Greater Than Code

View Top 200 Chart

Back to Rankings Page

Software How-To
**Greater Than Code**

For a long time, tech culture has focused too narrowly on technical skills; this has resulted in a tech community that too often puts companies and code over people. Greater Than Code is a podcast that invites the voices of people who are not heard from enough in tech: women, people of color, trans and/or queer folks, to talk about the human side of software development and technology. Greater Than Code is providing a vital platform for these conversations, and developing new ideas of what it means to be a technologist beyond just the code.
Featuring an ongoing panel of racially and gender diverse tech panelists, the majority of podcast guests so far have been women in tech! We’ve covered topics including imposter syndrome, mental illness, sexuality, unconscious bias and social justice. We also have a major focus on skill sets that tech too often devalues, like team-building, hiring, community organizing, mentorship and empathy. Each episode also includes a transcript.
We have an active Slack community that members can join by pledging as little as $1 per month via Patreon. (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode)

Latest Episodes:

186: The Universe Makes it Happen with Emily Gorcenski Jun 10, 2020

Show notes

Emily has been on GTC before! Check out her previous episode: 037: Failure Mode

01:08 - Emily’s Superpower: Hunting Nazis and Data Science

Emily’s Motivation to Do This Work – Fighting Back
What is the question behind the question?
Data Science + SCIENCE

14:55 - Being Willing to Be Wrong / Failure and Learning

Methods for Determining You’re Going to be Tracking Wrong Things
Simpson’s Paradox
Means Are a Lie
Detecting Nonlinearities

34:49 - Cybernetics

093: BOOK CLUB! Cybernetic Revolutionaries with Eden Medina

38:43 - The COVID-19 Pandemic Crisis and The Need For Systematic Restructuring

The Problem with Testing
- Conditional Probability
- Bayes Rule
Ventilator Production

47:16 - Nuance, Power, and Authority

High-Reliability Organizations
Devolution
- The Safety Anarchist
The Difference Between:
- Innovation
- A Work-Around
- A Shortcut
- A Non-Compliant
Deciphering Good Actors & Bad Actors

This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep of DevReps, LLC. To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode

To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps. You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well.

Special Guest: Emily Gorcenski.

Support Greater Than Code

Special Edition: #BlackLivesMatter Jun 04, 2020

Show notes

There are no show notes nessecary for this episode. Your job is to listen and learn from these 3 strong women.

Special Guests: Isa Herico-Velasco , Kim Crayton, and Shireen Mitchell.

Support Greater Than Code

185: Adaptive Capacity and Mutual Aid with Michelle Glauser Jun 03, 2020

Show notes

02:27 - Michelle’s Superpower: Resilience

Graceful Extensibility

04:59 - Techtonica

The Board
Breaking Barriers Into Tech
Income Sharing Agreements
Job Placement Success
Setting Cohorts Up For Success
Becoming an Educator
Socioeconomic Factors
- Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams

25:35 - Adaptive Capacity and Mutual Aid

Saying vs Showing You/They Care / Investment / Helping Others
Sponsorship
Hiring
Unemployment
Survival Mode

46:51 - Techtonica Success Stories

Reflections:

Rein: What’s going to happen after the pandemic? How will things be different?

Michelle: The world has an opportunity to change.

Jamey: The things Techtonica provides to its’ cohorts to break down barriers to entry in tech is awesome.

Arty: Asking what can I do to make a difference?

This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep of DevReps, LLC. To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode

Special Guest: Michelle Glauser.

