1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:06,978 [MUSIC] 2 00:00:06,978 --> 00:00:12,626 All right, so now I'd like to welcome up our next speaker, Ajuna Kyaruzi. 3 00:00:12,626 --> 00:00:16,907 Ajuna Kyaruzi works in developer relations at Datadog and 4 00:00:16,907 --> 00:00:19,361 is based in Brooklyn, New York. 5 00:00:19,361 --> 00:00:23,130 Ajuna was born and raised in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. 6 00:00:23,130 --> 00:00:25,624 And as an international black woman in tech, 7 00:00:25,624 --> 00:00:29,180 she often finds herself navigating diverse cultures. 8 00:00:29,180 --> 00:00:33,882 She loves community building and volunteers as the program manager for 9 00:00:33,882 --> 00:00:38,828 Africode, a nonprofit aiming to help all Africans in tech be successful. 10 00:00:38,828 --> 00:00:43,656 Ajuna manages their mentorship program that matches African college students with 11 00:00:43,656 --> 00:00:47,609 tech professionals as mentors for their early career development. 12 00:00:47,609 --> 00:00:52,616 Ajuna has also worked at Google for close to four years as a software engineer 13 00:00:52,616 --> 00:00:57,400 on Google Maps and as a site reliability engineer on Google Cloud. 14 00:00:57,400 --> 00:00:59,450 All right everyone, please welcome Ajuna. 15 00:01:01,360 --> 00:01:02,780 >> Thanks for such a great introduction. 16 00:01:02,780 --> 00:01:05,280 Like Quil said, my name is Ajuna, 17 00:01:05,280 --> 00:01:09,175 I currently work in developer relations at Datadog. 18 00:01:09,175 --> 00:01:12,911 I've been there for just a little less than a month now, 19 00:01:12,911 --> 00:01:18,568 currently working on just creating content for various developers who work there. 20 00:01:18,568 --> 00:01:22,636 And then like he also said I work as a program manager for Africode. 21 00:01:22,636 --> 00:01:26,896 So, I know you came into this talk probably just wondering what is empathy 22 00:01:26,896 --> 00:01:27,799 engineering? 23 00:01:27,799 --> 00:01:33,793 And I appreciate all of you coming in with just this vague notion in mind. 24 00:01:33,793 --> 00:01:37,044 As I was transitioning out from being a software engineer, 25 00:01:37,044 --> 00:01:40,696 I was very much wanting to write a little bit about my experiences. 26 00:01:40,696 --> 00:01:45,336 And I wanted to group together everything that I learned as a software 27 00:01:45,336 --> 00:01:48,456 engineer that didn't kind of go into coding, 28 00:01:48,456 --> 00:01:53,665 kind of just being a great coder, and that's where empathy engineering is. 29 00:01:53,665 --> 00:01:55,515 It's a topic that's important to me. 30 00:01:55,515 --> 00:01:59,796 That's kind of what does it mean to be a good community member and 31 00:01:59,796 --> 00:02:02,508 a good teammate in an engineering team. 32 00:02:02,508 --> 00:02:07,410 And I think that to be a good community member you have to be an empathetic one. 33 00:02:07,410 --> 00:02:13,550 So while we start thinking about that, let's sort of talk about what is empathy? 34 00:02:13,550 --> 00:02:17,320 And this is the definition, I kind of screenshot this from Google. 35 00:02:17,320 --> 00:02:20,950 So empathy is defined as the ability to understand and 36 00:02:20,950 --> 00:02:23,622 share the feelings of another person. 37 00:02:23,622 --> 00:02:27,330 I definitely like to bring up the fact that it's very different from sympathy. 38 00:02:28,580 --> 00:02:34,375 Bernie Brown who is an American researcher, and she researches and 39 00:02:34,375 --> 00:02:38,765 talks about vulnerability and shame and empathy. 40 00:02:38,765 --> 00:02:43,936 She has this great little stamp that talks about how empathy is 41 00:02:43,936 --> 00:02:50,716 feeling with people versus sympathy kind separating them a little bit from you. 42 00:02:50,716 --> 00:02:56,680 And she says, empathy never starts with at least where sympathy does. 43 00:02:56,680 --> 00:02:59,021 Because when you're being sympathetic to someone, 44 00:02:59,021 --> 00:03:01,059 you're like, at least it's not worse. 45 00:03:01,059 --> 00:03:05,060 Whereas empathy is I feel what you're feeling and I've been there as well. 46 00:03:05,060 --> 00:03:09,912 And I think that's incredibly important in engineering teams. 47 00:03:09,912 --> 00:03:13,740 You're working with other people in your building for so many different types 48 00:03:13,740 --> 00:03:17,569 of people, understanding each other, including their feelings can be super 49 00:03:17,569 --> 00:03:21,650 important because you're trying to build for as many different people as you can. 50 00:03:23,210 --> 00:03:27,560 So this idea of empathy has built up in me for quite a while. 51 00:03:27,560 --> 00:03:31,885 This is a screenshot from the Strengths Finder kind of 52 00:03:31,885 --> 00:03:35,933 personality quiz that I did when I was in college. 53 00:03:35,933 --> 00:03:39,086 I took a computer science degree and 54 00:03:39,086 --> 00:03:44,982 in my first kind of big computer science class, I was a sophomore. 