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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:

063: The Distribution of Brilliance and Opportunity with Rehema Wachira Jan 17, 2018

Show notes

01:22 – Rehema’s Superpower: Empathy

02:53 – Rehema’s “Untypical” Origin Story

07:20 – Enjoying Coding Because of the Complexity Behind It

11:21 – Creating a “Culture of Saving”

14:52 – “Diversity of Thought” and Seeing the World Through Others’ Eyes

22:20 – Being Creators and Makers

30:28 – How Technology Empowers People

38:27 – The Distribution of Brilliance and Opportunity

47:01 – Freedom of Creative Expression

Reflections:

Astrid: Having to unlearn the need of being perfect.

Jessica: We want to speak to more guests on a global level! Please reach out!

Sam: Fixed vs growth mindset.

Rein: Diversity is not just good for ethical reasons, it also makes your organization more competent.

Janelle: Celebrating beautiful.

Rehema: A fundamental right to freedom.

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: Rehema Wachira.

Support Greater Than Code

062: The Beauty of Art and Technology with Jamey Hampton Jan 10, 2018

Show notes

01:22 – Jamey’s Superpower: “The Fharlanghn Sense”

02:40 – Working in Agriculture

04:03 – Theories on Automation

05:56 – Pivoting Into Computer Science and Software Development

10:35 – Feeling Like You Need to Know Everything

Stella Report from the SNAFUcatchers Workshop on Coping With Complexity

15:47 – ‘Zines and Being a ‘Zine Librarian

27:50 – The Beauty of Art and Technology and Forming Emotional Connections to Things

Floppy Music DUO – Imperial March

35:26 – The Death Star => Ethics in Technology and Taking Responsibility/Being Accountable for your Code

Malcolm Gladwell: The strange tale of the Norden bombsite

@greaterthancode:
“I think the more powerful a tool is, the more respect you have to have for it.” ~ @jameybash on Greater Than Code

49:42 – Brilliance and Learning From Others Without Consent

54:49 – Advice for Channeling Your Own Inner Fharlanghn Sense

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!

Support Greater Than Code

061: Destruction-Focused Development with Safia Abdalla Jan 03, 2018

Show notes

00:53 – Safia’s Superpower: Sight

03:04 – Learning Languages — Both Human and Programming

The Sapir Whorf Hypothesis

07:56 – Being Empathetic in an International Perspective and Building Universal and Approachable Tech

11:19 – What does success look like for minorities in the Silicon Valley monoculture?; Being Tokenized

Admiral Grace Hopper

21:59 – Accepting Speaking Engagements Because of Who You Are (i.e. as a woman, minority, etc.)

24:07 – Writing Things Down to Balance Prioritizing Decisions

30:46 – Defining “Happy” and Always Feeling the Need to Do More

37:02 – Destruction-Focused Development

@jessitron
Destruction-Focused Development: write it, delete it, repeat.

"I don't become obsessed with the code.
I think it's more important to be obsessed with the problem."

@captainsafia on @greaterthancode.

43:58 – Safia’s Early Coding “Shenanigans”

Reflections:

Coraline: Being thoughtful about planning finite energy and labor. Also being content vs being happy.

@jessitron
"I often feel like I don't do enough and I haven't defined what 'enough' is."

@CoralineAda on @greaterthancode

Jasmine: Exploring feelings about being represented at events.

Jessica: Broadening perspectives that most of us were born into.

Safia: Talking about the Silicon Valley monoculture, being content vs happy, and tokenism.

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: Safia Abdalla.

Support Greater Than Code

060: Coping with Complexity with Kent Beck Dec 27, 2017

Show notes

01:19 – Kent’s Superpower: Putting Things Together That Don’t Necessarily Go Together

Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking by Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander

04:01 – Metaphors in Software Development

07:32 – Writing Tests and Keeping a Journal

@jessitron
The unit/integration distinction confuses me. I test at the level of, “Here’s a thought I need to capture.”

@KentBeck on @greaterthancode

10:58 – Complexity Partitioning

One Bite At A Time: Partitioning Complexity

Kent’s musings on the topic of unit versus integration testing after the show.

21:59 – The Way Systems Change Over Time as an Important Part of How We Design Software

27:20 – Changing Culture Vs Code and Storytelling and Succession

Reflections:

Jamey: Thinking about the reasons why we do things.