Support Greater Than Code

184: The Python Software Foundation and the Future of Conferencing with Naomi Ceder & Ewa Jodlawska May 27, 2020

Show notes

01:39 - Ewa’s Superpower: Organization

PyCon

02:01 - Naomi’s Superpower: Empathy for the Marginalized

02:51 - The Python Software Foundation (PSF)

05:26 - Regional and Local Meetings: Building a Healthy Community

06:52 - “Everybody Pays” and the PSF Budget

Financial Aid

11:16 - How the Pandemic is Effecting the PSF

Financially
Moving to Virtual Conferencing
- EuroPython 2020 Online

13:20 - Intellectual Property

Holding in Trust for Community
Preserving Goodness
PyLadies
Brand Integrity

16:36 - The Development of a Code of Conduct

Enforcement
Ratio of Enforcers to Attendees

23:08 - Naomi: Classics, Language, and Computer Science

Similarities and Differences
- Jamshid Gharajedaghi

29:15: Ewa: Ending Up in Governance

31:03 - Ewa and Naomi’s Roles in PSF

The PSF Board
The PSF Staff

35:49 - Creating Emergency Funds

40:18 - Grants & Sponsorships

42:33 - Contractual Agreements

46:22 - Engaging in a Virtual Setting Over In-Person Events

Python Pizza

51:15 - Approaching Issues Marginalized People Experience

Reflections:

Rein: If you want to understand how an accident happened, you need to understand why what a person was doing made sense to them at the time. “What would this mean if this made sense?”

Jacob: Looking forward to new conference formats.

Carina: What solutions are people pitching for moving to virtual gatherings?

Naomi: Only in our space do we think it’s "weird" to talk about whether or not we need emergency reserves. Also, online Hallway Tracks? Yes or no? What do now?

Ewa: Moving to online events is emotional.

This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep of DevReps, LLC. To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode

Special Guests: Ewa Jodlawska and Naomi Ceder.

Support Greater Than Code

183: How We Learn with Vaidehi Joshi May 20, 2020

Show notes

01:47 - Vaidehi’s Superpower: Learning new things and teaching them to other people

Teaching Things Helps YOU Learn
Deciding on Things to Learn

05:01 - Approaching Learning

Reading
Relating Things to Things Already Known
Ask Yourself, “Why do I need to know this?”
Tricks for Reading Papers
Read the Abstract & Conclusion
Pick Fights with the Paper
Using Tutorials
Accountability & Motivation
Learning with Others
Unraveled
Hermeneutic Circle

20:15 - Having Aha! Moments & Epiphanies: Brain Percolation

Russell Ackoff
- Absolution
- Resolution
- Solution
- Dissolution
Paradoxes

32:02 - Technologists Are Good Storytellers

39:03 - Improving Over Time and Doing Your Best

Hindsight Bias
Blameless Retrospectives: Accountability

47:55 - Creating Spaces for People to Succeed

Manager Training
“Managing Up”: The Phrase – meh

52:58 - Effective Mentorship

Mentorship vs Sponsorship
Trust
Lara Hogan

Reflections:

Jamey: Incremental learning and progress – biting off small chunks and not beating ourselves up while learning. It’s not a waste of time to just do a little at a time.

Rein: Soft skills are technical skills.

Vaidehi: It’s hard to measure and quantify these things.

This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep of DevReps, LLC. To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode

Special Guest: Vaidehi Joshi.

Sponsored By:

BrightonRuby: Alt::BrightonRuby: A slightly odd, quasi-conference for strange times by Andy Croll. There's no in-person BrightonRuby this year, but Andy is still trying to bring Ruby-ists and other software folk together. It will be recorded talks, a physical book, and a podcast. Delivered throughout June/July 2020. Plus a donation to Shelter's Coronavirus appeal. On sale now. 29Euros + tax (which works out to a very affordable about $36.50 + tax in U.S. dollars!) https://alt.brightonruby.com P.S.: A trusted source tells us that the book is a beautifully typeset copy of Why's Poignant Guide.

Support Greater Than Code

182: Labor Organizing with Ellen Wondra May 13, 2020

Show notes

00:41 - Ellen’s Superpower: Knowing what her pets are thinking. (Observation and Paying Attention to Non-Verbal Cues.)

Virginia Satir, Congruence and Incongruence
Lie to Me
Detecting Microexpressions

10:33 - Shareholder and Stakeholder Economies

18:30 - Termination of Employment Contracts

Emergent and Deliberate Strategy

27:44 - Collective Action – Why aren’t tech workers organizing more?