55 00:03:44,982 --> 00:03:48,584 We took a class that was team software development where we were building tools 56 00:03:48,584 --> 00:03:52,180 for non-profits in that area, and I was super excited about it. 57 00:03:52,180 --> 00:03:55,910 And we were trying to figure out how to best work with each other in the team. 58 00:03:55,910 --> 00:03:58,140 So, we had to take this personality quiz from Gallup. 59 00:03:59,300 --> 00:04:02,800 So these are my top five themes, they kind of gjve you after you did the quiz, 60 00:04:02,800 --> 00:04:04,390 kind of your strengths. 61 00:04:04,390 --> 00:04:10,340 And mine were harmony, consistency, connectedness, relator, and positivity. 62 00:04:10,340 --> 00:04:12,213 So as you may kind of think about it, 63 00:04:12,213 --> 00:04:15,570 they all kind of sound pretty similar to empathy. 64 00:04:15,570 --> 00:04:19,943 And the reason for that is Gallup kind of has four groups for their themes, one of 65 00:04:19,943 --> 00:04:25,460 which is strategic thinking, relationship building, influencing, and executing. 66 00:04:25,460 --> 00:04:30,130 And four of the five of mine fall into relationship building. 67 00:04:30,130 --> 00:04:35,171 And at the time I was like, my gosh, this is awful, I'm trying to show 68 00:04:35,171 --> 00:04:40,640 that I am advanced, this is my first kind of advanced computer science class. 69 00:04:40,640 --> 00:04:44,690 I'm working with teams of people and I'm trying to show them that I can be a great 70 00:04:44,690 --> 00:04:47,297 team member, yes, that I can bring something in. 71 00:04:47,297 --> 00:04:53,970 Why didn't I get one of the core strategic thinking ones like futuristic or ideation? 72 00:04:53,970 --> 00:04:59,650 My one non relationship building one was consistency which falls under executing. 73 00:04:59,650 --> 00:05:02,677 But to me that was just like yeah, I'm a consistent team builder, 74 00:05:02,677 --> 00:05:03,610 like what the hell? 75 00:05:05,390 --> 00:05:08,952 But I kind of talked to my team and my professor at the time and 76 00:05:08,952 --> 00:05:12,930 we kind of discussed why all strengths are equally important. 77 00:05:12,930 --> 00:05:16,120 I personally feel like you can learn anything. 78 00:05:16,120 --> 00:05:20,160 And I really, really fell back on how important it is that these are my 79 00:05:20,160 --> 00:05:22,680 strengths and I am comfortable with them. 80 00:05:22,680 --> 00:05:26,667 I'm sure if I took this now I have changed from there but I hope these come up again. 81 00:05:26,667 --> 00:05:28,756 Because you can learn anything and 82 00:05:28,756 --> 00:05:32,221 I'm really glad that I have these sort of to fall back on. 83 00:05:32,221 --> 00:05:35,026 Because I want to be connected to my team members and 84 00:05:35,026 --> 00:05:39,800 I wanna keep a positive environment and be related, feel connected to them. 85 00:05:39,800 --> 00:05:44,759 So it's super important that I kind of I'm hoping this feels kind of like my 86 00:05:44,759 --> 00:05:47,749 diploma of why I can kind of talk about this and 87 00:05:47,749 --> 00:05:52,330 why I've been thinking about this in engineering teams for a while. 88 00:05:53,790 --> 00:05:58,453 So we're gonna kind of split this talk into three parts, empathy for yourself, 89 00:05:58,453 --> 00:06:02,857 which I know I'm kind of stretching the definition of empathy a little bit. 90 00:06:02,857 --> 00:06:05,332 Empathy for your team, so the people that you work with. 91 00:06:05,332 --> 00:06:08,447 And lastly, I'll talk very briefly about empathy for 92 00:06:08,447 --> 00:06:11,520 your consumer or a person using your tools. 93 00:06:11,520 --> 00:06:12,689 Because in engineering, 94 00:06:12,689 --> 00:06:16,060 I'm sort of thinking about us as being folks who are builders. 95 00:06:16,060 --> 00:06:19,525 That are building technology for other people, and ourselves, and 96 00:06:19,525 --> 00:06:22,331 the people that use it are our consumers, our users, or 97 00:06:22,331 --> 00:06:25,600 customers depending on what you think about it. 98 00:06:25,600 --> 00:06:32,160 So starting off at first, we're gonna go with empathy for yourself. 99 00:06:32,160 --> 00:06:36,810 And I know that, like I said, I'm kind of stretching this because we defined empathy 100 00:06:36,810 --> 00:06:41,223 first as sort of the ability to share and understand feelings of another person. 101 00:06:41,223 --> 00:06:45,451 But I think that it can be really hard to do that if you're unable to sort 102 00:06:45,451 --> 00:06:48,475 of know what your feelings are with that, right? 103 00:06:48,475 --> 00:06:51,039 So it's really important to figure out what you need so 104 00:06:51,039 --> 00:06:53,728 you can ask that of your teammates and people around you. 105 00:06:53,728 --> 00:06:57,469 And I really love this thing that you can't pour from an empty cup. 106 00:06:57,469 --> 00:07:00,853 And I have this little picture here of someone kind of with an empty cup being 107 00:07:00,853 --> 00:07:02,330 like what? 108 00:07:02,330 --> 00:07:06,559 Because you really, really need to kind of build yourself up to be in a position 109 00:07:06,559 --> 00:07:10,401 where you can be successful and thriving, as well as you can move back, 110 00:07:10,401 --> 00:07:12,794 obviously with the situation that allows. 