[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.
February was LGBT+ History Month. So on Tuesday the 8th of February 2022, I spoke to Alex Herbert, who’s a Senior Engineer here at Made Tech, and has been heavily involved in working to make our organisation more diverse, inclusive and equitable for all of its colleagues. Now I couldn’t get this episode ready quickly enough to be published in February, but that’s okay. We don’t want to restrict ourselves to only thinking or talking about this topic in February!
Clare: Hello, Alex, how are you?
Alex: I’m good.
Clare: Thank you so much for joining me. So let’s leap straight in and talk about visibility of LGBT people in the IT industry because historically, there’s been pretty poor visibility of people in that group in this industry. And it’s not been an easy place for people to be out and proud. Do you think that’s still the case? Or do you think it’s changed at all?
Alex: So honestly, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. The IT industry, it’s always been quite progressive, but it’s by no means unique in a more societal context. So in the last 20 years or so there’s been a shift in societal perception of what it means to be gay and trans. There’s a lot less stigma now than there used to be. So there is naturally more visibility, what with television shows proudly including queer characters and things. With that visibility, there’s a bit more of a pushback or a backlash, I guess, from reactionaries and people who’ve never really had to think about these things before and are now annoyed that they have to. So England is particularly tough for LGBT people of late. In the last five years, hate crimes, especially violent hate crimes against LGBT people, have doubled in the last four years, more than doubled even.
So there is a lot of push for companies to be more diverse and inclusive, because there’s good science to show that people who feel comfortable with bringing their whole selves to work are more productive; that a diverse company generally has better results just by looking at the stats. But also, some companies might feel a bit hesitant to make more changes or celebrate diversity, since there might get a bit of a backlash these days and be accused of being ‘woke’ or potentially losing business. There was even recently a lawsuit and an appeal from a woman who felt she was terminated for refusing to treat her trans colleagues with respect. So I don’t want to go into that one because that’s an entire other kettle of fish, but it’s kind of a bit of a double-edged sword.
However, that being said, my hopes lie with the next generation because, unlike us, going through school, they were raised without Section 28 in place. So it wasn’t illegal for them to discuss LGBT issues in school, so they had a bit more of a comprehensive education around the subject. It’s certainly not so much of a faux pas to be gay in the younger generations than it was for my generation – I’m a Millennial, for reference – So once they start entering the workforce and everything starts filtering up, hopefully it’ll all become less of an issue because they tend to be a bit more of a tolerant generation. So I don’t really have a conclusion for that one. I’m just hoping it’ll be getting better all the time.
Clare: Yeah. One of the things you mentioned that you were talking about schools and about young people, and something that I’ve really found very encouraging is that my son who is now 19, when he was in high school, he had a friend in school who was trans and who was out at school, and the school were very supportive. And to be perfectly honest, this particular school is not particularly known for its progressiveness; it’s quite old-school in a lot of ways, and that’s been a concern to me. But in supporting this particular pupil, they were amazing. And what was really noticeable to me was that my son had no problem with using other pronouns, with the idea that this friend of theirs was actually using ‘they and them’. They changed their pronouns and, and all of that was fine with my son. He didn’t have trouble with it, because all of these concepts were being introduced to him at a young age where his brain is malleable and he can absorb these concepts. And you know, the great thing about children is, if you tell them things, if you introduce them to things, then that will just become their reality, and they won’t have any reason to question it. So I think that’s really encouraging from what I see.
And I have noticed in the last few years that I’ve had a lot more out colleagues but I don’t know if that’s because I’ve worked for better companies. It’s hard for me to tell, and I guess it’s hard for you to tell, because you and I both work for the same company, but it does feel a bit more encouraging. But the other thing I was going to talk about actually is, earlier on, I said ‘LGBT plus’ and then I said ‘this group’, but of course ‘LGBT plus’ covers a very wide spectrum. It covers sexuality and gender, for instance, they’re both kind of lumped in there, and the ‘plus’ just sort of gets tacked on at the end. But you know, gender is just as important as sexuality and isn’t the same thing as sexuality. And I wondered how you feel about the terminology that people use, and all the different ways that people tried to describe what they’re talking about.