Amazon Reinstates Fired Warehouse Worker After Employees Strike
The Potential Usefulness and Benefits of Unions
Project Maven

37:47 - Moving in the Direction of Stakeholder Value – What do we do next?

Anjuan Simmons – Lending Privilege
Talk to Your Coworkers: Build Connections; Network Architecture
Explore Worker Power
Manager Boards

Reflections:

John: A reminder of the value of collective action.

Rein: Tech workers are workers and workers have more in common with other workers than they do with bosses.

Aaron: The practical ways of implementing collective action in tech.

Episode 80: Crafting a Community with Kris Howard

This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep of DevReps, LLC. To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode

Special Guest: Ellen Wondra.

Support Greater Than Code

181: Normalcy Theater with Aaron Aldrich May 06, 2020

Show notes

02:04 - Aaron’s Superpower: Relating to people on any level because he has so many hobbies!

Useful in DevRel
Ending Up in Unexpected Places
Trying New Things and Nerding Out

06:42 - Everything Has a Technical Aspect

Music vs Computer Programming
Computer Systems as Sociotechnical Systems

10:37 - Connecting High-Performing Resilient Teams

Common Ground Within Teams
Recovering From Failure
Failover Conf by Gremlin

14:14 - Implementing Purposeful/Intentional Communication

17:55 - Highlights from Failover Conf - (Videos not available)

19:45 - How did an actual virtual conference go since COVID-19?

Slack Implementation
- Bots
- #Hallway-track channel
- Each Talk Had Its’ Own Q&A Channel
Challenges
- People Interaction
- Breaktime
- Technical Difficulties
Zoom Chat After the Conference
Deserted Island DevOps

26:27 - The Impact of Having ADHD

Advanced Forms of Coping Mechanisms
Quality Time
Struggling with ADHD During COVID-19
Working From Home and Being Thrown Into Remote Work
Juggling Meetings
Maintaining Comradery

39:43 - Normalcy Theater: Maintaining a Sense That Everything is Fine (When It’s NOT.)

Grief and Loss is Happening on a Global Level
J. Paul Reed
- Shed Load
- Sacrificing Thoroughness: we are ALL overloaded
- Recruiting Resources
- Shifting Work and Time
Showing Others Grace and Empathy

Reflections:

John: The idea of a software team plays at software just like a music group plays at instruments. (Twitter thread)

Carina: Everything has technical and human skills aspects.

Aaron: It’s okay to not be getting things done right now and to be taking the time that we need to take care of ourselves.

This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep of DevReps, LLC. To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode

Special Guest: Aaron Aldrich.

Sponsored By:

strongDM: Today’s show is sponsored by strongDM. Transitioning your team to work from home? Managing a gazillion SSH keys, database passwords, and Kubernetes certs? Meet strongDM. Manage and audit access to servers, databases, and Kubernetes clusters, no matter where your employees are. With strongDM, easily extend your identity provider to manage infrastructure access. Automate onboarding, offboarding, and moving people within roles. Grant temporary access that automatically expires to on-call teams. Admins get full auditability into anything anyone does: when they connect, what queries they run, what commands are typed. It’s full visibility into everything. For SSH, RDP, and Kubernetes, that means video replays. For databases, it’s a single unified query log across all database management systems. strongDM is used by companies like Hearst, Peloton, Betterment, Greenhouse, and SoFi to manage access. It’s more control and less hassle. strongDM. Manage and audit remote access to infrastructure”. Start your free 14-day trial today at strongdm.com/GTC.

Support Greater Than Code

180: Open Source Freedom and Technical Purity with Tobie Langel Apr 29, 2020

Show notes

02:34 - Tobie’s Superpower: Bridging tribes.