111 00:07:12,794 --> 00:07:15,700 But the more that you can fulfill yourself, I mean, 112 00:07:15,700 --> 00:07:18,420 this is sort of the excuse for self care, right? 113 00:07:19,490 --> 00:07:21,810 The more important it is to build yourself up so 114 00:07:21,810 --> 00:07:24,350 that you can also help others around you. 115 00:07:24,350 --> 00:07:28,195 And I'm gonna really spend a lot of time talking about setting yourself up for 116 00:07:28,195 --> 00:07:29,979 success and empathy for yourself. 117 00:07:29,979 --> 00:07:34,269 Because you definitely need to be in the best possible position that you can put 118 00:07:34,269 --> 00:07:38,503 yourself in in order to be able to build the tools that we're trying to build. 119 00:07:38,503 --> 00:07:44,314 Cuz it is can get stressful, you are building yourself as much as you can, 120 00:07:44,314 --> 00:07:47,619 and you are learning from yourself a lot. 121 00:07:47,619 --> 00:07:50,771 So in setting yourself up for success, 122 00:07:50,771 --> 00:07:56,508 I think the most important part is being open and able to ask questions. 123 00:07:56,508 --> 00:07:59,924 A lot of people around you, they all have different strengths like 124 00:07:59,924 --> 00:08:03,910 we talked about earlier, and they all have a lot of varied knowledge. 125 00:08:03,910 --> 00:08:07,840 Because of that, you don't know anything or everything so to speak, sorry. 126 00:08:08,970 --> 00:08:12,220 And asking questions is the fastest way to find out about things. 127 00:08:12,220 --> 00:08:15,500 If you're joining a new code base, and you just don't know where to find it, and 128 00:08:15,500 --> 00:08:18,650 you're like, well, I know GitHub, I can just go look it up. 129 00:08:18,650 --> 00:08:21,169 People name things very strangely. 130 00:08:21,169 --> 00:08:24,100 [LAUGH] Computer scientists are still bad at this, 131 00:08:24,100 --> 00:08:28,930 especially like what if your team that you work on in maps is called geo? 132 00:08:28,930 --> 00:08:33,840 What if they named themselves after like Bakery Treats, you don't know. 133 00:08:33,840 --> 00:08:38,460 And because of that, just asking questions will get you there a lot faster. 134 00:08:38,460 --> 00:08:42,236 My teams that I've been on code by the perspective of if it takes you longer than 135 00:08:42,236 --> 00:08:45,614 half an hour and I can spend five minutes explaining something to you, 136 00:08:45,614 --> 00:08:48,134 I'd rather spend the five minutes than you spending 137 00:08:48,134 --> 00:08:50,787 the longer than half an hour kind of looking for stuff. 138 00:08:50,787 --> 00:08:54,300 But feeling comfortable enough to ask questions can take a lot. 139 00:08:54,300 --> 00:08:56,900 We've probably talked about imposter syndrome already. 140 00:08:56,900 --> 00:09:00,790 And all of these can sort of deter you from feeling comfortable to ask questions. 141 00:09:00,790 --> 00:09:04,309 And being in an environment where you don't feel psychologically safe can also 142 00:09:04,309 --> 00:09:06,200 to kind of deter that as well. 143 00:09:06,200 --> 00:09:08,907 But whenever you can push yourself to sort of ask questions, 144 00:09:08,907 --> 00:09:12,980 I think that it can really, really help kind of push you to be more successful. 145 00:09:12,980 --> 00:09:17,714 Definitely, the largest leaps I've made in kind of solving a problem have been from 146 00:09:17,714 --> 00:09:21,514 asking someone some questions, even if it was rubber ducking, and 147 00:09:21,514 --> 00:09:23,730 I was able to find the answer by myself. 148 00:09:24,820 --> 00:09:27,870 The next one I'll talk about is kind of being present. 149 00:09:27,870 --> 00:09:31,692 I think it kind of goes with that theme but at the same time, 150 00:09:31,692 --> 00:09:36,372 if you are spending a lot of time kind of worrying about what comes next, 151 00:09:36,372 --> 00:09:38,634 instead of kind of being present, 152 00:09:38,634 --> 00:09:44,620 especially while you're getting an answer for your question, it can be really hard. 153 00:09:44,620 --> 00:09:46,602 Being forward thinking is super important but 154 00:09:46,602 --> 00:09:49,189 also kind of figuring out how to build up from where you are and 155 00:09:49,189 --> 00:09:52,010 how to take in the things that you're learning can also be great. 156 00:09:52,010 --> 00:09:55,816 I definitely have been in that position where I'm trying to think of the next 157 00:09:55,816 --> 00:10:00,560 question to ask so much so that I missed the answer to a question I already asked. 158 00:10:00,560 --> 00:10:03,846 So, I would encourage you to think about being present whenever you can and 159 00:10:03,846 --> 00:10:05,580 just taking a breather and going slow. 160 00:10:06,630 --> 00:10:08,820 The other one is working on self improvement. 161 00:10:08,820 --> 00:10:12,340 I think that for some people maybe this comes a little more naturally. 