Alex: So that is a great question. ‘LGBT’ at the moment is absolutely, like you said, it’s used kind of like an umbrella or a shorthand for anything that’s not fully heterosexual cisgender. And there’s a lot of genuine discussion around whether it’s still appropriate. So like, on one hand, you could try to be a bit more inclusive and do the LGBTQIA – which is lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer or questioning, intersex, allies, asexual, aromantic, that kind of thing – but you kind of end up with a bit of an alphabet soup. And even if you do all of that, it’s still not necessarily representing everybody. So agender, pansexual, non-binary people aren’t included in what I’ve just said there. You can’t like add an initial of everything without it just becoming massive.
But on the other hand, I can also understand how it can feel for some people who are not necessarily represented by the big four letters, that their experience might be considered as less than them. So by putting definitions on these things, we accidentally made our own binary to an extent, potentially. It does sort of create an implicit in-group and out-group. Also, leaving letters out of that can be considered more of a concern lately, since there are certain divisive groups that brand themselves by explicitly removing one of the four letters. The tacit inference is that the removal of that letter shows an opposition to people of that identity. So, by not including everybody in the LGBTQIA plus, are we doing the same thing?
So this is quite a big question. I don’t know the answers myself. There’s a lot of big non profit community-led organisations that are also considering the same issue. So I think we’re just going to have to wait and see on this one, how community changes all the time.
Clare: One of the things that I like to do is use the words ‘underrepresented’ or ‘marginalised’. So for instance, I’ll talk about underrepresented genders. And that’s another way of saying everybody except the favoured majority, which is men, because actually they’re not always the majority. That’s quite a nice way of saying that I’m including all genders. I’m talking about underrepresented genders. A term that we used to use at ThoughtWorks was ‘GUM’ which stood for gender underrepresented minorities. But when you just talk generally about, you know, ‘all genders’ for instance, rather than ‘both genders’ and the same goes for sexuality, just talk about ‘all sexualities’ to indicate that you’re being inclusive of all sexualities, and all genders. I think that helps. But of course, in different contexts, different things are appropriate.
Alex: I understand. I think that that’s quite a good method.
Clare: So, what can employers do to help create an environment where LGBT+ people feel welcome and safe?
Alex: That’s also a great question. It’s quite a big long list, and this list is by no means exhaustive. The primary thing you need to understand is that it’s not just getting people in, you have to also foster a culture in the company that retains people. So if you want to just take a diversity box and say, “oh, we need to hire three good people by the end of the year” and then you do that, but then they all leave within the following year, then you haven’t really made any progress. So there are certain things that you can do to start with, such as looking seriously at your job applications and job specifications, the gendered language. I know that we at Made Tech do that. We’ve got some tools to help us automatically pull through all of the job specifications that we post out, and see if there is language in there that would necessarily favour one group above the other, and we tried to make that as neutral as possible to encourage applications from a multitude of sources for example.
It’s important to make employees feel comfortable in the workplace. So a key thing there might be setting up social groups so that LGBT employees can communicate with each other and go out and learn who each other are, understand that they’re not alone in the organisation.
You need to be confident in seeking employee feedback on diversity issues as well. So having an employee group that might bring potential issues that people have faced, to a higher level in the organisation. So something that really helps with that is getting buy-in from the top, so especially senior-level executives. If they are interested in improving the diversity of the business then you’re kind of onto a winner there, because it means they’ll listen to you.
So once you’ve got lots of feedback and a bit more understanding of your employees, you can start to draft comprehensive equality policies. A big part of this is being able to handle discrimination effectively. So if there’s an issue that happens in the workplace, or indeed while working for a client, if there’s a policy in place there to protect the colleague on the receiving end of that discrimination, that can be a very positive thing.
Also allowing LGBT people and their allies to make their voices heard. So for example, at Made Tech, we have showcases. I’ve done some showcases before. We’ve had some talks from external people. So we had a trans speaker recently talking to the wider org about trans issues.
Clare: Oh, yes. That was wonderful. Can you remind me of her name?
Alex: Katie Neeves.
Clare: Katie Neeves. That’s right. Katie Neeves is fantastic. I absolutely encourage people to look her up. Sorry, carry on.
