me that you did, that you care!”
Dr J: And I think it’s thinking about those moments. So when I joined Thoughtworks six years ago, and a bit… They really, really wanted to get more diversity in there. They just didn’t know how to ask about pronouns. When I was being interviewed. There was like, a whole pile of stress because they all knew that I was non-binary; they just didn’t know how to ask me what my pronouns might be. They didn’t have that language. They also didn’t know how to state theirs. And somebody who’d just been through the Thoughtworks interview experience said to me, “Oh, my God, the person interviewing me started off with the introduction saying, Hi, my name is and these are my pronouns. So I felt so comfortable stating my pronouns.” and they said, “I’ve never felt so welcomed”. And it’s for those moments that you do it. It’s not for the people who are like, Oh, I don’t know what my pronouns are. And it’s like, it’s really easy. Do I use he, she or they for you? And they’re generally a binary person.
The one that’s also a snifter to me of somebody who is uncomfortable in a toxic way, is when somebody says – Oh, just use any pronoun, as long as you’re polite. There is something in the tone of voice and there is something in that response that says to me, this is not a safe space for me as a non-binary person. And one of the best things that I’ve had is when that’s happened in a meeting, and I’ve been facilitating, and I suddenly get a message from a colleague on my screen going, I just heard what they said, are you okay? Do you need me to step in? And it’s just like, oh, my god, somebody has not just seen what’s happened, they’ve recognised the unsafety that I feel in this space, and they’ve stepped in to kind of say, Do you need me to take over for a minute? Just to give you a minute to strengthen yourself.
And that to me, I mean, in my podcast, it was actually the first episode… I talked about how the first time somebody gets your name right, or somebody gets your pronouns right, you literally have your heart sing. Why would you not want somebody’s heart to sing? Why would you not want somebody to feel that moment of just ‘seen-ness’ – an indescribable joy of being seen? Just that moment of somebody going, Oh, you’re Dr. J. Use ‘they’ as a pronoun. I’m gonna call you J and not any other name that I might have heard for you. And I’m going to use ‘they’ as your pronoun. Somebody described it as trans-euphoria. And I totally agree with that. It’s that moment of just like – “eeee!”
Clare: And when you see that happen, as well, when you use somebody’s correct pronouns, or when you ask them about their pronouns, and you see how much they appreciate it and how much it means to them, then you’re like, Okay, this is why we do this. This is why it’s so important!
You also very quickly mentioned something to do with allyship that I think is worth highlighting. You talked about how if you’re in a meeting, and somebody behaves in a problematic way, and somebody else who is also in that meeting sees that happen… You talked about jumping in, but what you actually said was they check with you, do you want me to jump in? I am here for you. I am prepared to act on your behalf and I’m prepared to be your ally and support you and make it clear to the other people in this meeting that this is not acceptable. But the first thing I’m going to do is check with you.
Dr J: I want people to check with me, because sometimes I have made the longer term decision that it’s better to let something ride. I’ve been running public meetings for about a year or so for a client, and at the very first meetings, icebreakers and pronouns was really janky. It was really hard to get everyone to give their pronouns, but I forced it. I just pushed them. And there were quite a few people who did, what is a pronoun? or just use any pronoun, and things like that. But now they’re not isolated from the crowd. That is very obvious from the next couple of people who state their pronouns, like, I’m Clare and I use ‘she’ as a pronoun! And that is wonderful because there are people who are going – that’s bad behaviour. In this group, we state our pronouns with pride. And it’s been interesting to watch that naturally develop, and just building the norm that stating your pronoun is the normal thing to do.
And I think getting somebody to check in, it’s like are you okay with what’s just happened? Do you need a moment or do you have this under control? I was like, I got this under control. And they talked to me afterwards and said, we can now see why you’re so exhausted after running those meetings, because there is so much emotional effort that you need to put in, and some of those places, you said sometimes you feel uncomfortable stating your pronouns, so you choose not to. I don’t ever get their choice if I feel uncomfortable. And there’s times where people are like, Oh, I felt uncomfortable stating my pronouns. And I’m just like, Yeah, welcome to my world! But just giving people that space, and just recognising that if you’re feeling uncomfortable, somebody else is going to be feeling uncomfortable in that room or in that group, stating their pronouns. And by doing it, you’re making that space that little bit safer. We’re in this wonderful new world where pronouns are wonderful. People can be whatever they choose to be, and ‘identify as…’ and all of those things, and we can push people forwards.