162 00:10:12,340 --> 00:10:16,632 I struggled with this, especially when I graduated from college and 163 00:10:16,632 --> 00:10:18,180 started my first job. 164 00:10:18,180 --> 00:10:22,724 I was hit with senior-itis, which is just like the feeling of being done and 165 00:10:22,724 --> 00:10:26,940 you're like, I have gotten my degree, I know everything. 166 00:10:26,940 --> 00:10:30,130 I just need to learn some things on the job, but I'll totally be fine. 167 00:10:30,130 --> 00:10:35,923 Which was one of the reasons that I really struggled on one of my first teams. 168 00:10:35,923 --> 00:10:40,970 Because I was just really thinking about the idea of I'm done learning, 169 00:10:40,970 --> 00:10:46,290 whereas, especially technology, things are constantly evolving. 170 00:10:46,290 --> 00:10:49,110 Being open to the idea of self improvement is super helpful. 171 00:10:51,100 --> 00:10:54,112 Whatever you can do to sort of self improve, being here at this conference 172 00:10:54,112 --> 00:10:57,670 is definitely a great step, and I'm really happy to be here with y'all. 173 00:10:57,670 --> 00:11:01,092 Other ways of self improving can be reading a book, it can be fiction, 174 00:11:01,092 --> 00:11:01,790 nonfiction. 175 00:11:02,990 --> 00:11:07,298 Just whatever ways to have your brain kind of going and thinking and being open to 176 00:11:07,298 --> 00:11:11,750 kind of a growth mindset are super helpful and that sort of falls there. 177 00:11:11,750 --> 00:11:13,790 These last two kind of go hand in hand. 178 00:11:13,790 --> 00:11:17,861 And I do think that you kind of have to work with what exists for you, but 179 00:11:17,861 --> 00:11:23,070 having the best working environment or working schedule is super helpful. 180 00:11:23,070 --> 00:11:26,180 So, I'll give you a little snapshot into my life. 181 00:11:26,180 --> 00:11:30,080 On the left side of the picture there of my workstation from home. 182 00:11:30,080 --> 00:11:34,701 I used to work in the office when pre-pandemic and 183 00:11:34,701 --> 00:11:37,350 I was doing a lot well there. 184 00:11:37,350 --> 00:11:39,733 I love being around people, being able to ask questions, 185 00:11:39,733 --> 00:11:41,250 tap people on the shoulder and talk. 186 00:11:43,100 --> 00:11:46,210 But when we transitioned home, I was just like, what do I do now? 187 00:11:46,210 --> 00:11:49,440 I wasn't someone who worked from home very often. 188 00:11:49,440 --> 00:11:53,310 And if I did, I was just coding on my laptop, on my living room sofa. 189 00:11:53,310 --> 00:11:56,350 I was just very much didn't have anything set up. 190 00:11:56,350 --> 00:11:59,618 So at first I was like, let me try doing that, which I was like, 191 00:11:59,618 --> 00:12:01,052 that's not sustainable. 192 00:12:01,052 --> 00:12:03,893 Then I tried working from the only table I had in my room, 193 00:12:03,893 --> 00:12:07,776 which was a vanity with a little stool, which also was terrible for my back. 194 00:12:07,776 --> 00:12:10,593 So it took me a few iterations to get to here. 195 00:12:10,593 --> 00:12:14,158 And still I have moments where I'm like, I want a change of scenery, 196 00:12:14,158 --> 00:12:15,828 let me work from my living room. 197 00:12:15,828 --> 00:12:18,809 And watch a podcast or something in the background as I code. 198 00:12:18,809 --> 00:12:23,664 And I get so distracted, and I realized that the best place for me to work was 199 00:12:23,664 --> 00:12:28,695 right here at this desk where I'm sitting right now, where I can just focus. 200 00:12:28,695 --> 00:12:32,010 I face a wall cuz I'm easily distracted. 201 00:12:32,010 --> 00:12:35,986 So, I have a nice picture that I asked someone to paint for me on top of it, 202 00:12:35,986 --> 00:12:38,222 of myself focusing, so I'm reminded. 203 00:12:38,222 --> 00:12:42,218 And I also have all these post-it notes around me that are like, 204 00:12:42,218 --> 00:12:44,300 ask questions, do what you can. 205 00:12:44,300 --> 00:12:48,560 It's okay to be in a position of not knowing. 206 00:12:49,840 --> 00:12:53,317 Just whatever positive environment that I was able to put myself in, and 207 00:12:53,317 --> 00:12:55,330 this is what I found for myself. 208 00:12:55,330 --> 00:12:58,785 And really, this is what helps me set myself up for 209 00:12:58,785 --> 00:13:02,260 success and be empathetic to myself. 210 00:13:02,260 --> 00:13:04,730 The next one on the right is my schedule. 211 00:13:04,730 --> 00:13:08,295 So, as you can see, it's very bottom heavy. 212 00:13:08,295 --> 00:13:13,548 The reason for that is because I do not work well In the morning, 213 00:13:13,548 --> 00:13:16,300 I'm not a morning person. 214 00:13:16,300 --> 00:13:21,590 Whenever I can start my workday at after ten, I do. 215 00:13:21,590 --> 00:13:26,621 And the reason for that is just, I do most of my strategic thinking, 216 00:13:26,621 --> 00:13:30,350 [LAUGH] my sort of focused coding in the afternoon. 