Alex: Absolutely. That’s important. So then you’ve also got to collect data. Collect, measure, and try to improve from the data that you’re collecting. If you’re stuck as an organisation of how to improve diversity, you can seek assistance from an external organisation. Stonewall’s Diversity Champions is famous for having a diversity index. They help businesses become more inclusive, specifically more LGBT inclusive. And it’s also important to support the local LGBT community wherever you are, that shows that you actually care. It’s not just something that you’re doing to hire more employees, increase diversity and increase revenue; it shows that you actually care, if you support local organisations.
Clare: Yeah. And I think showing that you care is really important because it means that when people join your organisation, you are in underrepresented groups. It makes them feel comfortable and happy. It’s, you know, it’s nice to join a new organisation and feel like you’re being noticed and cared for. And also, we’ve mentioned this in other episodes – It’s not just about the people that are directly affected. It’s about their allies. It’s about people who care about these issues and care about other people. When they see that the organisation that they’re working for cares, then that makes them feel good and safe and happy.
And the other thing that I was going to talk about was, Stonewall is an organisation that we were also involved with at ThoughtWorks. And they did some fantastic work and the thing that was really noticeable, they did a kind of an annual, almost audit, that I think involved everybody in the company filling in a questionnaire, quite a detailed questionnaire, that then allowed Stonewall to basically give ThoughtWorks a score for you know, how you’re doing for your inclusive policies, and your support for LGBT+ people. And that was really useful because it got everybody thinking and talking about it. And it also meant, you know, I mean, it’s almost gamifying it to some extent, like we want to get a high score, we want to do well, and Stonewall publish those scores and they have kind of like a league table, effectively. That was really interesting, that had a really positive effect.
Alex: I’m glad to hear that. I know that there’s been a lot of controversy as well. False controversy really about Stonewall.
Clare: Yeah, unfortunately, they’ve suffered really badly because they’ve been targeted by transphobic campaigners, who unfortunately have been able to have an impact on Stonewall, which is just horrible. But they’re a great organisation, in my view. You talked about gendered language in job interviews. Can you give an example, because it’s not just about using the words ‘he’ and ‘she’ is it? It goes a bit further than that.
Alex: Yeah, it’s not. There’s things like, just off the top of my head: “You must be able to work at flexible times” is kind of saying “men only” because in a lot of cases, women will have children to take care of. So that kind of limits the pool of women that will apply to that job, because women more than anybody tend to need more flexibility in their work, but also more stability to an extent as well, because women these days are still the majority when it comes to primary care of children. So, in order to kind of fit your life around that, you can’t just be called out on-call on to a job at 11 o’clock at night. So things like that are going to affect how many women apply for a job.
Clare: Sometimes it just occurred to me is that some people in the industry talk about ‘software craftsmen’ and ‘craftsmanship’. And some people say “Oh they know we mean women as well!” but every time, as a woman or somebody in a gender minority, you see the word ‘man’ just being used kind of being thrown around like that, just as an assumption that the default is male…
Alex: Yes, the default.
Clare: Yeah, then it has just that another little impact on you, so “oh, I’m not really supposed to be here!” you know, “this is really for men”. Those things do make a difference. But it is interesting because people do also talk about things like aggressive language. So for instance, focusing on war analogies, you know, talking about things like ‘war rooms’, and in some job adverts, they’ll talk about having a ‘competitive edge’ or they’ll use language that’s stereotypically male, but that’s a really interesting one to talk about.
And actually, the one that you said about women being child-carers as well, because it is true that the majority of people doing that are women, and it is true that typically men are the ones who are more likely to be clustered around language to do with war. But of course, you don’t want to be making assumptions about that stuff. So when you say that you don’t want to have too much of an emphasis on flexible hours, and you don’t want to have too much of an emphasis on war analogies. It’s not even as simple as saying “because that’s for men” because of course, women and other genders are perfectly capable of being interested in that stuff. And other genders can also be caring for children. But it’s about being not exclusive. So it’s about making things open to everybody, isn’t it? So that you’re not only focusing on one group of people.
Alex: Absolutely.
