[Alpha] Humans Are Hard

Presented as an "Alpha" talk at Hong Kong Code Conf 2018

When I started coding, everything was easy.
I went to our scrum board,
I took a card,
It had acceptance criteria,
maybe I had to ask a few questions,
but more or less I was left to code in peace.

Everything was simple.

I could be the 10x engineer everyone talks about.

By why was it so simple?
Why have I never been so productive
(and so messy)
in my professional career ever since?

The answer is People.

As a young developer all the humans were abstracted away,
into user stories, and libraries,
I didn't have to think about them.

As I grew as a developer, and as a person,
I took on roles which more and more involved humans.

And, as it turns out, Humans are Hard!
Like, really hard!

In this talk I'm going to talk you about my journey from shy lone-wolf to (somewhat more) outgoing team player
and try to share some tips on how to better understand other people and work with them to build better software.

Transcript

1. Hong Kong Code Conf
3. Why the gap?
4. #1 rule of running a conference
5. Don't give a talk!!!
7. But I did it anyway
8. Humans are Hard
9. Humans are Hard Alpha
10. Matthew Rudy Jacobs
11. I work for the British Government
12. Co-Organised this since 2014
13. I'm a Developer
14. I'm a "Technical Architect"
15. I'm a Developer who mostly talks to people, draws pictures, and writes stuff
16. I'm good at code
17. I'm not good at people
18. Or I wasn't
19. As a Junior Developer everything was easy
20. I'd get a story
21. I'd code it
22. Done!!!
23. It was awesome
24. As I grew things got harder
25. I worked on bigger teams
26. I led bigger teams
27. I had to review other people's code
28. Other people had to review my code
29. I had to reject other people's code
30. I got more involved in Product
31. But
32. Things moved much slower
33. Meetings got in the way
34. Politics got in the way
35. Humans got in the way
36. I used to be a 10x engineer
37. In the past 6 months I've not written any code
38. In the past 6 months no-one has written any code
39. Why was it so easy before?
40. Because I didn't have to deal with people
41. I didn't have to speak to our Users
42. I didn't have to explain my code to colleagues
43. I didn't worry about other people maintaining my code
44. The Humans were "abstracted"
45. Software is Simple
46. Most of us aren't making Facebook
47. Most of us aren't making Google
48. Most of us aren't flying to the moon
49. Big systems are broken down into simple pieces
50. Software can be solved
51. But Humans?
52. Humans are Hard
53. Like, really hard!
54. There is no formula to solve people
55. We Are Humans
56. We Build Software for Humans
57. We Build Software with Humans
58. We need to do better
59. How I learned to be better at Humans
60. Take the time to understand Technique 1:
61. I didn't understand them
62. They didn't understand me
63. We all have different backgrounds and perspectives
64. We are all trying to do a good job
65. Assume the best
66. Put yourself in their shoes
67. Time spent understanding others Saves us time elsewhere
68. Don't apologise for being shy Technique 2:
69. I am shy
70. I am awkward with people
71. Or at least I thought I was
72. "I don't know how to talk to people"
73. "I don't understand people"
74. "who said that?" My colleague:
75. I stopped assuming I was awkward
76. It turns out I'm not that awkward
77. We're all awkward or rather:
78. Practice Technique 3:
79. Talk to people
80. Find out what makes them tick
81. People can be fun
82. Time to Practice!!!
83. Thanks