217 00:13:30,350 --> 00:13:34,490 So, I have my schedule very open in the morning, if people wanna meet with me. 218 00:13:34,490 --> 00:13:36,212 And I figured out that that's what works for me. 219 00:13:36,212 --> 00:13:42,613 I definitely resisted it for a really long time, trying to be as, a go getter. 220 00:13:42,613 --> 00:13:45,712 I'll do everything you can in the morning. 221 00:13:45,712 --> 00:13:49,319 And I realized that that just doesn't work for me, and that's okay. 222 00:13:49,319 --> 00:13:53,421 Just find that was not setting myself up for success, and this is. 223 00:13:53,421 --> 00:13:57,226 And communicating that to my team and them being open to meeting with me 224 00:13:57,226 --> 00:14:01,560 in the morning so I can do my focus coding in the afternoon worked out best for me. 225 00:14:01,560 --> 00:14:06,300 So, transitioning to the next section, which is empathy for your team. 226 00:14:07,430 --> 00:14:12,005 I think that I wanna talk about here, the past year has really proved to us 227 00:14:12,005 --> 00:14:15,880 how life is so intertwined between work and yourself. 228 00:14:15,880 --> 00:14:20,778 I think that a lot of companies have been places who want to have up kind 229 00:14:20,778 --> 00:14:23,630 of bring your whole self to work. 230 00:14:23,630 --> 00:14:25,393 But when your work is at home or 231 00:14:25,393 --> 00:14:29,431 there are gonna be times in your life when those things intertwine. 232 00:14:29,431 --> 00:14:34,930 Being empathetic for your team for them to go through life is always super helpful. 233 00:14:34,930 --> 00:14:37,750 And over the past year, it's been really great. 234 00:14:37,750 --> 00:14:41,176 And it's meant a lot to me when my team has reached out when things have 235 00:14:41,176 --> 00:14:41,778 been a lot. 236 00:14:41,778 --> 00:14:45,843 And I'm sure you can all think of at least a few different things over the last year, 237 00:14:45,843 --> 00:14:48,650 pandemic aside, that have been incredibly straining. 238 00:14:48,650 --> 00:14:53,250 Just from reading the news or how your community has been reacting to 239 00:14:53,250 --> 00:14:57,452 something or just impacting your life and health and family. 240 00:14:57,452 --> 00:15:00,838 So, reaching out to your team is super helpful. 241 00:15:00,838 --> 00:15:05,099 And I wanted to include this photo of these hands trying to collaborate. 242 00:15:05,099 --> 00:15:09,048 Cuz I think that setting an opportunity and a space for 243 00:15:09,048 --> 00:15:11,856 folks to be able to bring themselves, 244 00:15:11,856 --> 00:15:17,035 including all the kind of the rest of life, including the non-pretty 245 00:15:17,035 --> 00:15:22,684 parts can help you also be able to be more thriving in a professional manner. 246 00:15:22,684 --> 00:15:28,148 From the perspective of, if I already feel some sort of connectedness to my team and 247 00:15:28,148 --> 00:15:33,080 being able to say, hey, this is what's going well, this is what's not. 248 00:15:33,080 --> 00:15:37,001 I can also ask for help and move forward from there, or then if I reach out and 249 00:15:37,001 --> 00:15:40,270 they actually also need to talk to me about something. 250 00:15:40,270 --> 00:15:44,435 We already have that existing rapport to be able to kind of build from there. 251 00:15:44,435 --> 00:15:48,382 And the times when I've really wanted to kind of ask questions of a teammate, 252 00:15:48,382 --> 00:15:50,023 if we've never talked before or 253 00:15:50,023 --> 00:15:54,225 been able to have more of a casual conversation that's not related to work. 254 00:15:54,225 --> 00:15:57,110 Sometimes it felt harder for me to be able to reach out to them or 255 00:15:57,110 --> 00:16:01,310 be able to say like, hey, actually I can't meet at that time that you've scheduled. 256 00:16:01,310 --> 00:16:04,820 I need to focus or need to take care of people in my life. 257 00:16:04,820 --> 00:16:08,570 If you have children, if you're taking care of family members, right? 258 00:16:09,790 --> 00:16:15,210 So, being empathetic and letting to other people on your team is super helpful. 259 00:16:15,210 --> 00:16:17,866 The other thing that I'll also talk about is fostering a culture of 260 00:16:17,866 --> 00:16:20,190 inquisitiveness and being able to be wrong. 261 00:16:20,190 --> 00:16:22,776 We're going to disagree, especially as technologists, 262 00:16:22,776 --> 00:16:25,632 there's a lot of opinions and there's a lot of ways to do things. 263 00:16:25,632 --> 00:16:28,761 Some are correct, some are a little less so. 264 00:16:28,761 --> 00:16:33,219 And part of the design process of building new technologies is having those kind of 265 00:16:33,219 --> 00:16:37,095 conversations with people, kind of deciding what's the best path for 266 00:16:37,095 --> 00:16:40,583 the technologies that your team uses, for your situation, for 267 00:16:40,583 --> 00:16:42,220 your resource constraints. 268 00:16:42,220 --> 00:16:44,851 And being able to be wrongly super helpful so 269 00:16:44,851 --> 00:16:47,920 that you can throw all the ideas out there. 