Clare: The other thing that I was going to ask you about was data, because you said that you want to be able to gather data, you want to be able to look at how you’re doing as an organisation. And one of the things, particularly for LGBT+ a lot of the time, particularly sexuality, but also gender, are things that can be not visible and you don’t necessarily know by looking or speaking to somebody, whether they are trans or whether they are gay or whether they’re in an underrepresented gender or sexuality. And that’s a little bit of a kind of a Catch 22 because you can ask them, but if you haven’t created a safe environment, they’re not necessarily going to tell you. So there are ways of collecting data anonymously, but also I imagine there’s a bit of a sort of cyclical effect, that the more safe and inclusive you make your workplace, the more likely it is that even when you’re doing an anonymous survey you’ll get higher numbers of people self-reporting, because they will feel safer to do so.
Alex: That’s correct. So I really only talk about my experiences here in Made Tech. We do a regular ENPS survey. There’s only one question on it: ”Would you be happy to advertise Made Tech to a friend?” And that’s kind of a general measure of how happy individuals in the company are. But you’re absolutely right. And when you’re collecting the data, you need to ask people for this data, assure them that it is anonymised and try to collect as accurate data as possible, so that you know where your shortfalls are.
So one of the things that we do at Made Tech is, because we tend to work for councils and public services, creating new digital software solutions for them. We want to be over represented in the company by groups that are underrepresented in society, just so that we have that level of visibility on the tasks that we’re doing, by a lot of different people, from a lot of different backgrounds. So that if we design something that is a little bit exclusionary, then that will be caught by one of the people that work on it. Because they have that kind of lived experience. So yes, for Made Tech we are specifically trying to encourage over representation in underrepresented groups. And I think that that’s why we’ve got such a strong commitment to being a diverse organisation. So I would hope that when we do send out those forms to say hey, tell us about you, but also it’s anonymous, then we are going to get accurate results back.
Clare: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
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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’ll 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.
Just a quick reminder that before the break we were talking about Made Tech’s aim to have over representation from underrepresented groups, so we can maximise the chances that we offer diverse perspectives when developing new services in partnership with our clients.
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Clare: So we’ve talked about what employers can do to help create an environment where people feel welcome and safe. What can colleagues do?
Alex: So, number one is just be respectful to your colleagues. They’re people too, just like you, and we all basically want the same things out of life – health and happiness and all of that jazz. So if you want to be an ally to trans people specifically, it can be good to put your pronouns in your bio, even if you’re just cisgender, binary, male or female. If you put ‘he/him’ or ‘she/her’ in your bio, it’s kind of an inference for any trans person to say that you kind of understand trans issues and wouldn’t be terrified if you suddenly found out that you were talking to a trans person, which for trans people who grew up in England, that can be a concern. If somebody suddenly finds out that you’re trans, and all of a sudden their entire attitude shifts towards you. If you see somebody who has pronouns in their signature, you can kind of infer that they have some level of understanding of trans issues, and won’t necessarily be suddenly disgusted by you if you interact with them, and will probably give you a decent amount of respect. But this also helps trans people in your organisation figure themselves out without necessarily outing themselves, because if it was all the trans people who put pronouns in their bio because, “oh, it’s not immediately obvious, so other people need to be told explicitly” kind of thing, then it would be really easy to identify everybody that’s trans in an organisation. So, by doing it as an ally, you’re also kind of providing cover for your trans colleagues to be able to express themselves more genuinely inside of the workplace, which is a very good thing in my book.
Another big thing, and this is probably the hardest thing of being a good ally, is to challenge bigotry, when and if you see it happen. So if you’re hanging out with all of your builder mates down at the pub, and one of them makes quite a bad misogynist joke, you kind of have to call them out on it, if you’re trying to foster a sense of diversity and inclusion in the business and in your life. That’s the kind of crux of it. That’s where it can get uncomfortable. So, the same thing about challenging racism: If you’re out in an entirely white group and one of you cracks a racist joke, because everybody’s white you have the feeling of “Oh I don’t need to say it, they know that it’s wrong, and they’re only comfortable making that because they’re in this all-white group”. You should still kind of call them out on it. It’s a lot easier to shrink away, but it’s something that needs to be challenged, any kind of discriminatory language like that. So that’s obviously the big one.
