Three sporting events, two very recent & one very old, have me thinking about the organizations I'm a part of and my role in them.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/football-chess-software-fennel-aurora/

#Software #ProductManagement #Inclusion #ItsNotAPipelineProblem #EmbarrassmentDrivenProductManagement

Ed Yong is back with another must-read article, this time on what "chronic fatigue" actually means in practice for the millions living with these post-viral syndromes.

It is a certainty that you know at least one person living with something of this kind.

It's a certainty that at least one of your colleagues or employees is battling a painful energy budgeting problem.

The only question is whether any of them trust you or your organization's culture enough to disclose to you what they are living with?

Now, what are you going to do to change that?

https://archive.md/sBL8T

#Software #Inclusion #DisabilityAwarenessMonth #ItsNotAPipelineProblem

I started practicing it:
- Visibly listening
- Exaggerated nodding
- Exaggerated laughing / smiling
- Exaggerated "oh no", "wow really?", "yikes!", "makes sense", "that's true" faces

Why exaggerate? Especially on our tiny boxes in our video calls, small changes aren't easily visible.

The same is often true from a stage or a lecture theatre when you're one person in a big audience - we notice you because your movements stand out from the crowd.

Obviously being on camera so much, and being so conscious of how I am on camera, is work and often tiring.

I think it is worth my effort for 2 reasons:

1. This is one more of those "Simple Things I Do To Help More People Feel Welcome At Work" (see here for more: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/things-i-do-help-more-people-feel-welcome-work-fennel-aurora/).

Especially given my seniority, giving public encouragement, welcome, and help is something I consider a core part of my job.

2. Given the ongoing pandemic means I'm fully remote in a corporate world where there is always a tendency towards in-person chauvinism - and even before the pandemic this chauvinism was relevant as someone working in a satellite office rather than at HQ - being more consistently visible is also in part a way to compensate for that exclusion tendency. [2/2]

#Software #ProductManagement #Inclusion #ItsNotAPipelineProblem

Why is my camera on so much at work? Why are my physical reactions deliberately exaggerated?

This is one of the first things I learnt as a teacher - there will always be people in the class who will help by giving silent feedback and encouragement, no matter how nervous and unsure you are.

The same happens in sales presentations, in keynote talks, or performing on a stage - there will always be at least 1 person in the audience who helps you know whether or not you are landing your message or performance.

Those people are invaluable to presenters.

Those people help us keep the energy going.

Those people help us know when we need to explain more or differently.

Those people help us know when we need to switch to a different topic because what we prepared isn't working as we hoped.

Those people help us be better presenters, better teachers, better performers.

Once I understood this, I wanted to be one of those people when I'm in an audience. [1/2]

#Software #ProductManagement #Inclusion #ItsNotAPipelineProblem

96.3% of the top 1 million websites by traffic have basic accessibility errors, averaging 50 errors per page.

Most of the companies behind those sites have a diversity and inclusion statement which now can't be accessed by a large part of the population.

This is not a talent shortage.

This is not a pipeline problem.

This is choices on who gets priority which systemically just "happen" to always go in one direction.

https://webaim.org/projects/million/

#Software #ProductManagement #Inclusion #ItsNotAPipelineProblem #EmbarrassmentDrivenProductManagement

It is a constant minor irritant that I'm deeply fed of having to think about and sometimes remind people about only for it be ignored and continue happening.

And I'm a cis man, someone who most people would assume should feel included by that language, even though I very much do not feel included by it.

For people even further from those labels (and despite all of our companies' systemic lack of diversity and inclusion, many of these other people still exist), having to shut up and swallow the petty disrespect, or spend energy and capital on getting people to show them basic respect, must be beyond exhausting.

And this is just one extremely minor example.

Yet somehow we talk about talent shortages and pipeline problems, as if the problems are somehow located outside ourselves.

Get serious. Please. [2/2]

#Software #CyberSecurity #Inclusion #ItsNotAPipelineProblem

So-called "micro" aggressions create an atmosphere of disrespect and exclusion.

Because each individual incident is "micro", reacting to any one incident, an incident that is part of a drip-drip-drip of the same kind of disrespect from every direction, makes the person being disrespected and excluded look petty and irrational.

Ie speaking up and trying to stop the disrespect and exclusion is dangerous for your relationships and your career, and will likely not fix the problem, but instead result in further disrespect of people pretending the problem isn't real.

For example, every time someone at work addresses me as "hi guys", "hi gents", "hi chaps", I want to answer something like "oh, so not me then? I guess I should leave then".

Am I going to do that in every single $&^*ing meeting and to every single damned email? Of course not.

No, I'm going to shut up most of the time, and pick my moments to yet again highlight it while politely dancing around the feelings of the people continuing to actively disrespect and exclude other people.

But I want to say things like this each time I hear or see those words used. [1/2]

#Software #CyberSecurity #Inclusion #ItsNotAPipelineProblem

Part of why everything that comes out of the "AI" hype charlatans of Silicon Valley (and their useful fools all across the world) is so awful both in their absurd imagined fake futures and in the real present harms they are inflicting on all of us right now is that their foundational ideas are rotten to the core, and have been since the beginning.

We cannot separate the very much ongoing and highly influential eugenics movement from so-called "AI" as practiced my the largest companies in the world.

The brilliant @timnitGebru lays it out with receipts and humour in this must-watch lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7XT4TWLzJw

#ArtificialIntelligence #Software #Inclusion #ItsNotAPipelineProblem

Only the most incompetent bigots get caught like this, but of course we know this kind of attitude and practice exists all across our industry.

Our industry must face the reality that either we really believe approximately all the best most promotable talent are white men from certain countries, with occasional white women from the same or we have a serious segregation & inclusion problem all across our industry.

Until we all face that reality head on, I don't have a lot of hope anything will change.

While we pretend there is a pipeline problem and talk about so-called unconscious bias to spare the feelings of those enacting bigotry in our companies, I don't have a lot of hope anything will change.

This is exactly who we are until we actually take action to change ourselves.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3wgkx/tech-firm-lists-whites-only-job-blames-employee-nukes-online-presence

#Software #CyberSecurity #Inclusion #ItsNotAPipelineProblem

Today is #TransgenderDayOfVisibility. Despite the systemic discrimination, it's approximately certain that some of your colleagues and customers are impacted.

This day comes in a world where much of the English language media around the world is doing exactly what The Onion makes explicit in their excellent "It Is Journalism’s Sacred Duty To Endanger The Lives Of As Many Trans People As Possible" : https://www.theonion.com/it-is-journalism-s-sacred-duty-to-endanger-the-lives-of-1850126997

This day comes in a world where the English speaking countries are providing shameful global leadership in threatening and enacting naked bigotry as law.

Your trans and non-binary colleagues and customers likely do not want to be very visible in a world like this.

It is a terrifying place to be in as a member of a tiny minority, often visible without a choice, living under constant threats of incitements to, and actual enacted violence from the most powerful people around.

Spare a thought for your colleagues and customers.

Spare a thought for what we can do to let them know they are explicitly welcome & included in our workplaces, despite what the bigots in power say.

"May we all consider the many ways that each of us can make every space we enter less hostile for more people." - Koritha Mitchell

#Inclusion #SoftwareEngineering #CyberSecurity #ItsNotAPipelineProblem

And because disproportionate and overwhelming administrative violence is the standard organizational response to even the most mildly spoken uncomfortable truth from already vulnerable people, there is now a petition people can sign: https://openletter.earth/reinstate-susanne-tauber-protect-social-safety-and-academic-freedom-at-the-rug-ed83c085 #ItsNotAPipelineProblem #Software #CyberSecurity

This excellent short essay on the failings of "#diversity minus #inclusion" schemes in Dutch academia could equally be about any other country and any other industry, including my own. Required reading for those like me who consider the current status quo as unacceptable, and see it as our duty to find ways to change it:

"But I think we should forsake the collective delusion that having an equal opportunity program is equivalent to being an equal opportunity employer. The discrepancy between public commitment and actual progress seems to stem largely from the conviction that, if put on paper, diversity will magically result in inclusiveness. But such inclusiveness does not manifest without explicit efforts. The past decade has seen an almost religious faith in the benefits of diversity, leading many organizations to impose diversity policies on their long-standing employees in a top-down manner. In my view, universities and other organizations gravely underestimate the covert resistance against the perceived imposition of diversity policies. In other words: organizations have failed to prepare their managers and the workforce for ‘doing’ diversity by acting in an inclusive manner."