270 00:16:47,920 --> 00:16:51,168 And there's gonna be an idea that someone thinks might be wrong, but 271 00:16:51,168 --> 00:16:53,298 ends up being the best solution for the case. 272 00:16:53,298 --> 00:16:57,379 Right, I've definitely done things two times because the first time I thought I 273 00:16:57,379 --> 00:16:59,369 was right, and I ended up being wrong. 274 00:16:59,369 --> 00:17:04,112 Also, if you're a more senior person on your team, I really encourage you to sort 275 00:17:04,112 --> 00:17:07,854 of reach out to folks, especially newer and more junior folks. 276 00:17:07,854 --> 00:17:12,481 Because I'll give you an example in my life, when I first joined one of my teams, 277 00:17:12,481 --> 00:17:15,202 I had a tech lead who was kind of in charge of one of 278 00:17:15,202 --> 00:17:18,320 the technologies that I had to be working on. 279 00:17:18,320 --> 00:17:21,590 And they had an intern start around the same time that I did. 280 00:17:21,590 --> 00:17:24,970 And around two months in, their intern left. 281 00:17:24,970 --> 00:17:29,541 And they were like, phew, thank God, the intern was asking me so 282 00:17:29,541 --> 00:17:33,350 many questions, now I can get more work done. 283 00:17:33,350 --> 00:17:35,503 And they definitely meant it in passing, but 284 00:17:35,503 --> 00:17:39,600 I internalized that as this is someone who doesn't like to be asked questions. 285 00:17:39,600 --> 00:17:41,753 And they hadn't fostered an environment for 286 00:17:41,753 --> 00:17:45,190 me to be able to sort of approach them and kind of talk about that. 287 00:17:45,190 --> 00:17:49,840 So, I just was terrified to ask them questions until I got to know them better. 288 00:17:49,840 --> 00:17:55,460 And like I said, not asking questions definitely that set me up for failure. 289 00:17:55,460 --> 00:17:58,308 One time I spent a week going in the wrong direction, 290 00:17:58,308 --> 00:18:02,195 trying to figure something out that our team had already done before and 291 00:18:02,195 --> 00:18:05,273 knew was wrong, because I hadn't asked the question. 292 00:18:05,273 --> 00:18:10,190 Or kind of failed quickly and kind of figured out what I need to do. 293 00:18:10,190 --> 00:18:13,642 So, fostering a culture for your team to be able to be themselves, 294 00:18:13,642 --> 00:18:16,180 ask questions and be wrong can be super helpful. 295 00:18:17,880 --> 00:18:21,768 These are also all the other things that I think will kind of go hand in hand of 296 00:18:21,768 --> 00:18:23,622 a good software engineering team or 297 00:18:23,622 --> 00:18:26,613 any engineering team to work together in a good process. 298 00:18:26,613 --> 00:18:31,103 And figuring out how your team does this will work well. 299 00:18:31,103 --> 00:18:35,258 So, I have this lovely photo here of always git committing, 300 00:18:35,258 --> 00:18:37,464 [LAUGH] even in the case of a fire. 301 00:18:37,464 --> 00:18:41,832 But if it's a real emergency, please just leave the building. 302 00:18:41,832 --> 00:18:43,710 Definitely follow emergency protocols. 303 00:18:43,710 --> 00:18:45,510 But I like this joke. 304 00:18:45,510 --> 00:18:50,000 So, the processes that your team has can help you to also be successful. 305 00:18:50,000 --> 00:18:53,963 So, the other things that you can sort of think about is how does your team handle 306 00:18:53,963 --> 00:18:54,740 code reviews. 307 00:18:54,740 --> 00:18:59,591 If you're kind of merging new code with the existing code base, how do you 308 00:18:59,591 --> 00:19:04,690 handle different code branches and your general health of your repository? 309 00:19:04,690 --> 00:19:07,852 Do you have different environments where you push first 310 00:19:07,852 --> 00:19:12,480 to a sandbox staging environment or do you always push to production? 311 00:19:12,480 --> 00:19:17,430 If you're kind of thinking about new ideas, how do you do design documents? 312 00:19:17,430 --> 00:19:19,210 How do you review them? 313 00:19:19,210 --> 00:19:23,673 I had a team once that wanted us to always write commit messages that were incredibly 314 00:19:23,673 --> 00:19:27,900 helpful that started with an action verb and were 80 characters long. 315 00:19:27,900 --> 00:19:32,269 So, that if you read it in the log of all the commits that had been happening or 316 00:19:32,269 --> 00:19:33,703 the changes in the code, 317 00:19:33,703 --> 00:19:38,280 you could always see exactly what the change was in the 80 characters. 318 00:19:38,280 --> 00:19:40,580 So, it really varies from team to team. 319 00:19:40,580 --> 00:19:44,204 And there are all these things called also called language style guides, 320 00:19:44,204 --> 00:19:48,354 which depending on the language that your team uses, it's super helpful to know how 321 00:19:48,354 --> 00:19:52,060 does your team read through the code as efficiently as possible. 322 00:19:52,060 --> 00:19:54,661 Do they want older curly braces to be in a particular way. 323 00:19:54,661 --> 00:19:58,147 Do you prefer to use what style of formatting, right? 