Rein: How computer systems are beginning to take on the complexity of biological systems.

Coraline: The concept of lumpers vs splitters.

Sam: How strategies for dealing with complexity don’t just have to be about the problem itself, they can be about the emotional response of the programmer who has to get some work done.

Jessica: The for-allers vs the for-eachers; universalist vs existentialist.

Kent: Not being bothered by culture change and helping people feel the same.

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: Kent Beck.

Sponsored By:

Cohere: This episode is sponsored by Cohere! Cohere believes better teams make better products. Visit [wecohere.com/greaterthancode](https://www.wecohere.com/greater-than-code) to learn how your team can become greater than code.

Support Greater Than Code

059: Science All The Things! with Pamela Gay Dec 20, 2017

Show notes

01:13 – Pamela Podcasting, Since…well, FOREVER!

365 Days of Astronomy

02:19 – Pamela’s Superpower: Solving Random Problems with Software

05:19 – Becoming a “Reluctant Coder” i.e. Coding Out of Necessity

10:58 – Battlestar Galactica => Greek Mythology => Space => Astrophysics

14:52 – Doing What You Have To Do vs Doing What You Love To Do

20:27 – The Goal of Podcasting and Target Audience

23:57 – Understanding and Knowing Everything: Good? Bad?

26:03 – Outsourcing Work as a Personal Loss and The Internet’s Graveyard of Abandoned Projects

32:06 – Open Sourcing Work Yourself for the Benefit of Others

36:58 – Writing Software to Engage People

CosmoQuest Citizen Science

44:22 – Crowdsourcing Requires Trust but Garners Better Results

48:02 – The Motivation of Citizen Scientists

Reflections:

Jessica: The layers of people in software and people in software and how we’re all learning. It gets hard to separate the people from the technology.

Also, having goals you DON’T want to achieve.

Coraline: Seeing crowdsourcing being successful.

Jamey: Curiosity isn’t necessarily about finding out the answer. It’s the pursuit of the magic.

The tenuous path we all take in life, and what decisions cause us to be on the right path to the right here, right now.

Pamela: If we collaborate with the technology, maybe we won’t get silenced.

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: Pamela Gay.

Support Greater Than Code

058: Kindness and Patience with Tara Scherner de la Fuente Dec 13, 2017

Show notes

00:16 – Welcome to Episode 111010 of the Greater Than Code Podcast!

02:09 – Tara’s Superpower and Origin Story: Patience

04:56 – Conflating Patience with Kindness

07:39 – Is writing code making us less thoughtful? AKA Patience in the Workplace

The Economic Value of Rapid Response Time (The Doherty Threshold)

16:22 – Warning Signs that a Company’s Culture is Not a Good One; Also, is it the company or is it individuals within a company?

22:59 – Looking for and Interviewing for a Job at a Less Toxic Environment

33:20 – What does it mean to be a developer?

36:33 – Interviewing and Privilege

39:35 – Advice for Early Career Developers

44:10 – Remote Work Culture

Reflections:

Coraline: Being patient and kind.

Astrid: Software development is always something you can continue to improve at.

Tara: People don’t have to be exactly like us to be a person that we want to work with. Being different can be an asset.

Sam: Interviewing somebody should be able finding out how they think and not about what they necessary know at the moment.

Special Guest: Tara Scherner de la Fuente.

Support Greater Than Code

057: Everything is UI with Christina Morillo Dec 06, 2017

Show notes

01:08 – Christina’s Background and Superpower: Multitasking and Automation

See Also: GTC 056: Systematize Your Hustle with Kronda Adair

04:42 – Automation Processes: Discovery and Reconnaissance, and When Human Judgement and Input is Necessary

10:03 – Multitasking Timescales and Context Switching

16:39 – Decision-making Functions

23:28 – Being Kind to Your Busy Self and Choosing What NOT To Do

We’re Going to Need More Wine: Stories That Are Funny, Complicated, and True by Gabrielle Union

32:03 – Making Accomplishments Visible to Yourself and Having a Culture of Acknowledgement

For more discussion on congressive/ingressive behavior, see also: GTC Episode 038: Category Theory for Normal Humans with Dr. Eugenia Cheng

Operant Conditioning Chamber (Skinner Box)

Reflections:

Rein: Being self-aware of how much is on your plate, how you’re feeling about it, and then being able to say no, which is really saying yes to what YOU want to do, what YOU want to spend time on, and how YOU want to live YOUR life.

