Humans are Hard

Lessons learned from the past decade of coding, learning to understand and work with people.

Presented at LRUG on Monday 11th February 2019.

Video will appear on Skillsmatter at a later date
https://skillsmatter.com/skillscasts/13462-humans-are-hard

Transcript

1. Humans are Hard Matthew Rudy Jacobs @LRUG Feb 11th 2019
2. @MatthewRudy
3. The Ministry of Justice
4. Uber for Prisoners
5. Caveats:
6. I'm not claiming I used to be the shiest person in the world
7. I'm not claiming I am now the most outgoing person in the world
8. Everything is relative
9. The Talk!
10. Humans are Hard
11. I'm a Developer
12. I'm a "Technical Architect"
13. I'm a Developer who mostly talks to people, draws pictures, and writes stuff
14. I'm good at code
15. I'm not good at people
16. Or I wasn't
17. As a Junior Developer everything was easy
18. I'd get a story
19. I'd code it
20. Done!!!
21. It was awesome
22. As I grew things got harder
23. I worked on bigger teams
24. I led bigger teams
25. I had to review other people's code
26. Other people had to review my code
27. I had to reject other people's code
28. I got more involved in Product
29. But
30. Things moved much slower
31. Meetings got in the way
32. Politics got in the way
33. Humans got in the way
34. I used to be a 10x engineer
35. In the past year I've not written any code
36. In the past year no-one has written any code
37. (that's another story)
38. Why was it so easy before?
39. Because I didn't have to deal with people
40. I didn't have to speak to our Users
41. I didn't have to explain my code to colleagues
42. I didn't worry about other people maintaining my code
43. The Humans were "abstracted"
44. Software is Simple
45. Most of us aren't making Facebook
46. Most of us aren't making Google
47. Most of us aren't flying to the moon
48. Big systems are broken down into simple pieces
49. Software can be solved
50. But Humans?
51. Humans are Hard
52. Like, really hard!
53. There is no formula to solve people
54. We Are Humans
55. We Build Software for Humans
56. We Build Software with Humans
57. We need to do better
58. How I learned to be better at Humans
59. Take the time to understand Technique 1:
60. I didn't understand them
61. They didn't understand me
62. We all have different backgrounds and perspectives
63. We are all trying to do a good job
64. Assume the best
65. Put yourself in their shoes
66. Time spent understanding others Saves us time elsewhere
67. Don't apologise for being shy Technique 2:
68. I am shy
69. I am awkward with people
70. Or at least I thought I was
71. "I don't know how to talk to people"
72. "I don't understand people"
73. "who said that?" My colleague:
74. I stopped assuming I was awkward
75. It turns out I'm not that awkward
76. We're all awkward! or rather:
77. Find your place Technique 3:
78. I used to try to go to clubs
79. But clubs aren't my thing
80. Tech is my thing
81. Coders are my thing
82. Find your role
83. Understand other people feel the same way
84. Meet them in a mutually comfortable spot
85. Don't make them go to the pub
86. Be Confident Technique 4:
87. Everyone has imposter syndrome
88. I find it weird when people listen to me
89. But it turns out I'm super clever
90. It took too long to realise this
91. Practice Technique 6:
92. Talk to people
93. Find out what makes them tick
94. People can be fun
95. Time to Practice!!!
96. It's ok to be inconsistent
97. Final thought:
98. Life is short
99. Let's all just be friends
100. Thanks
101. @matthewrudy