324 00:19:58,147 --> 00:20:02,151 These sounds minor, but especially if you're working in a large software 325 00:20:02,151 --> 00:20:06,792 engineering team, whatever ways to make the code look as Kind of as similar 326 00:20:06,792 --> 00:20:10,925 as possible to reduce sort of the strain in the eye so 327 00:20:10,925 --> 00:20:15,653 I can parse it as quickly as possible can be super helpful. 328 00:20:15,653 --> 00:20:19,638 And these all kind of count as working processes for your team. 329 00:20:19,638 --> 00:20:22,396 And being a good teammate is following these. 330 00:20:22,396 --> 00:20:25,953 Now that we think about being a good teammate remotely, there are also a ton of 331 00:20:25,953 --> 00:20:29,709 different things that you can also do now we're all in this remote environment. 332 00:20:29,709 --> 00:20:31,628 And I don't think it's gonna fully go away. 333 00:20:31,628 --> 00:20:34,294 There are tons of people who are working remotely, it does work well. 334 00:20:34,294 --> 00:20:37,147 Some of us maybe will go back to the office. 335 00:20:37,147 --> 00:20:39,988 And depending on where you are in the world, things are opening up for 336 00:20:39,988 --> 00:20:40,973 you to go back and work. 337 00:20:40,973 --> 00:20:45,932 I know that my office is starting to open up if I wanna go in a day or two week. 338 00:20:45,932 --> 00:20:48,480 But knowing each other's schedule is helpful. 339 00:20:48,480 --> 00:20:50,783 I talked about my schedule earlier, but 340 00:20:50,783 --> 00:20:54,118 my current company has these things called work with mes. 341 00:20:54,118 --> 00:20:59,051 Where we write a document and kind of list out all the different things that help 342 00:20:59,051 --> 00:21:01,392 us work more successfully, right? 343 00:21:01,392 --> 00:21:02,697 When should you reach out to me? 344 00:21:02,697 --> 00:21:05,821 When am I doing my l heads-down coding? 345 00:21:05,821 --> 00:21:09,864 When is it better to send me an email versus sending me a message over 346 00:21:09,864 --> 00:21:11,536 instant message or Slack? 347 00:21:11,536 --> 00:21:13,669 When is it best to schedule a call? 348 00:21:13,669 --> 00:21:16,082 My calendar is open is open to my teammates, 349 00:21:16,082 --> 00:21:18,706 they can throw a meeting on there with context. 350 00:21:18,706 --> 00:21:22,103 But for some people, they're like, don't touch my calendar, 351 00:21:22,103 --> 00:21:23,538 that is my personal stuff. 352 00:21:23,538 --> 00:21:27,568 So it really depends on all these things, knowing about each other and 353 00:21:27,568 --> 00:21:30,933 being open to the idea that other folks work differently. 354 00:21:30,933 --> 00:21:34,696 And then understanding why people work that way is super helpful. 355 00:21:34,696 --> 00:21:38,336 The other thing is there's gonna be all these kind of collaboration times, and 356 00:21:38,336 --> 00:21:41,395 kind of scheduling those up, especially remotely, is helpful. 357 00:21:41,395 --> 00:21:47,472 My team has done so many interesting things to collaborate that's not work. 358 00:21:47,472 --> 00:21:50,239 When we're in the office, it was easy to be like, let's step out for 359 00:21:50,239 --> 00:21:51,412 lunch together or something. 360 00:21:51,412 --> 00:21:55,583 But now that we're mostly remote, we're like, can we play a video game together? 361 00:21:55,583 --> 00:21:58,782 We'll play Among Us or Minecraft. 362 00:21:58,782 --> 00:22:00,387 We did a scavenger hunt once. 363 00:22:00,387 --> 00:22:06,878 And we haven did boba tea making, which was a very interesting experience. 364 00:22:06,878 --> 00:22:11,666 So whatever you can do to sort of build connections to your team can be helpful. 365 00:22:11,666 --> 00:22:14,591 I'm gonna go to the last section, which is empathy for your customer. 366 00:22:14,591 --> 00:22:16,774 And after this, I'll take some questions. 367 00:22:16,774 --> 00:22:19,501 So if you have them, you can drop them in the QA tab. 368 00:22:19,501 --> 00:22:21,207 I'll definitely go over those. 369 00:22:21,207 --> 00:22:25,609 But I wanna just talk a little bit about empathy for your customer. 370 00:22:25,609 --> 00:22:27,994 Like I said earlier, we are builders. 371 00:22:27,994 --> 00:22:31,107 We're building technologies for other people. 372 00:22:31,107 --> 00:22:36,624 But I think generally just building new things is empathetic in nature. 373 00:22:36,624 --> 00:22:40,554 You have gone through a personal struggle [LAUGH] that you wanna reduce and 374 00:22:40,554 --> 00:22:43,272 you wanna share that solution with other people. 375 00:22:43,272 --> 00:22:45,927 That intrinsically, to me, is empathetic. 376 00:22:45,927 --> 00:22:50,761 So whatever we can do to make sure that we're thinking about our end user and 377 00:22:50,761 --> 00:22:52,757 how their varied needs can be, 378 00:22:52,757 --> 00:22:57,671 there are of people who process things differently, look different to us, 379 00:22:57,671 --> 00:23:02,390 have different technology advancements, or availabilities to them. 380 00:23:02,390 --> 00:23:07,173 And so whatever we can do to sorta think about their use case as we're building 381 00:23:07,173 --> 00:23:09,021 can make us better builders. 