And honestly, there’s a lot of guides floating about especially because it’s LGBT History Month now, on how to be a good ally, how to make your colleagues feel comfortable and stuff. So honestly, if you’ve read any of those, you’re probably a good ally.
Clare: Fantastic. Yeah. There was something that you just said that really stuck with me actually. You said that if you’re trans, and your colleagues discover that you’re trans, there’s going to always be a little worry that they might suddenly react disgustedly. And I think that is a really simple way of explaining why transphobia is such a bad thing. You know, imagine being in that situation where you’re worried that people who you’re working with, just any person you might encounter might suddenly react to you with disgust. That’s a horrible position to be in. And that just that is just a really good way of describing why prejudice and discrimination against trans people is so very not okay. I just wanted to get that in there.
Alex: No absolutely. I mean, I guess you can say that there’s certain subset of trans people this can apply, those who are considered ‘cis-passable’. But at the same time, you don’t want to say like how ‘cis-passing’ you are, isn’t necessarily a measure of your trans-ness.
Clare: Of course not.
Alex: Trans people who aren’t passable as cis people are absolutely valued and beautiful people. And, you know, it might not even be their goal, but trying to conform to what the rest of society thinks is normal, so that you can try your best to avoid those layers of disgust or, you know, potential conflicts with somebody who just found out, who doesn’t like trans people, you just kind of don’t want to deal with that. And that’s why a lot of trans people try to use the stealth option.
Clare: Yeah, yeah. It makes me really angry. It makes me really angry that anybody has to go through that, that anybody should have to worry about it, that that should even be a factor in how they choose to present themselves.
Alex: I agree. It makes me sad.
Clare: So I was going to ask you if you had any personal stories that you would like to share about how this impacts you?
Alex: So I started my career in tech a few years after I got out of university, because I finished university in 2008. There was big financial crash. I couldn’t find any IT jobs in the part of the country where I lived. So subsequently, I applied for what I consider my first decent IT job. I was an IT Assistant at a Housing Association and I applied as a man. I felt incredibly qualified, and the job interview really didn’t go very well. But regardless, I was offered the job. As soon as I had the money available in my account, I started doing what all trans people in the UK do as soon as they have any kind of decent money – buying hormones online. Because the NHS system is kind of ridiculous at the minute, and has been for a long time. But that’s a story for another time.
So in this job, I started to feel comfortable enough to transition. Really appreciated how my boss said, “I’ve never had a female employee” and I was like, “Well, I’ve got news for you mate!” [they both laugh heartily]
Clare: That’s brilliant, I love it!
Alex: So, then there was a time shortly after that I decided that, for career reasons, I couldn’t really move up in that organisation. There was only a small IT department, and unless somebody else left, there was no real progression for me. And I’d always wanted to be a programmer anyway, so I moved down to Manchester to try to be a computer programmer. And at this point I was out, I was living as a trans woman, and I was quite visibly trans as well. So I got training with an agency for a couple of months, and then I started going on thejob interview circuit. And it took ever such a long time to actually get a job. Because when you look obviously trans, there’s always that “hmm, do I really want to hire that person?” There’s kind of a stigma there, or there was back when I was looking for work as a programming graduate. So there were things like, “Oh, you’re really well qualified Alex, but I think that you might be a bit too qualified” or “I don’t think that you’d fit in well with our company culture” – and it doesn’t take a lot to read between the lines as a trans person, to say “Yeah, I know why you’re not hiring me”. So it took a while for me to get a place. I had a programming job for a couple of years down in the South. And then when I finally re emerged and came back up towards Manchester, I was a lot more visibly femme and it was easier for me to be cis-passing if I so choose. Like, I’m not saying that I’m an expert at it and can do it 100% but in things like job interviews at the time, I would just try to be as cis passing as possible just to avoid what I had before. And I found it to be quite easy to get a job again. But then once I was on the job, I seemed to be surrounded by a lot of men who didn’t really want to listen to me. So it’s kind of being able to see from all of these different sides. It’s kind of like going around the outside of a circle to appreciate the entire surface and, you know, having all of these different ways that people treat me differently, just because of my presenting outward gender, and I honestly found it quite interesting.
