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Greater Than Code — 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:

102: Sticky in the Flow with Katrina Owen Oct 24, 2018

Show notes

Greater Than Code Episode Episode 008: 99 Bottles of OOP with Sandi Metz and Katrina Owen

01:29 – Katrina’s Superpower: Organizing and Systematizing

09:44 – Motivation by Success

The 5 Second Rule | Mel Robbins

Procrastination | Mel Robbins

18:04 – Trust and Code Review

27:04 – Systematizing and Refactoring

30:54 – Training for Circus and its Parallels with Software Development and Mentorship and Working with Others

Sarah Mei: How We Make Software: A new theory of teams

43:12 – Deliberate Practice and the Appearance of Expertise

Reflections:

John: Short iterations and early feedback as a way of creating and maintaining motivation.

Coraline: How to create a sense of psychological safety in code reviews, in particular.

Sam: The five-second window in which you can change your behavior and increase motivation.

Janelle: Feedback loops as spirals that are reinforcing towards the positive or negative.

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.

Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks!

Special Guest: Katrina Owen.

Support Greater Than Code

101: A Difficult Conversation with Sonia Gupta Oct 17, 2018

Show notes

02:02 – Sonia’s Superpower: Talking about white supremacy and dealing with the fallout.

05:27 – Feeling Rightness and Motivation to Stand Up for Your Beliefs

10:15 – Seeing Your Advocacy and Efforts Make a Difference

12:17 – When People Disagree

16:26 – Ingroup vs Outgroup Empathy

21:17 – Intersectionality

White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

26:07 – Navigating Situations with Empathy

28:25 – Staying In Your Own Lane While Advocating For and Amplifying Others

35:39 – Educating Yourself About Race

So You Want to Talk About Race

Other Resources from Sonia:

38:39 – Doing The Work

Reflections:

Jessica: The place for these conversations is not Twitter!

Coraline: Personalizing advocacy.

Jamey: Our advocacy is powerful because it comes from a place of passion.

John: The fixed vs growth mindset in regards to racism.

Sonia: We can all be advocates and we can all be 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.

Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks!

Special Guest: Sonia Gupta.

Support Greater Than Code

100: The Business of Documentation with Jaime Slutzky Oct 10, 2018

Show notes

01:12 – Jaime’s Superpower: Taking complex ideas and figuring out the fastest way from here to there. (i.e.: logistics!)

05:41 – Tech as a Roadblock

19:44 – Handing Off Responsibilities to Business Owners

The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

Bullet Journals

18:09 – Identifying Ideal Clients and Attitudes Towards Technology

24:40 – Documentation

36:53 – What do clients need to know about technology?

Reflections:

John: Documentation is important.

Jamey: Getting tech recommendations from people you trust, pick one, and do it. Don’t be paralyzed by indecision.

Jaime: Document in isolation.

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.

Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks!

Special Guest: Jaime Slutzky.

Support Greater Than Code

099: The Knowledge You Possess with Stephanie Morillo Oct 03, 2018

Show notes

02:40 – Stephanie’s Superpower: Intellectual Curiosity

13:06 – On Being a Content PM, Technical Writer, and Ruby Together Core Team Member

@azureadvocates

19:44 – Validating Open Source Software Contribution

Write the Docs Slack Community

24:27 – Filtering Feedback

28:14 – The Importance of Content Strategy

Greater Than Code Episode 088: The Safety 2 Dance with Steven Shorrock

43:24 – Don’t Minimize Yourself! (Psst: You’re awesome!)

One of the best (and worst) things about working in tech is how easy it is to get excited by something and wanting to learn it—right up until your brain tells you you're not doing enough, work harder, leading you to get overwhelmed with just how much there is to learn. 🙃
— Stephanie Morillo (@radiomorillo) September 24, 2018

Coraline's low-friction task management system (lftm)

Reflections:

John: Understanding the teams you’re working with better.

Coraline: The power of dreams.

Jamey: The value of being able to know when people in your life are interacting with you in good faith.

Stephanie: Figuring out the “why”.

RubyMe

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.

Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks!

Special Guest: Stephanie Morillo.

Support Greater Than Code

098: Designing For Inclusion with Jenny Shen Sep 20, 2018

Show notes

01:51 – Jenny’s Superpower: Not Giving a F*ck and Sticking Up For Others

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life

05:00 – Living a Remote Lifestyle and Cross-Cultural Communication

08:34 – Design and UX For International Users / Research for Local Users

18:08 – Designing to Include All People: Is it possible?

27:07 – Paid Mentorship

Sunk Cost Fallacy

34:32 – Offering Mentorship Scholarships

37:15 – Privilege and Open Source

40:22 – Advice for People Looking to Freelance and Work Remotely

Reflections:

Jamey: Weaponizing the sunk cost fallacy for themself.

Sam: The importance of humans in tech and tech culture.

Jessica: The difference between internationalization and localization.

Jenny: Scholarships as a way to signal and inform other people what she values and what she wants to promote.

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.

Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks!

Special Guest: Jenny Shen.

Support Greater Than Code

097: The Job of a Manager with Brandon Hays Sep 12, 2018

Show notes

00:43 – Brandon’s Superpower: Helping Other People Discover Their Own Superpower

02:04 – Maintaining Relationships When People Change Jobs So Frequently

04:31 – Climbing The Corporate Tech Ladder and Strategizing Career Growth

10:25 – Mentorship and Power Disparity

19:00 – Management and Leadership Skills

The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change

10 Traits of a Great Manager, According to Google's Internal Research (Project Oxygen)

23:22 – Solving Problems Regardless of Job Title

27:50 – Preservation of Context

31:01 – Becoming a Manager…and Being Bad at it!