Janelle: Taking the time to remember and that remembering takes time.

Jessica: Choosing the group that you’re being generative with.

Christina: UX is everything and everywhere.

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!

Sponsored By:

Upside: Bundle your flights and hotel. Save money. Earn gift cards.

Support Greater Than Code

056: Systematize Your Hustle with Kronda Adair Nov 22, 2017

Show notes

01:26 – SYSTEMS! Implementing Repeatable Processes Via Automation

Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less by Sam Carpenter

09:28 – Strategies for Implementation

12:18 – Reclaiming Your Time and Cheap is Always Expensive

Work the System (Online)

Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business

Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS)

Google Image Result for http://www.pyragraph.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/GOOD-FAST-CHEAP.jpg
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@jessitron
Solopreneurship: "It's never just you. There's present-you and future-you"

@kronda on @greaterthancode

23:20 – Choosing Successful Customers and Avoiding Perfection Paralysis

@jessitron
If you don't have a system, your system is, think really hard about it every time.

@geeksam on @greaterthancode with @kronda

me: or worse, don't

28:44 – Successful Use Cases

Active Campaign

35:33 – Iterating and Changing Processes

42:31 – Kronda’s Superpowers

Reflections:

Jessica: As developers, and as we’re writing automation for other people, we can also think at a meta level, and automate the parts of our jobs so then we can spend more thinking time thinking about the interesting part of code, like how to achieve the results that we want.

Kronda: Things that are easy vs things that are effective.

Sam: Executive Dysfunction and the idea of making decision rules.

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: Kronda Adair.

Support Greater Than Code

055: Change Ourselves a Little, Many Times with Keith Bennett Nov 15, 2017

Show notes

00:16 – Welcome to “Metamours United For Frequent Dialogue” …we mean, “Greater Than Code!”

01:47 – Keith’s Background and Superpower

10:03 – Conflict Resolution

Open Spaces session on Conflict Resolution this summer at DevOpsDays D.C. (and the precursor to this conversation)

Difficult Conversations: How To Discuss What Matters Most

12:01 – Opinions on Mediators/Mediation

14:21 – Approaching Conflict

News Story Re: Portland Murders

17:31 – Radical Helpfulness/Kindness

Keith Bennett: Kaizen and Radical Helpfulness

The Smoke Filled Room

20:49 – Being Okay with Being Different and Speaking Up

Triumph Over Fear: A Book of Help and Hope for People with Anxiety, Panic Attacks and Phobias

Congressive/Ingressive Chat with Dr. Eugenia Cheng

31:17 – Fire Alarms and Radical Helpfulness (Cont’d)

35:50 – Knowing When to Step Back or to Step Forward

Reflections:

Astrid: The way to change ourselves a lot is to change ourselves a little, many times.

Sam: Decide that you’re okay with being different and training yourself to be bold.

Jasmine: Be mindful of yourself and your actions.

Jessica: There’s a lot of conscious thought and choice in both being helpful and resolving conflict.

Keith: Working together to create a safer and happier world.

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: Keith Bennett.

Support Greater Than Code

054: Code Hospitality with Nadia Odunayo Nov 08, 2017

Show notes

01:19 – Nadia’s Superpower

02:01 – Code Hospitality and Being a Good Host

Nadia Odunayo: The Guest: A Guide To Code Hospitality @ GORUCO 2016

Daniel Dennett’s “Intuition Pump”

10:22 – People and Habits and Having Expertise in a Particular Realm

17:00 – Asking Questions/Waiting for Explanation Rather Than Passing Judgement

22:16 – Codebases Are Constantly Changing: Use the README to Give Context

Code Hospitality Guide App

27:27 – Making Diagrams Whilst Coding/Pairing

Rapoport’s Rule

32:27 – Thinking About the “Why”

36:44 – Giving and Receiving Feedback in a Nonviolent Way

39:09 – Host Responsibilities for Hospitality

Reflections:

Jamey: Breaking down the power dynamic of learning.

Jacob: Unspoken rules and normalized behavior based on location and telling stories to make people feel more at home.

Rein: Recognizing emotional labor.

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 Guests: Jacob Stoebel and Nadia Odunayo.

Support Greater Than Code

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