Clare: Thank you for sharing that. I think it really gives some insight into what it’s like to be working as a trans person in this industry. Okay, are there any LGBT+ IT pioneers or distinguished figures, modern or historical, that you’re inspired by? I normally ask that question at the beginning, but because I wanted to kind of expand it out – because of our topic and because of LGBT+ History Month, I kind of moved it to the end so that we could really expand on it.
Alex: So that’s a great question, Claire, as always. So, I have loads! I’m going to go into some detail on some of these, but other ones I’m just going to give honourable mention, if that’s okay?
Clare: Of course!
Alex: So, obviously the famous one is Alan Turing, they gay cryptanalyst who speared the decryption of the Enigma during the Second World War. He helped design and build the Bombe, and later, Colossus, which is considered the first electronic computer by a lot of people. He was instrumental in cracking the Enigma which allowed us to read their communications during the Second World War. However, he was famously gay throughout his time there, but was never able to live his true life because being a gay guy back then just wasn’t societally acceptable, which he found out and experienced personally in 1952, when he was convicted of gross indecency after beginning a consensual relationship with another man, which led to him being denied entry to the US, losing his security clearance in the UK Government, and suffering inhumane treatments, such as being forced to choose to either be chemically castrated or thrown in prison. Turing chose the former option, and he was given a synthetic form of oestrogen in an attempt to make him ‘normal’, which had unforeseen consequences like him growing breasts after a while. Later, he took his own life, famously dipping an apple in cyanide and eating in what’s known to be a re-enactment of his favourite movie, which is Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. It wasn’t until 2009 when the UK government issued a formal apology, and there has since been an ‘Alan Turing’s Law’ I think, which is about going back historically, anyone who was convicted of this kind of gross indecency has it expunged from the records – which, quite late, but sure, at least they’re trying. There’s a monument to Turing in Sackville Gardens in Manchester, not far from me, which is Alan Turing sitting on a bench holding an apple, which I think is beautiful.
Clare: I love that monument. When I used to go into the office, I used to cycle past it every day, it’s great. I like sitting next to him on the bench.
Alex: Me too. My first Pride, I was sat next to Turing on the bench.
Clare: Oh, brilliant.
Alex: So yeah, there’s quite multiple dimensions of people that I find really inspiring. Sophie Wilson, for example, was a computer scientist who was instrumental in designing low-power microprocessors in the early 80s. She worked at Acorn Computers, where she designed the BBC Micro machine, which I’m old enough to have played with, and the BBC BASIC language as well, and so she designed the first generation of ARM processors which you might recognise as being in basically everybody’s smartphone. So yeah, she transitioned later on, but absolutely “transwomen power smartphones”. Hashtag whatever, social media!
Lynn Conway as well, worked in IBM purchasing new microchip technologies, which allowed chips to process instructions out of order, which is the basis for a lot of microchips today. So she is credited with helping to create the precursor to the modern processor. She was fired from IBM for wanting to transition. So she left and transitioned anyway, and then managed to find other jobs in the 70s onwards, in what we trans people called ‘stealth mode’ – to which I previously eluded – which is where you just pretend to be cis and don’t tell anybody that you’re trans. IBM issued a formal apology to her for their treatment of her, in 2020. So that took a long time as well.
There’s also Angelica Ross, the self-taught computer programmer and actress who you might recognise from the recent hit series ‘Pose’ – which is amazing! – She started TransTech in 2014, which is an organisation aimed at fostering trans people in the tech industry and growing their skills.
Sally Ride, of course, the first lesbian astronaut. She spent her post-NASA life trying to teach women how to get into STEM subjects.
Clare: Wonderful.
Alex: Good old Doctor Ride! There is Audrey Tang, who is a Taiwanese free software programmer and the first non-binary person in the Taiwanese cabinet, after initially working to aid a protest to get their message out against the government. The Taiwanese government eventually offered Audrey Tang a job to improve digital literacy, which made them the first non binary person in the Taiwanese cabinet.
Tim Cook of course, famously gay CEO of Apple, came out in 2014, the first multi-billion Dollar CEO or something like that to come out as gay. Lots of queerness in tech that often goes unseen.
