Admitting that hard problems are hard SASHA ROSENBAUM

You have been tasked with building a website

Imagine your CTO, Bob

Bob has an idea

  • Hey, Bob, I don’t understand… - Why do we need all this?!

Are you saying that YOU don’t understand this?

Resume driven development

“If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.” ― Albert Einstein

We should stop pretending that ❖Distributed systems are easy ❖People can be available 24/7 ❖Unicorn companies don’t have technical debt ❖That new product will solve all of your problems

The intro slide Sasha Rosenbaum Sr. Program Manager @Microsoft @DivineOps

Computer Science Top 20 CS department in the world • • • • System Administrator for IAF R&D Software Engineer Azure Consultant Cloud Solution Architect https://www.linkedin.com/in/sasha-rosenbaum/

You must be marketing!

We use heuristics to navigate the world

Stereotypes are self-perpetuating

Studies in 2012 and 2015 Same resume with a male (vs female) name was 6-14% more likely to get an interview. The resumes with white-sounding names spurred 50% more callbacks than the ones with black-sounding names.

Why am I telling you this?

The cost is much higher for ❖Women ❖People of color ❖Junior Engineers

Why speak up?

Complexity isn’t free

Costs of complexity https://abstrusegoose.com/432 ❖Time to learn ❖Time to build ❖Cost of Maintenance ❖Chances of failure

Money

Productivity

Building Effective Teams (Google Study) Background? Personality types? Skills?

Building Effective Teams (Google Study) Background Personality types Skills => Psychological Safety

Psychological safety A belief that a team is safe for risk taking in the face of being seen as ignorant, incompetent, negative, or disruptive.

Psychological Safety Feeling confident that no one on the team will embarrass or punish anyone else for admitting a mistake, asking a question, or offering a new idea.

How many of you have that?

How many of you remember not having that?

Psychological safety doesn’t just happen

As a leader, remember

Make it safe to express opinions

Make it safe to admit mistakes

You don’t know everything

You are here to IMPROVE not to PROVE yourself

None of this is easy

But it is worth it!

Thank You! @DivineOps

Resources https://rework.withgoogle.com/print/guides/5721312655835136/ https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/careers/the-same-resume-with-differentnames-nets-different-results/news-story/a2a182fb4570e948c27ce63139ee66b1 https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/mar/15/jalen-ross/blackname-resume-50-percent-less-likely-get-respo/ https://www.technion.ac.il/en/2016/08/technion-ranked-top-in-israel-69thworldwide/ https://www.amazon.com/Mindset-New-Psychology-Success-dpB07N48NM33/dp/B07N48NM33/ http://projects.wsj.com/buzzwords2014