32:58 – The New Manager’s Toolkit

35:08 – Techniques for Managing From Below to Influence Your Manager

38:19 – Engineers and Business-level Input

Reflections:

John: The deeply ingrained thread in “nerd” and “geek” culture how terrible managers are.

Astrid: The power dynamics that exist that are untapped in engineering.

Coraline: What kind of technical contribution do I want to leave as my legacy?

Brandon: Translating skills from previous careers to new careers.

Not Applicable: What Your Job Post is Really Saying

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.

Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks!

Special Guest: Brandon Hays.

Support Greater Than Code

096: Resilience Engineering with John Allspaw Sep 05, 2018

Show notes

John Allspaw: Etsy’s Debriefing Facilitation Guide for Blameless Postmortems

01:32 – John’s Superpower: Seeing connections across domains.

05:45 – All Technical Communities Run Small, the Intersection of People, Technology, and Work, and the Resilience Engineering Community

09:07 – Variety and Complexity

Requisite Variety

The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World’s Greatest Manufacturer

The Great Courses

Understanding Complexity

17:51 – Understanding Cognitive Work

25:34 – Heuristics and Biases

31:01 – Strategies for Generating Context-Specific Questions

Debriefing Facilitation Guide (Morgan Evans)

35:01 – Asking “Why?” Over “What?” Questions

The PreAccident Podcast

Todd Conklin: People screw up – and it happens all the time

Ten challenges for making automation a “team player” in joint human-agent activity

49:33 – Analyzing and Aggregating

Rational Choice Theory

Reflections:

Rein: How do we deal with the objective/subjective dialectic?

Janelle: The thing we focus on and pay attention to is a clear signal of what matters.

Jessica: Looking up the Knowledge Elicitation Methods.

Rein: It takes variety to match variety.

John A.: Guiding dialogue data.

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.

Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks!

Special Guest: John Allspaw.

Support Greater Than Code

095: Cleaning House with Heidi Waterhouse Aug 29, 2018

Show notes

01:20 – Heidi’s Superpower: Being Able to Remember Where Other People Set Things Down

03:53 – Where will software be in three years?

Greater Than Code Episode 084: Federation Is Bad with Aurynn Shaw

08:28 – Resilience in People and Software

Bob Marshall / @flowchainsensei

12:00 – Developer Relations

Heidi’s Lady Conference Speaker Blog Posts

19:24 – Measuring Success in Developer Relations

23:43 – Fostering Relationships

29:13 – Life Hacks for ADD and Claiming Personal Space

41:37 – Housekeeping and Code Review; Clean Fights

The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts

Reflections:

Astrid: The things you say can be heard by someone else a different way.

John: If you think about what you need out of your household or codebase as being your preference, it allows you to work with people who have other preferences more easily.

Jamey: There’s always somebody that is going to care about something.

Jessica: Spreading enthusiasm without judging people who aren’t enthusiastic about the same things as you are.

Heidi: Being able to discuss the emotional needs of having your own needs and space while having to compromise both in code and life.

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.

Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks!

Special Guest: Heidi Waterhouse.

Support Greater Than Code

094: Humans All The Way Down with April Wensel Aug 22, 2018

Show notes

01:07 – April’s Superpower: Synthesizing Seemingly Unrelated Concepts to Create Something New

02:30 – Tension Between Code and Compassion

05:47 – Living According to Your Values

11:33 – Team Values and Feedback Loops

17:23 – Changing Social Makeups of Teams

22:22 – Conscious Business

32:51 – Self-Compassion and Forgiveness

40:34 – Alleviating Pain and Suffering

43:51 – Being Kind vs Being Nice

47:16 – Having Hard Conversations

51:15 – “Clever” Code

Reflections:

Sam: Capturing how zero-sum thinking works and holding compassion for yourself and other people.

John: Putting values evaluations into regular retrospectives.

April: You don’t just apply compassion in isolation. True compassion is unconditional.

Janelle: Helping to relieve quiet suffering.

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.

Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks!

Special Guest: April Wensel.

Support Greater Than Code

093: BOOK CLUB! Cybernetic Revolutionaries with Eden Medina Aug 15, 2018

Show notes

Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende’s Chile (Print Version)

01:57 – Eden’s Superpower: Being a Patient Learner

06:51 – Determining Your Ability/Eligibility to Speak as an Expert

08:55 – Electrical Engineering => Law => PhD Work

12:47 – The History of Cybernetics

15:51 – American vs British Cybernetics

The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future by Andrew Pickering

Grey Walter’s Tortoises

17:37 – The Many Definitions of Cybernetics

The Cybernetics Moment: Or Why We Call Our Age the Information Age (New Studies in American Intellectual and Cultural History) by Ronald R. Kline

25:03 – Project Cybersyn

45:56 – Sociotechnical Engineering

53:24 – Creating Ethically Sound Tools

Reflections:

Astrid: The power dynamics that are already baked into our tools and the history of computing is global.

Jessica: Looking into second-order cybernetics.

Rein: The importance of learning about history, culture, and how people work as being necessary for a technical career.

Eden: Making connections throughout the show.

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.

Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks!

Special Guest: Eden Medina.

Support Greater Than Code

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