Clare: Fantastic thank you. Okay, so we’re running out of time. So I’m going to go to the questions I always ask at the end. So the first one is: can you tell me one thing about you that’s true, and one thing about you that’s untrue?
Alex: I once won a Chess tournament.
Clare: Okay…
Alex: I once won a Pokemon tournament!
Clare: Ah, oh, sneaky! Right. Okay.
[music]
We’ll reveal which of Alex’s answers was true and which was false in our next episode, which will be an interview with Katy Armstrong about servant leadership. But meanwhile, here’s the answer from Ryan Bergman’s episode on the Open Source landscape, where Ryan told us that either he and his family have a project going on where they’re trying to take a family photograph in front of all 99 US County courthouses; or that once they got accidentally locked in a courthouse and had to spend the entire day there, because they went to use the bathroom and got locked in!
Ryan: We’re trying to take our family’s photographs in front of all the hundred courthouses.
Clare: I loved your embellishments! I loved the story about getting locked in because you needed the toilet, that’s perfect!
[To Alex:] Where can people find you, and do you have anything coming up that you’d like to plug?
Alex: So I famously, or infamously even, have an incredible dislike and distaste for social media. So if I’ve done my job correctly, you can’t find me anywhere!
Clare: Haha fantastic, I love it!
Alex: I would however, like to plug the LGBT foundation in Manchester, for which I volunteer, and if you wish to volunteer with them, or if you wish to donate, or if you need to just use their services: LGBT foundation in Manchester is at “LGBT.foundation”. And as for podcasts: If you’re a trans person in the UK and you want the most recent up to date, trans news and interviews, then there’s a podcast called “What the trans?!” which is kind of a bit of a news focused one.
Clare: Great, thank you. Okay, so to end on a high, what’s the best thing that’s happened to you in the last month or so?
Alex: So you say the last month, but that’s been a bit coloured by lockdown. So I want to talk about last September. So, my partner’s quite enamoured with the recent aesthetic in ‘women who love women’ – casually referred to as ‘Sword Lesbians’ – where women tend to get married using swords, pausing for lots of pictures in their wedding dresses with swords.
Clare: Okay!
Alex: So I took my sweetie down to Kent to forge a sword for the week.
Clare: Wow!
Alex: So we each went down there, barely knowing how to hold a hammer, and we worked a forge, and we did the grounding, and made the handle, made the wood that goes on the handle, stuck it all together, did something called peening with a peening hammer. That was amazing. And we came away with a sword each.
Clare: Wow!
Alex: So if anyone else who’s listening to the podcast who’s interested in making swords, I believe it was Owen Bush, down in Kent, and I would highly recommend them and their services.
Clare: Wow, that sounds like so much fun! Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Alex. It’s been really good to talk to you.
Alex: It’s been great to talk to you as well.
As always, to help you, guess what? I’m going to attempt to summarise it. ‘LGBT+’ stands for Lesbian Gay, Bisexual and Transgender… and a lot of other things. Because those first four letters are only the tip of the iceberg. We’re already mixing together both sexuality and gender. And it’s important not to exclude anyone, but it can get tricky. Sometimes it’s helpful to talk about marginalised or underrepresented sexualities and genders.
The good news is that over the last 20 years, a shift in societal perception has meant that there’s less stigma around being LGBT+, there’s more visibility, but there’s also been some backlash. Violent hate-crimes in England have significantly increased against LGBT+ people. But there is still good news. There’s a lot of push for companies to be more diverse and inclusive. When people are comfortable in bringing their whole selves to work – and that particularly applies to sexuality and gender – they’re more effective. Thankfully, the homophobic legislation of Section 28 In Britain – something which also came up in conversation with Lou Downe in our episode on good services – This legislation was repealed in 2003, which has made things easier for the next generation.
At Made Tech, because we want to be certain that we’re providing diverse perspectives to our clients, we aim for over-representation of underrepresented groups. So, what can employers do to create a welcoming, safe environment to help them to improve on diversity? Well, it’s not enough to hire from diverse backgrounds. You also need to retain people, and that means creating a good working environment.
But back to the hiring: What you can do is – you can check job specs for gendered language. So the way that you describe your work and your challenges, any assumptions you make about working conditions – So for instance, don’t assume that everyone could work long or unsocial hours – people might have caring responsibilities. And don’t use words that imply a certain group of people. For instance, using the word ‘man’ by default. There are tools that you can use to check the language of your job adverts.
