Today I'm launching something near and dear to my heart...VERY near and dear 😂 -- a podcast project with my phenomenal favorite neuroscientist (& wife), @analog_ashley !
On "Change, Technically" we're coming to your ears to share tales of who gets to be technical. We dig into STEM pathways & how leaders can learn from psych and neuroscience to think about cultivating innovation. We share our stories from classrooms to software teams. Plus new Cat & Ashley lore!
@grimalkina @danilo
What a delightful episode! I learned a lot from this, and it has me thinking about how to meet people in their spheres of interest to contextualize coding. I'm not sure I'm equipped to do that, but it sounds like great fun!
Since I grew up in an age when essentially *all* coders were self-taught, it's weird to me that people think they are "the only one" who learned programming that way.
@bogosity @grimalkina @danilo this is such a great point; it's the double-edge sword of formalizing these kinds of things in coursework and degree programs, imho.
might i recommend @thecarpentries for finding folks in their respective disciplines!
@internic love your thoughtfulness about this. Yes!! I think this is a super underappreciated thing. I don't know that I've articulated it on the podcast super eloquently yet 😅 but it blew my mind when I learned more about these layered biases that go deeper than just "STEM or not-STEM" & include associations we make about "pure intellect" & "technical prowess" (a non-STEM example is music). & ++ to the context of when we first learnt as a heritage we don't always see!
@grimalkina On the hiring front, when I've been involved in making hiring decisions my issue has been that I recognize really great contributions can come from people who are self-taught or have less conventional backgrounds, but what isn't clear is how to recognize those people. Part of me thinks "just spend time with them and talk to them and you'll figure it out," but that also seems like the sort of highly subjective gut judgement where unconscious bias looms large, so I fear it might do more harm than good.
It is ironic that in the hiring where I've been involved, I'm often the only one in the discussion with a PhD, but I often find myself arguing not to weight education too strongly. My feeling is just that if you are trying to find someone to do task X, having actually done task X before is better evidence of capability than having been in a program that nominally teaches how to do X (especially if X isn't domain-specific research).
Cat Hicks
bogosity
Ashley Juavinett
Nick has moved to Mathstodon