Clare: Brilliant. Thank you. So I’m going to go onto the questions that I ask people, always, at the end, and the first one is just a silly little game that we play. I’m going to ask you to tell me one thing about you that’s true. And one thing that about you that’s untrue.
Dr J: So I know this game!
Clare: You’ve played this game before, haven’t you? Yeah, the listeners can’t see that J is rubbing their hands with glee!
Dr J: I usually play it as “two truths and a lie”, but I’m not going to. I’m just going to do one truth and one lie. So, one of the things that I’m going to say is that when I skateboard and when I surf, I’m goofy footed. And the other thing that I’m going to say is that I smashed my leg badly when I skateboarded.
Clare: Is goofy footed, a kind of skating term? Does that have a specific meaning?
Dr J: Yeah, it’s which leg goes in front. Naturally, most people skate with their right foot in front, but when you’re goofy footed you skate with your left foot in front, and you effectively skate back-to-front to everybody else, or you surf back-to-front to everybody else.
Clare: Do you do a lot of surfing?
Dr J: Do I do a lot? I would love to do more surfing, but I live in London. London, the great renowned surf capital of the world! I would love to be back in New Zealand sometimes, in Auckland, where I can look at the surf report at about 4.30 and go – Which beach do I want to go to today? – and then just choose where I go surfing after work for a couple of hours. That’s my dream. But also, I can’t live in New Zealand. It’s not inclusive enough for me. It’s not big enough to have a big queer scene.
Clare: Yeah, that’s a shame.
Dr J: So, my dream would be to have London with surfing!
[music]
Clare: We’ll reveal which one of Dr. J’s answers was true and which one was false, in our next episode. But meanwhile, here’s the answer from Ted Young. After his interview on hexagonal architecture, where he told us that either he ran and completed a full marathon, or that he sold patented technology that Microsoft uses in their Bing search engine, I’m going to guess that the Bing one was the correct one.
Ted So, no! Although we did talk to them. We actually we actually spent quite a bit of time at Microsoft. And they were interested in the patent and the technology.
I don’t know why it never went anywhere, but I remember we actually got brought in but they didn’t end up using it.
[music ends]
Clare: Okay, so the penultimate question is: Where can people find you, and do you have anything coming up that you would like to plug?
Dr J: Oh, so, where can people find me? So I use ‘drjharrison’ (so, Dr J Harrison) on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn. My website is www.drjharrison.com – It is the one thing that I write using GitHub because it’s written using Hugo. Me saying that makes me sound like I can code! Literally, our lovely friend Tito had to be on about half a dozen phone calls with me while I cried, talking me through! So on that site, there’s me giving my TEDx talk, there’s a whole pot of different talks. I usually have what talks I’ve got coming up.
I’ve got something coming up in March. It’s a ‘Women in Tech’ thing. I’m on a panel because my pitch was – how do you get women in meetings to speak up more? – and I was like, You don’t! You get the men to shut up! [they both laugh, heartily] And that was literally my pitch to them, as to why I should be on the panel. And they were like – Yep, yep, you’re going to be fab! I will send Clare the details of that.
And, plugging stuff: Follow me on Twitter, follow Thoughtworks on Twitter… Oh, podcast! [censored] podcast. I completely forgot my podcast! So, I do a podcast with my best friend Josephine. It is called “It is complicated.” Search for it on all of your podcasting platforms, because it’s explicit, because we don’t take out the swears, and we talk about queer stuff. And we talk about life and queer theory and how all of that stuff gets complicated.
One of some limiting factors of stuff being available in other countries is the fact that I am queer. There are 72 countries where my existence is illegal; but there’s also a number of countries where even me talking about being queer, my existence as a queer person, my sexuality and my gender, the way that they combine – even within a workplace context – means that this podcast will be inaccessible to some people.