Provide social groups so that LGBT+ people can communicate with each other and know that they’re not alone. Collect anonymous data on how things are going. Give employees avenues to provide feedback, and ensure that feedback will be taken seriously, all the way to the top of your organisation. Have policies in place for how discrimination will be handled, both from colleagues and clients. Allow LGBT+ people and their allies to make their voices heard. For instance, you can host talks for both internal and external speakers. If you’re stuck, seek assistance from external organisations such as Stonewall, and support the local LGBT+ community wherever you’re based.
So, what can colleagues do to create a welcoming environment for LGBT+ folks? Be respectful. Remember, we’re all basically the same. We all want health and happiness. Publish your pronouns. Let trans people know that you’re understanding of their issues, and won’t react badly if you discover that they are trans. This also – the use of pronouns – provides cover so that it’s not only the trans people who are putting pronouns in their bios. Challenge bigotry when you see it. And be aware that LGBT+ people are often scared about how people will react to them, because they’ve had bad experiences in the past. So the more welcoming and understanding you are, the more you help to alleviate those fears.
Okay, that’s not all. 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.
[music fades]
I’ve been a software engineer for 22 years, but it hasn’t been continuous. in 2007 I left IT altogether, and in 2009 I retrained as a high school maths teacher. That’s another story all of its own! So it didn’t go brilliantly. When teenagers are being forced to stay in a room and study a subject you might love but they mostly hate, by somebody who struggles with multitasking, and who is discovering that the theory of applying consistent rules consistently, is very different from the practice of keeping track of several bored misbehaving teenagers simultaneously… Their default is to be, let’s just say ‘difficult’. So I didn’t have a great time.
Most teachers will be able to tell you which is their least favourite class – that gives them headaches, just thinking about them. And often, not always, but often, that class will be year nine, which in the UK is the class of kids aged 13 to 14. They’re hovering between childhood and adolescence. They want security and freedom, both at once. What made things slightly awkward for me was that my best friend’s son was in year nine at the school – luckily not in my maths class – but a lot of his friends were.
Anyway, this story takes place four years later. I’ve long-since given up on teaching. I didn’t last long at all. My friend’s son, the one who had been in year nine when I was teaching, was going to be 18, and he was planning a party at his parents’ house. And I was invited to keep my friend company while her house was taken over by exuberant 18-year-olds. I said yes without really thinking about it. And then, too late, discovered that she and I were going to be the only adults present over the age of 19. And that a lot of my year nine maths class would be there. Okay, they were four years older, probably more mature. But I was embarrassed to think about what kind of impression I might have left as their ineffective maths teacher! And what if anybody tried to gate-crash? What if things kicked off? By the time the party rolled around, I was quite apprehensive.
We set up camp in my friend’s bedroom, occasionally venturing out to check everything was okay, but mostly operating as a kind of community centre for partygoers to come and chill with us for a bit before returning to the fray. When I was a teacher, my least favourite job was playground duty – standing on a windy corner, hoping I’d be able to cope with whatever misdemeanours occurred. At some point during the party, somebody arrived at the front door who wasn’t welcome. There was general consternation. There were some scary looking young people hovering in the hallway. I stood halfway down the stairs, not really sure what to do. They glared at me. I glared back. I adopted the classic forbidding teacher pose. There was a pause… my heart was in my mouth, but it worked. They left. That was one hurdle dealt with.
But what about those ex maths pupils? The first time one of them popped their head around my friend’s bedroom door, I braced myself. I was quite nervous. And then found myself enveloped in a big hug! One by one they appeared and gave me hugs, and apologised for the grief they gave me when they were younger. It turned out they had positive memories of my maths classes. It was all rather touching and lovely!
So, what’s the lesson in this story? Well, often when you think you’re doing a bad job, it’s not as bad as you think. Other people have different things to worry about, and are rarely focusing on the same things as you. So, things that linger in your own memory don’t necessarily linger in the same way for others. And finally, if you stand firm, and look firm, it’s amazing what an impact it can have.
[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 spelt 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]
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