382 00:23:09,021 --> 00:23:13,983 So, for example, respecting people's privacy. 383 00:23:13,983 --> 00:23:18,835 We've definitely thought about some different parts of the world, 384 00:23:18,835 --> 00:23:21,605 like Europe's has the GDPR, I think. 385 00:23:21,605 --> 00:23:25,456 I might be getting my acronyms wrong, but 386 00:23:25,456 --> 00:23:30,531 they have their process of how to handle user privacy. 387 00:23:30,531 --> 00:23:34,449 But there's also just a generally thinking about how much information do you need 388 00:23:34,449 --> 00:23:35,260 from your user. 389 00:23:35,260 --> 00:23:39,587 If you're creating a map app, you do need to know what their location is. 390 00:23:39,587 --> 00:23:43,251 But do you actually need to know that? 391 00:23:43,251 --> 00:23:46,753 If you aren't building a map application, 392 00:23:46,753 --> 00:23:50,442 do you need to know your user's application or 393 00:23:50,442 --> 00:23:56,799 what other applications that they use if you aren't building l a security app? 394 00:23:56,799 --> 00:23:58,795 So definitely thinking about that. 395 00:23:58,795 --> 00:24:01,854 And then also your user's actual security so 396 00:24:01,854 --> 00:24:06,376 that your app can be misused for them would be also be very helpful. 397 00:24:06,376 --> 00:24:11,640 Other things to go over a little faster is user experience, the UX. 398 00:24:11,640 --> 00:24:14,628 How users can kind of go through your app as naturally as possible. 399 00:24:14,628 --> 00:24:19,950 Have all of your thumbs up in the right places if you want people to like things. 400 00:24:19,950 --> 00:24:22,384 If they're all over the place, it'll be harder. 401 00:24:22,384 --> 00:24:24,601 But also thinking about internationalization and 402 00:24:24,601 --> 00:24:25,742 accessibility, right? 403 00:24:25,742 --> 00:24:28,494 People from all over the world will use your things. 404 00:24:28,494 --> 00:24:30,420 Can it be translated to different languages? 405 00:24:30,420 --> 00:24:35,532 Can it be ready for read from a different side of the screen? 406 00:24:35,532 --> 00:24:38,619 Can you translate everything from and 407 00:24:38,619 --> 00:24:42,685 use everything you need them to be added, right? 408 00:24:42,685 --> 00:24:45,113 And then also from an accessibility perspective, 409 00:24:45,113 --> 00:24:46,867 everyone has different abilities. 410 00:24:46,867 --> 00:24:51,124 And being able to have as many people who can use your application as possible, 411 00:24:51,124 --> 00:24:53,007 it would be really great, right? 412 00:24:53,007 --> 00:24:56,179 There's some people who being able to have your text that's 413 00:24:56,179 --> 00:24:58,925 readable by a screen reader with alternative text. 414 00:24:58,925 --> 00:25:02,955 Or being able to check whether or not the contrast is high enough 415 00:25:02,955 --> 00:25:06,606 on your application so that folks who maybe can't read or 416 00:25:06,606 --> 00:25:11,650 see particular colors can still be able to process your application is great. 417 00:25:11,650 --> 00:25:16,455 Just also thinking about general ethics is empathetic to me, right? 418 00:25:16,455 --> 00:25:21,204 Definitely being, how do we handle technology as best as we 419 00:25:21,204 --> 00:25:25,386 can because we do have a responsibility as filters. 420 00:25:25,386 --> 00:25:27,197 And that's where I'll end it. 421 00:25:27,197 --> 00:25:31,951 Thank you, you can reach out to me and communicate with me at ajunaky.com or 422 00:25:31,951 --> 00:25:33,300 ajunaky on Twitter. 423 00:25:33,300 --> 00:25:35,930 Please do reach out to me if you have any points here. 424 00:25:35,930 --> 00:25:39,250 I know this kinda will reach everyone at a different space, and 425 00:25:39,250 --> 00:25:41,518 I'd love to continue that conversation. 426 00:25:41,518 --> 00:25:44,456 But I'll take a few questions now. 427 00:25:44,456 --> 00:25:45,780 Think I have a couple of minutes. 428 00:25:50,825 --> 00:25:52,912 Let's see, in the chat. 429 00:25:58,156 --> 00:25:59,133 Thanks everyone. 430 00:26:02,175 --> 00:26:05,029 If there are any questions that I haven't seen, please do let me know. 431 00:26:05,029 --> 00:26:07,667 I'm kind of going over the QA, and 432 00:26:07,667 --> 00:26:12,232 I haven't been able to see anything, I have a minute left. 433 00:26:12,232 --> 00:26:16,779 [LAUGH] But yes, if there's anything that you'd want to keep 434 00:26:16,779 --> 00:26:21,265 communicating with me, please definitely let me know. 435 00:26:21,265 --> 00:26:22,137 I did see a question. 436 00:26:22,137 --> 00:26:27,199 When can I learn and practice JavaScript, data structures and algorithms? 437 00:26:30,183 --> 00:26:31,737 Someone already answered that. 438 00:26:31,737 --> 00:26:33,710 Treehouse definitely is a great option. 439 00:26:33,710 --> 00:26:35,861 Let's see. 440 00:26:38,337 --> 00:26:41,024 Cool, I think that is my time. 441 00:26:41,024 --> 00:26:42,193 Thank you so much, everyone. 442 00:26:42,193 --> 00:26:44,531 And looking forward to continuing the conversation.