And this is one of the really, really big problems with the different platforms and the way that they limit us. For example: Singapore and Russia, just to pull two random examples where promotion of LGBT content is not allowed, the fact that I have said the word ‘queer’ can mean that this podcast may be restricted within those countries.
Clare: Wow. I am certainly not going to tell you not to say the word queer, and I am certainly not going to hide the fact that you are queer from our audience. I don’t want to do that and I’m not going to do that.
Dr J: But I think that hits on one of the really interesting lens of technology and social discussion of convention – is that there is technology that allows us to publish stuff globally. But there is censorship that exists within that technology and outside of it, that means that some of those words don’t get out. It might be difficult to find, but we’ve also got a website: www.itiscomplicated.me – And you can also find us on Twitter and Patreon.
Clare: Okay, brilliant. To end on a high, what is the best thing that’s happened to you in the last month or so? And it can be either work-related or non work-related. Tell me something happy!
Dr J: [laughs] I had a brilliant New Year’s, I helped run Queer House Party. We had a roomful of people in real life, plus an amazing online party to make it fully accessible and all of those things. Had a brilliant New Year’s Eve with people whose company I enjoy. And that’s been one of the best things!
Clare: That sounds pretty good to me! Brilliant. Thank you so much.
Dr J: Thank you!
[music]
As always, to help you digest what you’ve just heard, I’m going to attempt to summarise it:
So, what’s the difference between diversity and inclusion? Some people say that diversity is being asked to the party and inclusion is being asked to dance. But Dr. J. likes to express it as “Really, inclusion is being asked to organise the party and getting to choose the music that you dance to.”
Diversity matters because our users are diverse. It matters because we don’t want people to feel fear about revealing their diversities, whether that’s sexuality, gender, family background, mental health status.
Inclusion means feeling safe and cared for, and able to be open about what makes us different. It means knowing in advance how you’ll handle diversity. So if someone says they’re having a bad mental health week, you can say, here’s our employee assistance programme. There are other ways of being inclusive too, like finding consensus when making decisions, or caring about people when they’re having a bad time, and like listening before talking.
Unconscious bias is a natural human trait. We tend to hold bias against people we don’t consider to be ‘on our team’, and it’s unconscious because you’re unaware of it. Unconscious bias training helps you to be aware of these biases, but it doesn’t necessarily tell you what to do about it. You need to be aware of your first thought, which is the bias. But then what about the second thought? You can control that. You can find ways of connecting with the people that you’re biassed against, and turning them from ‘out-group’ to ‘in-group’ by finding those connections. You can be aware of your biases and look at how you react to them, so that you take control of the second thought and the first action.
When hiring, don’t just look for ‘Bob replacements’. Think about how the rest of the team can grow into Bob’s place and think about what you actually need for growth rather than stasis. Give newcomers room to have new ideas and make things different. Actively seek new perspectives and don’t demand qualifications that won’t even be used. Think about transferable skills. For instance, working in a coffee shop can involve juggling complex logistics.
In all contexts, asking for pronouns helps with inclusion and therefore diversity. And any discomfort people might feel is made up for by the feeling of joy for the person who is not normally given the opportunity to state their preferred pronouns. As J says, “Why would you not want somebody’s heart to sing?” – And this isn’t just for the people directly affected but also their allies. It’s a sign that you care about everyone. And don’t forget that some people don’t have the choice to avoid any pronoun-related discomfort.
When asking people for their pronouns, ask what pronouns people prefer. This avoids passive aggression. And when asking for diversity-related data, make sure you explain why. And explain that it’s anonymous. And then you can use tracking to monitor any apparent bias and ask questions about why certain people are being excluded.
You can be an ally for people who are vulnerable. If you spot something happening that might impact someone adversely, check in with them. Are they okay? And ask whether they’d like your intervention before leaping in.
Okay, stick around for extra content.
[music]
Every other episode, this last short segment will be devoted to ‘Storytime’. Storytelling is useful for teaching, for unlocking empathy, for creating a sense of shared connection and trust in your teams. I love telling stories to both children and adults. I’m actually a lapsed member of the UK Society for Storytelling. So the plan is that I’m going to be using stories to illustrate various points about effective software development.
