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.
Read here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/football-chess-software-fennel-aurora/
Or as a 🧵 below 👇🏻
#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?
#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
Over the last few years, I consciously started doing some simple things publicly at work (internally and externally with partners) to help more people feel welcome. Then I waited for them to start catching on, only explaining if asked or indirectly via my social media posts.
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]
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]
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 by 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
Eugenics and the Promise of Utopia through Artificial General IntelligenceBased on work by Timnit Gebru & Émile P. Torres
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.
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
The task of reporting is not a simple one. Each and every day, reporters and editors at publications like The Onion make difficult decisions about which issues should receive attention, knowing that our coverage will influence not only how people think, but also how they act. This responsibility is at the core of an…
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