Avoiding Labels

04:13 - Being a Co-Conspirator of Ethical Open Source

Contributing to the Greater Good
Finding Deeper Meaning in Open Source, Software, and Tech
Privilege, Moral Obligation, and Responsibility
Edmund Berkeley
The Priority of Constituencies
Technical Purity

12:41 - Open Source: Prioritizing Implementers Over End-Users

Richard Stallman, “Four Freedoms”
Everything is Software, Everywhere – Impact

17:19 - Developer Attachment to Technical Purity

Privacy & Security & Safety (Spying on your spouse on Facebook example)
Flavors of Safety (Zoom breaches and trust)
- Physical Safety and Mental Safety
- Freedom From Self-Censorship
Surveillance and Tracking

34:54 - Open Source Practitioners Misguided Thinking When Building Software

Software is Written by Privileged People
Lack of Empathy for the End-User
Comfort and Questioning
Internationalization Issues

47:03 - Talking About These Issues – What gives us hope?

This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep of DevReps, LLC. To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode

Special Guest: Tobie Langel.

Sponsored By:

strongDM: Today’s show is sponsored by strongDM. Transitioning your team to work from home? Managing a gazillion SSH keys, database passwords, and Kubernetes certs? Meet strongDM. Manage and audit access to servers, databases, and Kubernetes clusters, no matter where your employees are. With strongDM, easily extend your identity provider to manage infrastructure access. Automate onboarding, offboarding, and moving people within roles. Grant temporary access that automatically expires to on-call teams. Admins get full auditability into anything anyone does: when they connect, what queries they run, what commands are typed. It’s full visibility into everything. For SSH, RDP, and Kubernetes, that means video replays. For databases, it’s a single unified query log across all database management systems. strongDM is used by companies like Hearst, Peloton, Betterment, Greenhouse, and SoFi to manage access. It’s more control and less hassle. strongDM. Manage and audit remote access to infrastructure”. Start your free 14-day trial today at strongdm.com/GTC.

Support Greater Than Code

179: Conference Magic with PJ Hagerty Apr 22, 2020

Show notes

02:43 - PJ’s Superpower: Convincing people that karaoke is a good idea.

PJ’s Karaoke History
Why Karaoke is Awesome

07:13 - The DevRel World (DevRel = Developer Relations)

Jim Weirich

13:42 - Online vs In-Person/Live Conferences

Body Language and Delivery
Hallway Track: Is not a literal 'track.' It's all the interactions, conversations, talk follow-up, etc. that happen at a conference outside of the formal schedule. Hallway tracks are when people interact socially about the issues being discussed at the event. For instance, between talks or over lunch. Most hallway track conversations are open and casual. Sometimes hallway track conversations inspire a future lightning talk, Ignite talk, panel discussion, or full talk.
Can you emulate an in-person conference online?
Luck and Visibility

25:54 - Making Conferences Diverse & Inclusive

Putting People on Stage That Don’t Look Like You
Passing on “Lucky” to Others

33:01 - Prompt and Talking About Mental Health

Ed Finkler on Open Sourcing Mental Illness at Distill (this was the talk that launched Prompt)
Greg Baugues: Devs and Depression
OSMI = Open Sourcing Mental Illness
CodeDaze 2016 - Paying Off Emotional Debt by Justine Arreche
Madalyn Rose Parker: Overcoming Mental Health Hurdles at Work
Mental Health Summit - php[tek] 2014

43:10 - Making Conferences Diverse & Inclusive (Cont’d)

Being Seen -- White Cis Men
The Colored Musicians Club
Aggressive Inclusion
Micro Opportunities
Lightning Talks

54:14 - Accessibility

Time and Monetary Expenses
Conferencing in the time of COVID-19

PJ's First Ever Full Talk at RubyMidwest: Act Locally - Think Globally

Reflections:

Carina: The exaggerated visual of putting a hand down and throwing people into the air to lift them up.

Jamey: Holding onto the feeling of being lucky while feeling awful.

Jessica: Getting pushes to make output.

PJ: Be a Jim Weirich. Have a “Hello World” attitude. Human connection is important.

This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep of DevReps, LLC. To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode

Special Guest: PJ Hagerty.