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joms.12516

#ItsNotAPipelineProblem #Software #CyberSecurity

A really nice UK naturalist has started a series on trying to show what it's like to be autistic. Unlike most programs about us, it is led by and involving autistic people, rather than outsiders looking at us as zoo animals. It's lovely: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0bbnjvx/inside-our-autistic-minds-series-1-episode-1 (you will need a UK VPN & to make a throwaway account to be able watch, unless you have other ways to access BBC things)

We're all around your workplaces, and out of necessity in an often extremely hostile world, many of us are very good at masking it.

For many of us, you will only find out we are autistic when we deliberately decide to drop a small part of the mask.

For others who aren't able to mask as completely, you see our absolute worse moments, for which we are often severely punished.

Either way, that constant masking comes at a very high cost for us, this program gives a good look at how and why that is.

#ActuallyAutistic #ItsNotAPipelineProblem #Software #CyberSecurity

Have you ever noticed how a mixture of wishful thinking and a desire to maintain privileges while avoiding any changes leads us to talk about the present in the past tense?

"Post-colonial Europe"
"Post-racial America"
"The pre-MeToo world"
"During the pandemic it was"

We are very good at putting things we don't like about ourselves and things we don't want to acknowledge, face, or do something about into a fictional past, while the reality remains very much in the present.

Wonder why I talk about both #CovidIsNotOver, #ItsNotAPipelineProblem, and #EmbarrassmentDrivenProductManagement so much?

This is why. #Language matters.

Dangerously mediocre unremarkable white dude in tech* strikes again 🤦🏻‍♂️

The layers upon layers of entirely unjustified confidence displayed by this utterly mediocre techbro are staggering to behold:
https://www.fastcompany.com/90848175/twitter-stuck-in-code-loop-nightmare

* coined by Kim Crayton

#Software #ItsNotAPipelineProblem

There is something deeply enjoyable about a skilled and well-researched writer putting a layer of respectible politeness over an evisceration of a whole industry of scammers willfully perpetrating mass harm on children and the wider society.

Anyway, here is some #PR advice for the #EduTech industry from @RisuToInu : https://pracademy.co.uk/insights/why-edtech-startups-must-plan-crisis-communications/

#Software #CyberSecurity #ItsNotAPipelineProblem

People who understand software, people who create websites, apps, programs, whole computers systems are constantly putting themselves in the mind of their software.

Software is one big exercise in empathy with a slightly alien mind. Just like getting to understand and train a pet.

Software lets you know very clearly how it wants to be rubbed. Just like a cat, software gives you all the clues you need to make it happy.

Geeks are people who care enough for a computer's feelings to spend considerable time & effort to find that one wrong letter and fix it, just to make a computer happy.

Geeks don't have empathy? Balderdash!

Geeks can't understand when their behaviour is hurting people around them? Balderdash!

If the same person refuses to use your correct pronouns, or to stop incorrectly calling you "guys", or stop a million other casual acts of disrespect, it is not because they don't or can't understand.

"May we all consider the many ways that each of us can make every space we enter less hostile for more people." - Koritha Mitchell

#ItsNotAPipelineProblem #Software #CyberSecurity

@Patricia Ugh 🙁 I bang the #ItsNotAPipelineProblem drum, but actually it *is* a pipeline problem - a problem of the pipeline that keeps accelerating these asshats to positions of power and then maintaining them there to wreak untold harm and exclusion. 😬

Well I'm pretty sure that's the first brand's instance I've blocked on here. Mediocre unremarkable white dudes in tech really are impressively talented at blowing up perfectly serviceable companies they luck into controlling. 🤷🏻‍♂️🙃 #fediblock #ItsNotAPipelineProblem #software

Brilliant 1hr interview with Dr. Jonathan Flowers on "The #Whiteness of #Mastodon".

This should be required reading/listening for anyone working in #tech / #software.

All of the problems and complexity he explains are issues with all of our supposed "solutions" that are based in tech.

"This is not a technical problem, and it doesn’t have a technical solution [...] This is a problem at the intersection of technology and culture; that is, even if you were to resolve the technical issues, you still have the problem of the culture of Mastodon as inheriting whiteness [...] You are missing the fact that technology enables identity in a digital space, and insofar as technology enables identity in the digital space, the very norms of that space constrict how we can use the technology to make our identities present."

Go read / listen : https://techpolicy.press/the-whiteness-of-mastodon/

#ItsNotAPipelineProblem