I was 14 years old and babysitting for two small children. I think they were three and four years old. They were the children of my mother’s friend. I babysat for them a few times. I liked it there. It was a cosy house and the kids were nice, but there was one thing that was a bit awkward, which was the open fire. It was the main form of heating, and it was always going out, and I never really knew how to keep it going. But I did know this one trick where you hold up a sheet of newspaper in front of the fireplace. This causes oxygen to get sucked up the chimney at the bottom of the newspaper and pulls the air through the fire and gets it roaring again. It’s okay… This story has a happy ending! Well, depending on your point of view, but nobody died!
Okay, so the little boys were in bed. I was doing some homework, the fire went out. So I did the newspaper trick. But I made one fatal mistake. Instead of a sheet of newspaper. I held up a whole newspaper. I could hear the fire behind the newspaper roaring away, and once I was satisfied that it had done the job, I pulled away the newspaper and the whole thing was on fire. And it was at this point that I made my second mistake: In my panic, instead of just throwing the whole thing back in the fire, I dropped it. The carpet caught fire. A small stool and an armchair nearby both caught fire. There was quite a large area of fire, maybe a squared.
So, I ran into the kitchen, but I knew from making cups of tea how ridiculously slow-running the tap was. It didn’t seem like I had time to fill a container with water, and I couldn’t see a fire extinguisher. I looked at the phone, but I thought – surely by the time the Fire Brigade get here, it’s going to be too late. So I ran back in, and I just started sort of jumping up and down in the middle of it, trying to stamp it out. My hair caught fire, my shoe got a whole burnt right the way through to my skin – They were pale pink leather shoes. I can remember them really clearly, I think I must have been in my pink phase! – Anyway, somehow I managed to put the fire out, and I was left with a scene of devastation.
And then I heard the children calling for me. So I went upstairs. “Clare,” they said, “We can’t sleep!” “Why is that?”, I said, and they said “There are people screaming outside in the street!”
I couldn’t remember doing it, but I think it was probably me they heard screaming.
But everyone was basically okay. But it could have been so much worse. So what did I learn?
Well, I think the first thing is – don’t be afraid to ask clarifying questions. When I was first shown the newspaper trick, I could have tried practising it myself. I could have checked exactly what are the parameters for this? Is it okay to hold up a whole newspaper? Should you only ever do it with one sheet of newspaper? The answer is only one sheet.
But I think the main thing I learned was – always ask for help! When things are on fire – ,whether metaphorically, or in this case literally – It’s always okay to ask for help, even if you don’t end up needing it. If I hadn’t put the fire out, the Fire Brigade – if I’d called them – would have already been on the way. And actually, I could have been getting the kids and myself out of the house instead of making like some crazy kamikaze firefighter. Luckily, I’ve never been in that precise situation again, but I do think I’ve gotten better at asking for help!
[music]
And that’s the end of another episode. If you’re enjoying the podcast, please do leave us ratings and reviews because it pushes us up the directories and makes it easier for other people to find us. I’ve got a few talks coming up. You can see the details on my events page on medium, which is linked to from my Twitter profile. And you can find that at @claresudbery, which is probably not spelled the way that you think. There’s no I in Clare and Sudbery is spelled E R Y at the end, the same as surgery or carvery.
You can find Made Tech on Twitter at M A D E T E C H. Do come and say hello. We’re very interested to hear your feedback and any suggestions you have for any content for future episodes, or just to come and have a chat.
Thank you to Rose, our editor; Gina Cady, our podcast co-ordinator; Fiona Egan, our transcriber; Richard Murray for the music (there’s a link in the description); and the rest of our internal Made Tech team – Kyle Chapman, Jack Harrison, Karsyn Robb and Laura Plaga. Also in the description is a link for subscribing to our newsletter. We publish new episodes every fortnight on Tuesday mornings.
Thank you for listening and goodbye.
[Music Outro]
[Recording Ends]
Back to the episode