Sponsored By:

strongDM: Today’s show is sponsored by strongDM. Transitioning your team to work from home? Managing a gazillion SSH keys, database passwords, and Kubernetes certs? Meet strongDM. Manage and audit access to servers, databases, and Kubernetes clusters, no matter where your employees are. With strongDM, easily extend your identity provider to manage infrastructure access. Automate onboarding, offboarding, and moving people within roles. Grant temporary access that automatically expires to on-call teams. Admins get full auditability into anything anyone does: when they connect, what queries they run, what commands are typed. It’s full visibility into everything. For SSH, RDP, and Kubernetes, that means video replays. For databases, it’s a single unified query log across all database management systems. strongDM is used by companies like Hearst, Peloton, Betterment, Greenhouse, and SoFi to manage access. It’s more control and less hassle. strongDM. Manage and audit remote access to infrastructure”. Start your free 14-day trial today at strongdm.com/GTC.

Support Greater Than Code

178: Data Science and Sponsorship with Emily Robinson Apr 15, 2020

Show notes

Manning Publications has been kind enough to give our listeners a discount code. They're giving listeners of the show a permanent 40% discount, which is good for all products in all formats for everyone. Again, this is a PERMANENT discount code for all Greater Than Code listeners. Use the code PODGREAT20 every time you shop Manning.

02:30 - Emily’s Superpower: Finding all the dogs to pet.

05:05 - Emily’s Data Science Journey

Organization Behavior
Qualitative / Quantitative
Research: Women in STEM Fields

08:21 - The Idea of Passion

Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing
Gatekeeping

10:46 - Defining Data Science

Analytics
Decision Science
Machine Learning

13:48 - Emily’s Book: Build a Career in Data Science

16:11 - Dealing with Failure

PyData Ann Arbor: Jacqueline Nolis | When Data Science Projects Fail

18:30 - Sponsorship

Emily’s Post on Sponsorship: The Importance of Sponsorship

20:08 - The Spread of Data Science Roles

Strengthening Job-Critical Skills

27:09 - Sponsorship (Cont’d)

Sponsorship vs Mentorship
Having a Solid Community / Network
- R-Ladies
Capital
Smaller Acts of Mentorship
- Trey Causey's Do you have time for a quick chat? Post
Sponsorship and Mentorship Work Best When There's a Concrete, Stated Goal
- Data Helpers
Mentorship Should Be Part of Our Formal Career Ladder

36:20 - Themes Learned From Writing Build a Career in Data Science

Communication Skills
Proactivity
Community (Network is Important)

40:02 - Companies Should Train People to be Mentors

What does a tech lead do?

43:07 - Measuring Productivity

45:48 - External vs Internal Data Science

People Scientists

47:18 - Women and Diverse Representation in Data Science

Groups & Resources
Why Women Are Flourishing In R Community But Lagging In Python

Reflections:

Avdi: Mentorship does not have to be a huge commitment to be useful and sponsorship is often as important -- or more important than mentorship.

Chanté: What are the things that we’re willing to do for people who need an extra boost or push or support?

Jacob: Mentorship is possible without the mentors knowing they’re even doing it.

Rein: If you’re a mentor and your mentees aren’t coming to you with well-formed questions, it’s your job to coach them into that as a mentor.

Emily: There aren’t enough resources for senior engineers on the non-technical side of things.

This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep of DevReps, LLC. To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode

Special Guest: Emily Robinson.

Sponsored By:

strongDM: Today’s show is sponsored by strongDM. Transitioning your team to work from home? Managing a gazillion SSH keys, database passwords, and Kubernetes certs? Meet strongDM. Manage and audit access to servers, databases, and Kubernetes clusters, no matter where your employees are. With strongDM, easily extend your identity provider to manage infrastructure access. Automate onboarding, offboarding, and moving people within roles. Grant temporary access that automatically expires to on-call teams. Admins get full auditability into anything anyone does: when they connect, what queries they run, what commands are typed. It’s full visibility into everything. For SSH, RDP, and Kubernetes, that means video replays. For databases, it’s a single unified query log across all database management systems. strongDM is used by companies like Hearst, Peloton, Betterment, Greenhouse, and SoFi to manage access. It’s more control and less hassle. strongDM. Manage and audit remote access to infrastructure”. Start your free 14-day trial today at strongdm.com/GTC.

Support Greater Than Code

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected