WEBVTT
00:00:00.050 --> 00:00:04.129
A year ago I convinced Ashley that she had to do a podcast with me.
00:00:04.267 --> 00:00:07.746
Has the last year of"Change, Technically" been what you expected?
00:00:08.147 --> 00:00:16.306
I know I came in with a lot of like fear about being the person who said, oh, I have a podcast.
00:00:17.621 --> 00:00:22.757
So I came in with a lot of like self-awareness and self-doubt of that sort.
00:00:22.757 --> 00:00:27.646
But I have come around to the idea that maybe we have something interesting to say.
00:00:28.407 --> 00:00:33.447
When I look back at every episode, it's so far ranging.
00:00:33.536 --> 00:00:41.246
We've gotten to talk about things and learn about things, and you and I get to have these little research dives.
00:00:41.246 --> 00:00:46.737
We never would've maybe learned about these things that we've learned about and then we talk about it afterwards.
00:00:47.006 --> 00:00:50.307
It's almost kind of like been getting a Master's degree.
00:00:50.307 --> 00:00:53.487
with you, you know, as a group project in this household.
00:00:54.697 --> 00:00:57.756
Almost like book club for us, but it's like research book club.
00:00:58.176 --> 00:01:09.876
A year of"Change, Technically", which Ashley is grateful for because it has funneled some of my energy into an output that is not just Ashley's ears at breakfast.
00:01:10.493 --> 00:01:16.403
So this is producer Danilo, and we haven't done this before, but I turned on my microphone today.
00:01:16.509 --> 00:01:16.868
Oh my God.
00:01:16.868 --> 00:01:17.468
Who is that?
00:01:17.468 --> 00:01:18.373
What is happening?
00:01:18.754 --> 00:01:19.769
It's the voice of God.
00:01:21.421 --> 00:01:29.111
To celebrate a year, I proposed that we let Cat and Ashley talk their shit.
00:01:29.930 --> 00:01:41.381
I don't wanna like break my arm, pattin' myself on the back, but the premise that your very sweet, yet rigorous domesticity.
00:01:42.100 --> 00:01:43.960
Would make for a great podcast.
00:01:44.180 --> 00:01:45.114
Has borne out
00:01:45.164 --> 00:01:50.209
I hope that if anybody ever writes a biography of us, it's called"Sweet and Rigorous Domesticity".
00:01:52.188 --> 00:01:54.198
New"Change, Technically" merch idea
00:02:02.248 --> 00:02:11.068
I would love to hear about your theories of change, and what you find lacking in the common theories of change that you encounter in others.
00:02:12.929 --> 00:02:18.239
A theory tells you, if I change X, maybe Y will change.
00:02:18.338 --> 00:02:27.519
A theory of change is usually the kind of theory we want because we're interested in something happening differently in the world.
00:02:28.158 --> 00:02:29.868
People use this term all kinds of ways.
00:02:30.658 --> 00:02:37.438
If you actually have a theory of change, you have a So what, so we should do this.
00:02:37.468 --> 00:02:40.739
It requires a little bit of planting your flag.
00:02:40.769 --> 00:02:42.088
It requires some courage.
00:02:42.088 --> 00:02:50.609
I think you are often and wrong when you do that because you're venturing into the territory of saying, well, you know, you all said we need a solution.
00:02:50.609 --> 00:02:53.519
Here's one, let's, like, I, I think it's gonna be this one.
00:02:53.519 --> 00:02:55.169
This is the one I'm gonna argue for.
00:02:55.528 --> 00:03:09.598
To me, you know, we all need, we're all searching for theories of change a lot of the time, but then we get kind of stuck in the preliminary space and I get really frustrated when people act like.
00:03:10.424 --> 00:03:15.943
They have closed the door on a conversation simply by describing something that bothers them.
00:03:16.334 --> 00:03:24.794
And there's no, there's no path from a, the bad world we live in now to B the better world we're talking about.
00:03:25.123 --> 00:03:34.514
I don't understand when people just say all managers are evil or all managers are terrible and then they Don't have any.
00:03:35.653 --> 00:03:37.633
so what should we do about it?
00:03:37.734 --> 00:03:57.623
Where is the theory of change it's just something that I see all the time and when I try to talk about social dynamics in groups, people in tech constantly flood me with these replies that are like, you know what the explanation is, managers, managers are terrible.
00:03:57.984 --> 00:04:01.584
And to that, as a social scientist, a, I'm like, first of all.
00:04:01.883 --> 00:04:04.524
it's really annoying to me that you're ignoring.
00:04:04.524 --> 00:04:08.574
All kinds of other properties of groups that don't have anything to do with whether someone's a manager or not.
00:04:08.574 --> 00:04:14.623
So like we've all been in groups that don't have any managers and are still behaving in certain ways.
00:04:14.924 --> 00:04:26.533
And then B, what do You mean by that like is a manager, is what you're picturing actually like a white man in management who came up in a certain style?
00:04:26.533 --> 00:04:27.704
Are you picturing.
00:04:28.244 --> 00:04:42.314
This one woman who finally got one promotion and decided to take a 30 K pay raise that's gonna change her children's future and leads two people in a small healthcare nonprofit.
00:04:42.343 --> 00:04:44.324
you know, that person's also a manager.
00:04:44.423 --> 00:04:52.913
Ashley, you have done a bunch of radical stuff with your students and there was a theory of change there.
00:04:53.105 --> 00:04:54.605
What was your theory of change?
00:04:55.350 --> 00:05:00.990
It's so much more grassroots and from the ground up than anybody is sort of willing to admit.
00:05:00.990 --> 00:05:13.321
And I actually think the manager's example kind of ties into this because it's like, why do we blame the manager, like the person at the top when there are probably things we could be doing on the ground to change things.
00:05:13.321 --> 00:05:18.000
And like I think about what's happening now in our country, which is that they're trying.
00:05:18.331 --> 00:05:19.951
To change things top down.
00:05:20.261 --> 00:05:25.420
Every political analyst who studies policy change is like, this isn't gonna stick.
00:05:25.451 --> 00:05:28.750
Like, it's not actually gonna change the way people feel.
00:05:28.750 --> 00:05:56.360
So whether it's like my classroom or it's like an organization, I think change actually starts from the ground with people changing their perspective, whether it's like a student learning something differently or having a different kind of interaction in class or you know, on a, on a team, someone interacting with their manager differently and like changing the scope of that relationship.
00:05:56.360 --> 00:06:00.891
And that's the thing that like catapults into bigger organizational change.
00:06:01.401 --> 00:06:06.500
Or sometimes it's having like the one advocate in the room.
00:06:06.500 --> 00:06:08.901
And that's the thing that like propels up.
00:06:08.990 --> 00:06:21.980
You know, we sort of talked about this in the Andor episode, but I was also recently talking to someone at a large, you know, organization, research institute, and they were sort of talking about, oh, the people at the top don't understand, like they don't understand what we need.
00:06:22.011 --> 00:06:24.050
And I was like, who are the advocates?
00:06:24.050 --> 00:06:25.341
Like who are the people in the room?
00:06:25.341 --> 00:06:26.630
Like what are the rooms like?
00:06:26.750 --> 00:06:39.471
It's like there's these like ground level details that are actually really important and that's the thing that matters and builds up to actual, change in organizations and policies.
00:06:40.026 --> 00:06:45.875
Yeah, I think that, you know, when I think about your work, Ashley, I think about, you know, you're so practical and, and
00:06:45.891 --> 00:06:47.571
Yeah, it's very practical.
00:06:47.855 --> 00:06:48.966
and empathic.
00:06:48.995 --> 00:07:02.016
You're, you're kind of like, you know, I remember when you took this job and, and I mean there's a, you could spend the whole rest of your life engaging in abstract online arguments about how Computer Science Is taught.
00:07:02.690 --> 00:07:19.401
Why students don't enroll in it, or you could do what Ashley did and get a job as a leader and create an entire program that that introduces people to programming outside of the confines, finds of computer science and actually changes something.
00:07:19.761 --> 00:07:20.331
You know?
00:07:21.050 --> 00:07:28.850
And you know, I think that there's something else here to, this whole, like doom and gloom critique.
00:07:28.850 --> 00:07:38.420
Never have a strategy part, which is do we as marginalized people in these systems ever get to succeed?
00:07:38.990 --> 00:07:39.591
And why?
00:07:39.651 --> 00:07:41.091
Why are you so eager?
00:07:41.091 --> 00:07:42.740
to punish us for succeeding?
00:07:43.161 --> 00:07:50.380
You know, if this is the world we live in and we need to feed ourselves, and also we have an ambition.
00:07:50.380 --> 00:07:57.430
Maybe I had an ambition to become a person who could create jobs that employed social scientists in tech.
00:07:58.076 --> 00:08:00.266
It's pretty clear how you have to do that.
00:08:00.355 --> 00:08:04.855
You have to become a manager who has a budget to create a job.
00:08:05.216 --> 00:08:12.115
And I'm not saying that working inside of both universities and corporations is not maddening.
00:08:12.505 --> 00:08:13.646
It is, of course.
00:08:13.735 --> 00:08:22.196
And, and, you know, but like, what do you want me to do Is living in the woods the same, you know, is that gonna create jobs for social scientists?
00:08:22.196 --> 00:08:23.305
I, I didn't think so.
00:08:23.305 --> 00:08:36.686
And I think there's something really interesting about who gets bombarded with this sort of self-righteous message about how leadership is bad and who gets just like celebrated and treated like.
00:08:37.510 --> 00:08:38.831
But you're really one of us.
00:08:38.831 --> 00:08:41.020
You're really a technical person the whole way through.
00:08:41.020 --> 00:08:45.941
You just happen to take on leadership and you just happen to, you know, occasionally take on a job.
00:08:45.941 --> 00:08:50.951
And that's what I see in tech circles a lot like this kind of sorting that happens all the time.
00:08:51.280 --> 00:08:58.390
And if you're like a woman who gets, who's successful, who daress to get promoted, then suddenly you're an administrator.
00:08:58.630 --> 00:09:07.240
And this is empirically measured across tons of research that women lose their technical credibility as soon as they become successful.
00:09:07.240 --> 00:09:15.490
As soon as there's an alternate explanation that people have that they can slide in for your competency, they'll do that.
00:09:15.701 --> 00:09:33.910
And so it's like all of those beliefs I'm interested in changing and talking about and making progress on, and it really bothers me when people just throw out all that social evidence and they just say, well, I read one post one time that was about how managers are bad.
00:09:33.910 --> 00:09:35.561
And that's like my whole philosophy now.
00:09:37.250 --> 00:09:45.561
I'm curious how each of you have navigated the lack of curiosity from people in positions of power.
00:09:45.755 --> 00:09:56.855
I was talking to this like, person who works at this research institute and who was kind of like upset with the way the leadership was working, I was like, what do they think about what it is that your team does?
00:09:57.035 --> 00:10:02.666
You know, like, do you know what, their sort of view of the world is and like their understanding of what you, you know, your team does.
00:10:02.666 --> 00:10:06.176
And I think that stems from curiosity and is actually like a necessary thing.
00:10:06.176 --> 00:10:11.365
Like you have to have this empathy to be like, what does this person actually think about me and my work?
00:10:11.635 --> 00:10:13.436
And have curiosity about that.
00:10:13.826 --> 00:10:20.515
Um, so that's kind of like one thing that comes to mind in terms of thinking about Yeah, the need for curiosity.
00:10:20.696 --> 00:10:20.875
I don't
00:10:20.921 --> 00:10:23.500
So you, the curiosity has to start inside of you.
00:10:24.535 --> 00:10:29.066
Yeah, you have to be curious about what, like why would someone operate this way in the world?
00:10:29.066 --> 00:10:31.346
You know, why is the manager acting this way?
00:10:31.495 --> 00:10:34.375
Like, why is the organization set up this way, whatever it might be.
00:10:34.375 --> 00:10:38.216
I think that has to start from your curiosity about it
00:10:41.272 --> 00:10:41.812
I love that.
00:10:41.812 --> 00:10:48.126
I think that there's a lot of relation between the way we think about ourselves and what we export to other people.
00:10:48.397 --> 00:10:57.636
So like, I was just writing about this in this chapter in my book about groups and group conflict and how we ostracize people.
00:10:57.636 --> 00:11:06.606
And there is this fascinating connection between self-compassion and the way that people do or don't have it.
00:11:06.606 --> 00:11:17.557
If you have a deficit in self-compassion, if you really don't see yourself as sharing humanity with other people, you're also very hostile to those other people, which sort of seems okay.
00:11:17.557 --> 00:11:18.187
No, no, duh.
00:11:18.187 --> 00:11:23.947
Like That's really obvious, but I, I think it's actually not obvious to people in certain contexts.
00:11:23.976 --> 00:11:27.817
So I work with a lot of software engineers.
00:11:27.866 --> 00:11:39.626
I've just listened to them for years at this point, and I hear how vicious they are to themselves, and then I hear them completely export that to other people and not realize it.
00:11:40.932 --> 00:11:52.221
So I hear, I'm frustrated with how I led my team and probably all other leaders are uncompassionate assholes who've never fixed anything.
00:11:52.731 --> 00:11:59.481
These are deeply nihilistic viewpoints about the world, and they can be disguised.
00:11:59.812 --> 00:12:22.881
We are really good at rationalizing them, and I don't like to tolerate it that much because I think that it's really harmful for people There's a lot of hope in that though because it means that if you can actually improve the way you think about yourself, like that actually is a really good starting place for becoming more powerful in how you interact with people.
00:12:23.241 --> 00:12:25.072
I wanna get a little more specific.
00:12:25.072 --> 00:12:43.701
Like I often challenge myself to say, well, if I'm not capable of sitting in a room with like leaders who don't understand the marginalized people who are maybe on my team, then like, what good am I?
00:12:44.001 --> 00:12:45.472
Like, what right do I have?
00:12:45.927 --> 00:12:46.522
champion them.
00:12:46.746 --> 00:12:55.836
Exactly like I have to do that work, even if it's distasteful, scary, stressful, annoying.
00:12:56.076 --> 00:13:00.606
Like, because what matters is getting progress to happen.
00:13:00.636 --> 00:13:03.697
Not like my personal relationship with these leaders.
00:13:04.027 --> 00:13:06.697
And obviously I, I wanna have a good personal relationship.
00:13:06.876 --> 00:13:14.346
I think it's important, but to me it's like, okay, I learned this.
00:13:14.346 --> 00:13:34.746
Working in education, if you're gonna go say I get to represent a public school and their data, you cannot hold your nose up about sitting in a room with like Republican lawmakers who profoundly disagree with everything about who you are sometimes and will tell you that, you know, like.
00:13:35.586 --> 00:13:38.917
These are the fights that we actually have in the world.
00:13:39.006 --> 00:13:42.187
And so I think you're either in a place where you can do that or not.
00:13:42.187 --> 00:13:48.037
And you know, honestly, if you're not in a place to do it, which I sometimes have not been, remove yourself, like go work on something else.
00:13:48.037 --> 00:13:48.397
Right?
00:13:48.907 --> 00:13:57.846
Um, but I feel really strongly that you can't be like selfish and narcissistic and sort of say, um, oh wow, I'm astonished.
00:13:57.846 --> 00:14:03.096
I'm so astonished that people in power, like are, are blinded by that.
00:14:03.096 --> 00:14:05.797
Like, okay, of course they are.
00:14:06.216 --> 00:14:11.197
And so, are you gonna help or are you just gonna take, up space and not help, you know?
00:14:12.996 --> 00:14:37.407
This kind of relates to something we were talking about last night, Cat, which is that like, if, if there's a, I think you were saying like if there's like a prejudice that is expressed in a group and I, I would say that this probably could extend to like, if a misconception is expressed in a group, then that will kind of like stick and people will remember it as the idea of the group as a whole.
00:14:37.437 --> 00:14:41.726
Like even if the whole group didn't agree with it and it was just one person.
00:14:41.726 --> 00:14:53.037
And I think this like speaks to the fact that like the dissenter in that group or the person, like actually willing to point it out, stand up for, you know, whatever marginalized community is being misrepresented, whatever it might be.
00:14:53.037 --> 00:15:00.626
Like, it's like ever more important because you don't want people to walk away from that space with an even like worse perception of how people think.
00:15:01.721 --> 00:15:01.782
Yeah,
00:15:01.807 --> 00:15:02.907
Yeah, totally.
00:15:02.937 --> 00:15:11.246
You're talking about like the ways that prejudices can be transmitted across our social relationships and it's, it's really, really powerful.
00:15:11.246 --> 00:15:23.846
Like there's these super interesting effects, like even watching someone that you're in a group with, be in a conversation with someone who's expressing prejudice group views, and that person is not part of your group themselves.
00:15:24.116 --> 00:15:28.287
We, we can misattribute it like we, we leave that observation.
00:15:28.496 --> 00:15:29.277
It leaks.
00:15:29.277 --> 00:15:42.356
Yeah, so there's, this is part of why psychologists say that, you know, some of these beliefs are somewhat self perpetuating and that we can be worse in groups than we actually all are as individual people.
00:15:42.356 --> 00:15:49.376
Like we have, we have our own values that sometimes get suppressed by these mechanisms.
00:15:49.376 --> 00:15:54.326
and, you know, understanding that is, is scary, but it's also very powerful.
00:15:54.326 --> 00:16:04.586
It, it lets you sort of realize, okay, we're fighting a pretty big battle here, you know, for like how our species interacts and how we see each other.
00:16:05.086 --> 00:16:24.256
If you've been listening and you're thinking that you too could benefit from a really thoughtful conversation with Cat Hicks about your problems in your workspace, I have really good news for you, and that is that Cat Hicks has a consulting firm called Catharsis Consulting, which can help you and help you think about things in an evidence-based manner.
00:16:24.792 --> 00:16:33.761
You can get a 90 minute consult with Cat, where you sit down and hash out your evidence strategy, tackle your human engineering problems, and bring psychology to your software teams.
00:16:34.091 --> 00:16:35.951
Check the link in the show notes to learn more.
00:16:39.409 --> 00:16:50.740
let's revisit something from, I believe, our very first episode, what is a technical person, and is this a useful question to even have?
00:16:52.048 --> 00:16:57.089
Is it a useful question, like, for employers or for society or for anybody?
00:16:58.813 --> 00:17:07.124
You know, let's let, sure, let's scope it to people's kind of personal experience of the workplace.
00:17:07.634 --> 00:17:08.203
Hmm.
00:17:08.413 --> 00:17:12.223
is this dividing line of technical versus non-technical?
00:17:12.223 --> 00:17:17.653
Is, is this useful to anybody except for pernicious goals?
00:17:18.388 --> 00:17:18.778
mm
00:17:19.823 --> 00:17:27.722
feel like, this is something Cat has been thinking about a lot lately, but I'll take a less informed stab at it, which is that,
00:17:29.178 --> 00:17:30.347
I wouldn't say less informed.
00:17:31.893 --> 00:17:33.182
well informed via cat, I guess.
00:17:33.538 --> 00:17:36.208
You're teaching at the beginning of the formation of these groups.
00:17:36.258 --> 00:17:42.317
Yeah, well, I guess, no, I mean, what I was thinking is like, you know, groups are helpful in human society.
00:17:42.317 --> 00:17:48.407
Like there's a reason we have groups whether or not, like the group of technical people is helpful.
00:17:49.413 --> 00:17:50.883
Um, I don't know.
00:17:50.883 --> 00:18:05.853
I have kind of mixed feelings about, I guess, I guess I wish that instead of it being a trait of a person, you know, instead of it being like who is technical, it was like, what can this person do or what do they want to learn?
00:18:06.153 --> 00:18:06.423
Right?
00:18:06.423 --> 00:18:08.492
Because that's more like, it's like a hobby group.
00:18:08.522 --> 00:18:14.012
It's like people who wanna sew together and then it makes sense for those people to like learn how to sew together.
00:18:14.373 --> 00:18:22.173
Um, obviously we have to be in groups at work that are around particular skills or you know, like things you have to do at work.
00:18:22.413 --> 00:18:30.482
But I think the issue that I have is with it being conceptualized as a trait, as like a thing that you either have or do not have.
00:18:32.462 --> 00:18:39.932
So you, you would be more comfortable with technical being a responsibility than an innate quality.
00:18:40.472 --> 00:18:40.893
yeah.
00:18:41.133 --> 00:18:41.583
Sure.
00:18:41.972 --> 00:18:42.333
Yeah.
00:18:43.127 --> 00:18:43.847
That's interesting.
00:18:43.847 --> 00:18:45.377
Like a responsibility, a thing.
00:18:45.617 --> 00:18:57.167
A thing that's within your purview at work is like you are the person who, I don't know, maintains the code base or you know this particular thing or works on this workflow, and that is quote unquote technical.
00:18:57.167 --> 00:18:57.557
Sure.
00:18:58.292 --> 00:19:03.633
falls over, but, but immediately now, now you're getting into like details.
00:19:03.782 --> 00:19:04.232
Right.
00:19:04.682 --> 00:19:15.363
And I think that where we fall short, where we use this technical label is that we're actually just leading a bunch of details that are the things that matter.
00:19:15.843 --> 00:19:18.992
The thing we're doing with that label is being lazy.
00:19:18.992 --> 00:19:25.442
It's like, okay, there's a specific skill that I need you to have and you either have it or you don't have it.
00:19:25.442 --> 00:19:34.292
But instead of getting into what that skill is, I'm just gonna call it this blanket technical thing, and now we're getting into traits and it's unproductive.
00:19:34.428 --> 00:19:38.282
It's a heuristic for people's pay level, right?
00:19:38.282 --> 00:19:40.053
And that's why this like really matters, right?
00:19:40.053 --> 00:19:45.363
Like people who are kind of quote unquote technical are in a different pay grade than people who are not.
00:19:46.218 --> 00:19:46.577
Right.
00:19:48.692 --> 00:19:49.143
Okay.
00:19:50.613 --> 00:19:55.593
I think that technical is like a location in multidimensional space.
00:19:57.827 --> 00:19:57.948
Please
00:19:58.022 --> 00:19:58.742
All right.
00:19:59.073 --> 00:19:59.522
Okay.
00:19:59.853 --> 00:20:09.482
And I think that you are allowed to enter that location if you hit enough of the criteria that we create for it.
00:20:10.353 --> 00:20:12.992
And those things are shifting.
00:20:13.022 --> 00:20:21.363
So like it used to maybe be that gender was more of a passport blocker, you know, into the location of technical.
00:20:22.083 --> 00:20:25.803
But I think that there's so many interesting things here.
00:20:25.803 --> 00:20:26.553
Like one is.
00:20:26.617 --> 00:20:26.837
is
00:20:28.397 --> 00:20:29.117
There's a really.
00:20:29.117 --> 00:20:32.958
core thing that we like to do in our minds, which is essentialize.
00:20:32.988 --> 00:20:41.117
So making something, a trait of an individual rather than an activity we perform, you know, and our beliefs about that.
00:20:41.147 --> 00:20:44.117
This is really powerful and it shows up all the time.
00:20:44.178 --> 00:20:53.327
Like across child development, across when people are entering a new field, do they learn that something's an essential skill or not?
00:20:53.327 --> 00:20:55.667
You know, do they essentialize it as a trait or not?
00:20:55.667 --> 00:20:57.258
So there's that.
00:20:57.587 --> 00:21:07.607
I, I like the shifting it towards an activity, you know, or a thing that you can bring into focus and You can think about it in your own day, right?
00:21:07.607 --> 00:21:09.728
Like, am I foregrounding?
00:21:09.728 --> 00:21:14.087
Am I starting to, am I using the part of my mind that can think in a technical way?
00:21:14.567 --> 00:21:17.387
Or am I gonna try to like, think in a different way?
00:21:17.387 --> 00:21:17.688
Right?
00:21:17.688 --> 00:21:19.367
And so I don't.
00:21:20.522 --> 00:21:32.643
And then of course there's like a, you know, the, the macroeconomic version of it, which is just all the people who get to go to the fancy offsite, you know, or all of the like, ways we could describe this technical or not technical division.
00:21:33.123 --> 00:21:41.343
Um, yeah, I agree so much with what you said to Nelo that we use it so much of the time when we're not being specific.
00:21:41.343 --> 00:21:43.772
And you can, you can elicit this from people.
00:21:43.772 --> 00:21:58.982
So like when I, I sat down in these interviews we did with software engineers a while ago and, and, I sort of experimentally asked people, um, also in this little like conference that I was part of, um.
00:21:59.492 --> 00:22:15.423
What do you think when you think, when you call something technical, or what do you think it means when we call something technical and like the, the arguments that you can spark, the absolute chaos that you can spark simply By asking that question.
00:22:15.873 --> 00:22:17.972
um, is, is so telling.
00:22:17.972 --> 00:22:28.442
And it shows that people deeply know, you know, that this division is doing things they don't want it to do, but then they also feel they need to use it.
00:22:28.502 --> 00:22:32.553
You know, they need to use it to protect certain activities in their workplace.
00:22:32.583 --> 00:22:35.643
And so you, you can just feel that tension.
00:22:36.482 --> 00:22:43.712
So to me it's so interesting to ask is it useful Like, like in some sense, everything that survives is useful, you know,
00:22:44.718 --> 00:22:48.317
It, it has survived a mimetic, um, selection pressure.
00:22:48.317 --> 00:22:48.708
Right,
00:22:48.903 --> 00:22:50.012
it's useful to someone
00:22:50.583 --> 00:22:52.893
if the, if the, if the, question is.
00:22:53.688 --> 00:22:56.627
Is this the, way we solve whatever's going on with us?
00:22:56.627 --> 00:22:58.337
I think the answer's very clearly.
00:22:58.337 --> 00:23:02.627
No, we're not solving things with this, so we need something else.
00:23:03.887 --> 00:23:09.917
you you know what both you just said reminded me of a, a little allegory.
00:23:10.502 --> 00:23:14.583
Which is, you know, Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Mario.
00:23:15.258 --> 00:23:16.458
No, I don't.
00:23:17.432 --> 00:23:18.603
not personally, no.
00:23:18.768 --> 00:23:19.218
Yeah.
00:23:19.742 --> 00:23:20.732
so so me neither.
00:23:20.732 --> 00:23:22.742
We don't, we don't run in the same circles.
00:23:23.133 --> 00:23:23.853
You and Suge
00:23:24.363 --> 00:23:24.752
Me.
00:23:24.752 --> 00:23:33.542
And so, so the thing about Miyamoto that's wild is that at the time that he created Donkey Kong,
00:23:34.752 --> 00:23:34.833
Hmm,
00:23:34.893 --> 00:23:39.512
he was not supposed to be the guy who did that work.
00:23:40.653 --> 00:23:46.923
The people who were creating video games at that time were like hardcore engineers.
00:23:47.522 --> 00:23:47.643
Hmm.
00:23:47.643 --> 00:23:56.613
had this like kind of literal mindedness to them that was more about just like, can we get something interactive out of this incredibly meager set of.
00:23:57.048 --> 00:24:00.887
Constraints and chips and costs, right?
00:24:00.978 --> 00:24:03.617
And Miyamoto is this guy in like the planning department.
00:24:03.617 --> 00:24:05.988
He's such just this like apprentice planning guy.
00:24:06.077 --> 00:24:10.938
And Nintendo is just flat out, they are so resource constrained.
00:24:12.018 --> 00:24:21.857
And so it just falls to Miyamoto like, Hey, can you, can you rescue this arcade game that we sent to America that nobody wants?
00:24:23.387 --> 00:24:29.807
And they let this guy who on paper was not technical, the game for the first time
00:24:29.952 --> 00:24:30.173
Hmm.
00:24:30.407 --> 00:24:33.468
he created a franchise worth, worth, billions.
00:24:34.008 --> 00:24:37.458
And so I guess when I ask like, is it useful?
00:24:38.508 --> 00:24:50.567
Is it in the long-term interests of any of us to have like a really narrow conception of who gets to do what work, including work that has very technical underpinnings.
00:24:50.712 --> 00:24:50.833
hmm.
00:24:50.837 --> 00:24:53.117
Yeah, well That's definitely not useful.
00:24:53.178 --> 00:24:57.018
Like that just flat out is terrible, you know?
00:24:57.347 --> 00:25:07.577
And is maybe one of the worst things that we do on this planet is just constantly foreclosed on the future of the people who could be solving our biggest problems.
00:25:07.607 --> 00:25:14.357
And I mean, we do that by not caring about the health of, you know, people in other countries.
00:25:14.357 --> 00:25:15.887
I mean, we do that in any number of ways.
00:25:15.887 --> 00:25:23.688
I don't just mean that we do, we do that because some child in America didn't get into a gifted class and should have, but it's like a whole global problem.
00:25:24.202 --> 00:25:24.553
Right.
00:25:24.843 --> 00:25:31.653
I think there's like more acknowledgement of the necessity for people to switch fields in scientific research.
00:25:31.682 --> 00:25:38.343
Like there's actually some mechanisms for funding that very explicitly incentivize people to switch fields.
00:25:38.583 --> 00:25:38.913
Right.
00:25:38.913 --> 00:25:40.323
And, and maybe the, maybe the
00:25:40.397 --> 00:25:42.288
Do we, do we still have that funding?
00:25:42.948 --> 00:25:43.458
I don't know.
00:25:43.728 --> 00:25:57.157
Probably not, but you know, but like, it's not as clear as like technical to non-technical, but maybe you are a cancer researcher and you think about the way cells work in a particular way, but then you are incentivized to think about, the nervous system or something different.
00:25:57.157 --> 00:26:01.768
Like take you know, your scaffolds for how you understand how biology works and apply that to something else.
00:26:01.768 --> 00:26:09.657
And I think there's like a lot of really good research around the power of that and how, you know, you can get locked into a particular way of seeing the world.
00:26:09.657 --> 00:26:11.907
And like so many, yeah.
00:26:11.907 --> 00:26:25.498
And so many paradigm shifts in science have come from people from the outside, you know, the motos of the scientific world coming in and just thinking about it differently and being like, yeah, but what if cells did this actually?
00:26:25.498 --> 00:26:30.478
And I feel like, yeah, that, that just like to me feels like a known feature of how.
00:26:30.897 --> 00:26:41.097
Progress happens is like you need different opinions and people who haven't been steeped in the same shit for like decades, you need fresh perspectives.
00:26:41.932 --> 00:26:46.343
For a solution to propagate, for innovation to happen, it has to be shared.
00:26:46.732 --> 00:26:50.573
And I talk about this when I talk about social learning and developers.
00:26:50.623 --> 00:27:06.113
We imagine this genius who's working alone and, even if that were true, which is often not true, but like even if that's true, when that happens, other people need to be able to receive that idea and that is actually something they do.
00:27:06.173 --> 00:27:08.423
It's not just them being robots.
00:27:08.452 --> 00:27:10.252
That is a capacity we have.
00:27:10.252 --> 00:27:15.863
Our ability to successfully imitate and transmit solutions is.
00:27:16.613 --> 00:27:17.692
Phenomenal.
00:27:17.962 --> 00:27:26.663
And if we could actually respect that, you know, it, it really allows us to propagate solutions in ways that we've never imagined.
00:27:26.692 --> 00:27:32.752
And so you'll see these moments that happens, like, I mean, open source software is a pretty famous location for this to happen.
00:27:33.623 --> 00:27:45.593
And the free revealing that people want to do because they have joy in solutions because they have made a connection between some seemingly niche problem and a solution and others might share it.
00:27:45.593 --> 00:27:56.673
And then it turns out, you know, understanding some niche possibility for mRNA could be the thing that gives us a vaccine against pancreatic cancer if we're allowed to work on it.
00:27:56.732 --> 00:27:57.153
You know,
00:27:57.772 --> 00:27:58.083
Right.
00:27:58.742 --> 00:28:02.192
I mean, it's not just that we can't predict.
00:28:02.613 --> 00:28:04.923
What kinds of people will matter to our future?
00:28:04.923 --> 00:28:19.803
We also can't predict what kinds of work will turn into huge game changers for our future, and I, I think that is, that's something that you and I talk about a lot, Ashley, that there's this ex exploration attitude in science.
00:28:19.803 --> 00:28:38.643
There's this awareness of this when you're a scientist and we both, when we go have to work on the edges and try to work cross disciplinarily and maybe work with more people who are really steeped in that there's technical and not, and they're in that siloed, I would call it, kind of computer science kind of thinking.
00:28:39.423 --> 00:28:44.343
Then we get really frustrated because they don't have that curiosity and exploration.
00:28:44.373 --> 00:28:50.492
What they have is like a lot of rigidity that is deeply not innovative in my opinion.
00:28:52.018 --> 00:29:07.768
The reason that I wanted to invite each of you to talk your shit, to celebrate a year of change technically, is that I know in the pursuit of your good work, you've had to eat plenty of it.
00:29:08.218 --> 00:29:19.323
And so for people who are listening, who are eating shit in their own way, I wonder if there is anything you would like to offer to make the journey a little bit.
00:29:20.252 --> 00:29:21.002
Less lonely.
00:29:21.502 --> 00:29:30.393
Grifters always lose eventually the people who are faking are exposed Yeah.
00:29:30.962 --> 00:29:40.712
And I don't know, I think the hardest thing has been having to ride that out a little bit and to wait for it to happen, you know?
00:29:40.712 --> 00:29:49.532
And in the initial stages of someone making claims that are bullshit or whatever, like it sucks, it's really, really shitty.
00:29:49.532 --> 00:29:59.972
Or like someone telling us that like I shouldn't be teaching programming or I need to teach math as a part of my programming course, or whatever it is that is just like completely unfounded.
00:30:00.272 --> 00:30:09.633
Like, you know, those people will, will see the light maybe someday they probably won't tell you that they saw the light, but like it's coming for them.
00:30:12.363 --> 00:30:13.803
Um, I don't know.
00:30:13.803 --> 00:30:15.153
That's my initial feeling.
00:30:15.873 --> 00:30:16.712
Mm.
00:30:17.182 --> 00:30:18.442
I'll say something that.
00:30:18.532 --> 00:30:22.762
I think both of you have really helped me see.
00:30:22.913 --> 00:30:29.817
So like a personal thank you to both of you is never let them take your swagger.
00:30:30.698 --> 00:30:49.748
And your chutzpah and your cool, you know, like when you know what you're about and you know what you've done and you know why you're doing it, there is a quality of just untouchable power to that.
00:30:50.498 --> 00:31:01.567
And, and I think people hate it who are grifters, you know, and if, if you can become, and then realizing they can't take you away from that is just a, is such a game changer.
00:31:01.567 --> 00:31:03.548
And, And realizing
00:31:03.603 --> 00:31:03.803
that
00:31:04.807 --> 00:31:08.798
you truly can have tremendous joy in what you're doing.
00:31:09.188 --> 00:31:21.307
You can walk, and I told, I mentioned like being in the room with say, you know, like folks who are deeply politically not aligned with me and whatever, being able to leave that room like, well, that was fun, You know?
00:31:21.698 --> 00:31:22.837
Oh my gosh.
00:31:22.837 --> 00:31:29.798
You just see the real estate that is created in other people's minds when you can have that attitude because.
00:31:30.113 --> 00:31:37.643
They, they cannot, by the structure of their beliefs and how they're entangled, their self-concept is entangled.
00:31:37.853 --> 00:31:42.893
It's like why they're, you know, opposing what are clearly things that are good for us to do.
00:31:43.373 --> 00:31:46.282
They're so trapped in like a cage of their own making.
00:31:46.282 --> 00:31:54.923
And honestly, you don't have to be, and I think there's like this quality of letting yourself be free and it's, it's healing.
00:31:54.952 --> 00:32:06.182
And it's like, when I, became a leader in tech and I started at the same time sewing my own clothes and just thinking, I'm gonna wear the colors that I like.
00:32:06.262 --> 00:32:20.512
I've had so much of people looking at me and just making unwanted comments about how, I look and who, I am, and how could you be here and have you ever thought about the fact that you're like a woman, you know, and just a thousand comments like that.
00:32:21.442 --> 00:32:25.492
I was like, well, you know, I might as well make myself.
00:32:25.583 --> 00:32:45.772
X-Wing jumpsuits and, and just have this, this joy, and I think joy is like electric and charismatic, and it, it actually helps you find people, helps other people who are genuinely well intentioned, feel good about themselves and like perhaps they too could be themselves.
00:32:46.462 --> 00:32:49.343
And so that is socially transmissible as well.
00:32:50.113 --> 00:32:50.232
Hmm.
00:32:53.012 --> 00:32:57.067
Well, and that is one year of"Change, Technically".
00:32:57.067 --> 00:33:05.768
If you have been listening to us since the start, we really thank you for tuning in each time we show up on your podcast app.
00:33:06.067 --> 00:33:11.077
And if you are new, there's a whole year of fun stuff just like this.
00:33:11.222 --> 00:33:14.732
We do this'cause it's fun and'cause we care about these subjects.
00:33:14.792 --> 00:33:18.932
And I think you will have a great time with them too.
00:00:00.050 --> 00:00:04.129
A year ago I convinced Ashley that she had to do a podcast with me.
00:00:04.267 --> 00:00:07.746
Has the last year of"Change, Technically" been what you expected?
00:00:08.147 --> 00:00:16.306
I know I came in with a lot of like fear about being the person who said, oh, I have a podcast.
00:00:17.621 --> 00:00:22.757
So I came in with a lot of like self-awareness and self-doubt of that sort.
00:00:22.757 --> 00:00:27.646
But I have come around to the idea that maybe we have something interesting to say.
00:00:28.407 --> 00:00:33.447
When I look back at every episode, it's so far ranging.
00:00:33.536 --> 00:00:41.246
We've gotten to talk about things and learn about things, and you and I get to have these little research dives.
00:00:41.246 --> 00:00:46.737
We never would've maybe learned about these things that we've learned about and then we talk about it afterwards.
00:00:47.006 --> 00:00:50.307
It's almost kind of like been getting a Master's degree.
00:00:50.307 --> 00:00:53.487
with you, you know, as a group project in this household.
00:00:54.697 --> 00:00:57.756
Almost like book club for us, but it's like research book club.
00:00:58.176 --> 00:01:09.876
A year of"Change, Technically", which Ashley is grateful for because it has funneled some of my energy into an output that is not just Ashley's ears at breakfast.
00:01:10.493 --> 00:01:16.403
So this is producer Danilo, and we haven't done this before, but I turned on my microphone today.
00:01:16.509 --> 00:01:16.868
Oh my God.
00:01:16.868 --> 00:01:17.468
Who is that?
00:01:17.468 --> 00:01:18.373
What is happening?
00:01:18.754 --> 00:01:19.769
It's the voice of God.
00:01:21.421 --> 00:01:29.111
To celebrate a year, I proposed that we let Cat and Ashley talk their shit.
00:01:29.930 --> 00:01:41.381
I don't wanna like break my arm, pattin' myself on the back, but the premise that your very sweet, yet rigorous domesticity.
00:01:42.100 --> 00:01:43.960
Would make for a great podcast.
00:01:44.180 --> 00:01:45.114
Has borne out
00:01:45.164 --> 00:01:50.209
I hope that if anybody ever writes a biography of us, it's called"Sweet and Rigorous Domesticity".
00:01:52.188 --> 00:01:54.198
New"Change, Technically" merch idea
00:02:02.248 --> 00:02:11.068
I would love to hear about your theories of change, and what you find lacking in the common theories of change that you encounter in others.
00:02:12.929 --> 00:02:18.239
A theory tells you, if I change X, maybe Y will change.
00:02:18.338 --> 00:02:27.519
A theory of change is usually the kind of theory we want because we're interested in something happening differently in the world.
00:02:28.158 --> 00:02:29.868
People use this term all kinds of ways.
00:02:30.658 --> 00:02:37.438
If you actually have a theory of change, you have a So what, so we should do this.
00:02:37.468 --> 00:02:40.739
It requires a little bit of planting your flag.
00:02:40.769 --> 00:02:42.088
It requires some courage.
00:02:42.088 --> 00:02:50.609
I think you are often and wrong when you do that because you're venturing into the territory of saying, well, you know, you all said we need a solution.
00:02:50.609 --> 00:02:53.519
Here's one, let's, like, I, I think it's gonna be this one.
00:02:53.519 --> 00:02:55.169
This is the one I'm gonna argue for.
00:02:55.528 --> 00:03:09.598
To me, you know, we all need, we're all searching for theories of change a lot of the time, but then we get kind of stuck in the preliminary space and I get really frustrated when people act like.
00:03:10.424 --> 00:03:15.943
They have closed the door on a conversation simply by describing something that bothers them.
00:03:16.334 --> 00:03:24.794
And there's no, there's no path from a, the bad world we live in now to B the better world we're talking about.
00:03:25.123 --> 00:03:34.514
I don't understand when people just say all managers are evil or all managers are terrible and then they Don't have any.
00:03:35.653 --> 00:03:37.633
so what should we do about it?
00:03:37.734 --> 00:03:57.623
Where is the theory of change it's just something that I see all the time and when I try to talk about social dynamics in groups, people in tech constantly flood me with these replies that are like, you know what the explanation is, managers, managers are terrible.
00:03:57.984 --> 00:04:01.584
And to that, as a social scientist, a, I'm like, first of all.
00:04:01.883 --> 00:04:04.524
it's really annoying to me that you're ignoring.
00:04:04.524 --> 00:04:08.574
All kinds of other properties of groups that don't have anything to do with whether someone's a manager or not.
00:04:08.574 --> 00:04:14.623
So like we've all been in groups that don't have any managers and are still behaving in certain ways.
00:04:14.924 --> 00:04:26.533
And then B, what do You mean by that like is a manager, is what you're picturing actually like a white man in management who came up in a certain style?
00:04:26.533 --> 00:04:27.704
Are you picturing.
00:04:28.244 --> 00:04:42.314
This one woman who finally got one promotion and decided to take a 30 K pay raise that's gonna change her children's future and leads two people in a small healthcare nonprofit.
00:04:42.343 --> 00:04:44.324
you know, that person's also a manager.
00:04:44.423 --> 00:04:52.913
Ashley, you have done a bunch of radical stuff with your students and there was a theory of change there.
00:04:53.105 --> 00:04:54.605
What was your theory of change?
00:04:55.350 --> 00:05:00.990
It's so much more grassroots and from the ground up than anybody is sort of willing to admit.
00:05:00.990 --> 00:05:13.321
And I actually think the manager's example kind of ties into this because it's like, why do we blame the manager, like the person at the top when there are probably things we could be doing on the ground to change things.
00:05:13.321 --> 00:05:18.000
And like I think about what's happening now in our country, which is that they're trying.
00:05:18.331 --> 00:05:19.951
To change things top down.
00:05:20.261 --> 00:05:25.420
Every political analyst who studies policy change is like, this isn't gonna stick.
00:05:25.451 --> 00:05:28.750
Like, it's not actually gonna change the way people feel.
00:05:28.750 --> 00:05:56.360
So whether it's like my classroom or it's like an organization, I think change actually starts from the ground with people changing their perspective, whether it's like a student learning something differently or having a different kind of interaction in class or you know, on a, on a team, someone interacting with their manager differently and like changing the scope of that relationship.
00:05:56.360 --> 00:06:00.891
And that's the thing that like catapults into bigger organizational change.
00:06:01.401 --> 00:06:06.500
Or sometimes it's having like the one advocate in the room.
00:06:06.500 --> 00:06:08.901
And that's the thing that like propels up.
00:06:08.990 --> 00:06:21.980
You know, we sort of talked about this in the Andor episode, but I was also recently talking to someone at a large, you know, organization, research institute, and they were sort of talking about, oh, the people at the top don't understand, like they don't understand what we need.
00:06:22.011 --> 00:06:24.050
And I was like, who are the advocates?
00:06:24.050 --> 00:06:25.341
Like who are the people in the room?
00:06:25.341 --> 00:06:26.630
Like what are the rooms like?
00:06:26.750 --> 00:06:39.471
It's like there's these like ground level details that are actually really important and that's the thing that matters and builds up to actual, change in organizations and policies.
00:06:40.026 --> 00:06:45.875
Yeah, I think that, you know, when I think about your work, Ashley, I think about, you know, you're so practical and, and
00:06:45.891 --> 00:06:47.571
Yeah, it's very practical.
00:06:47.855 --> 00:06:48.966
and empathic.
00:06:48.995 --> 00:07:02.016
You're, you're kind of like, you know, I remember when you took this job and, and I mean there's a, you could spend the whole rest of your life engaging in abstract online arguments about how Computer Science Is taught.
00:07:02.690 --> 00:07:19.401
Why students don't enroll in it, or you could do what Ashley did and get a job as a leader and create an entire program that that introduces people to programming outside of the confines, finds of computer science and actually changes something.
00:07:19.761 --> 00:07:20.331
You know?
00:07:21.050 --> 00:07:28.850
And you know, I think that there's something else here to, this whole, like doom and gloom critique.
00:07:28.850 --> 00:07:38.420
Never have a strategy part, which is do we as marginalized people in these systems ever get to succeed?
00:07:38.990 --> 00:07:39.591
And why?
00:07:39.651 --> 00:07:41.091
Why are you so eager?
00:07:41.091 --> 00:07:42.740
to punish us for succeeding?
00:07:43.161 --> 00:07:50.380
You know, if this is the world we live in and we need to feed ourselves, and also we have an ambition.
00:07:50.380 --> 00:07:57.430
Maybe I had an ambition to become a person who could create jobs that employed social scientists in tech.
00:07:58.076 --> 00:08:00.266
It's pretty clear how you have to do that.
00:08:00.355 --> 00:08:04.855
You have to become a manager who has a budget to create a job.
00:08:05.216 --> 00:08:12.115
And I'm not saying that working inside of both universities and corporations is not maddening.
00:08:12.505 --> 00:08:13.646
It is, of course.
00:08:13.735 --> 00:08:22.196
And, and, you know, but like, what do you want me to do Is living in the woods the same, you know, is that gonna create jobs for social scientists?
00:08:22.196 --> 00:08:23.305
I, I didn't think so.
00:08:23.305 --> 00:08:36.686
And I think there's something really interesting about who gets bombarded with this sort of self-righteous message about how leadership is bad and who gets just like celebrated and treated like.
00:08:37.510 --> 00:08:38.831
But you're really one of us.
00:08:38.831 --> 00:08:41.020
You're really a technical person the whole way through.
00:08:41.020 --> 00:08:45.941
You just happen to take on leadership and you just happen to, you know, occasionally take on a job.
00:08:45.941 --> 00:08:50.951
And that's what I see in tech circles a lot like this kind of sorting that happens all the time.
00:08:51.280 --> 00:08:58.390
And if you're like a woman who gets, who's successful, who daress to get promoted, then suddenly you're an administrator.
00:08:58.630 --> 00:09:07.240
And this is empirically measured across tons of research that women lose their technical credibility as soon as they become successful.
00:09:07.240 --> 00:09:15.490
As soon as there's an alternate explanation that people have that they can slide in for your competency, they'll do that.
00:09:15.701 --> 00:09:33.910
And so it's like all of those beliefs I'm interested in changing and talking about and making progress on, and it really bothers me when people just throw out all that social evidence and they just say, well, I read one post one time that was about how managers are bad.
00:09:33.910 --> 00:09:35.561
And that's like my whole philosophy now.
00:09:37.250 --> 00:09:45.561
I'm curious how each of you have navigated the lack of curiosity from people in positions of power.
00:09:45.755 --> 00:09:56.855
I was talking to this like, person who works at this research institute and who was kind of like upset with the way the leadership was working, I was like, what do they think about what it is that your team does?
00:09:57.035 --> 00:10:02.666
You know, like, do you know what, their sort of view of the world is and like their understanding of what you, you know, your team does.
00:10:02.666 --> 00:10:06.176
And I think that stems from curiosity and is actually like a necessary thing.
00:10:06.176 --> 00:10:11.365
Like you have to have this empathy to be like, what does this person actually think about me and my work?
00:10:11.635 --> 00:10:13.436
And have curiosity about that.
00:10:13.826 --> 00:10:20.515
Um, so that's kind of like one thing that comes to mind in terms of thinking about Yeah, the need for curiosity.
00:10:20.696 --> 00:10:20.875
I don't
00:10:20.921 --> 00:10:23.500
So you, the curiosity has to start inside of you.
00:10:24.535 --> 00:10:29.066
Yeah, you have to be curious about what, like why would someone operate this way in the world?
00:10:29.066 --> 00:10:31.346
You know, why is the manager acting this way?
00:10:31.495 --> 00:10:34.375
Like, why is the organization set up this way, whatever it might be.
00:10:34.375 --> 00:10:38.216
I think that has to start from your curiosity about it
00:10:41.272 --> 00:10:41.812
I love that.
00:10:41.812 --> 00:10:48.126
I think that there's a lot of relation between the way we think about ourselves and what we export to other people.
00:10:48.397 --> 00:10:57.636
So like, I was just writing about this in this chapter in my book about groups and group conflict and how we ostracize people.
00:10:57.636 --> 00:11:06.606
And there is this fascinating connection between self-compassion and the way that people do or don't have it.
00:11:06.606 --> 00:11:17.557
If you have a deficit in self-compassion, if you really don't see yourself as sharing humanity with other people, you're also very hostile to those other people, which sort of seems okay.
00:11:17.557 --> 00:11:18.187
No, no, duh.
00:11:18.187 --> 00:11:23.947
Like That's really obvious, but I, I think it's actually not obvious to people in certain contexts.
00:11:23.976 --> 00:11:27.817
So I work with a lot of software engineers.
00:11:27.866 --> 00:11:39.626
I've just listened to them for years at this point, and I hear how vicious they are to themselves, and then I hear them completely export that to other people and not realize it.
00:11:40.932 --> 00:11:52.221
So I hear, I'm frustrated with how I led my team and probably all other leaders are uncompassionate assholes who've never fixed anything.
00:11:52.731 --> 00:11:59.481
These are deeply nihilistic viewpoints about the world, and they can be disguised.
00:11:59.812 --> 00:12:22.881
We are really good at rationalizing them, and I don't like to tolerate it that much because I think that it's really harmful for people There's a lot of hope in that though because it means that if you can actually improve the way you think about yourself, like that actually is a really good starting place for becoming more powerful in how you interact with people.
00:12:23.241 --> 00:12:25.072
I wanna get a little more specific.
00:12:25.072 --> 00:12:43.701
Like I often challenge myself to say, well, if I'm not capable of sitting in a room with like leaders who don't understand the marginalized people who are maybe on my team, then like, what good am I?
00:12:44.001 --> 00:12:45.472
Like, what right do I have?
00:12:45.927 --> 00:12:46.522
champion them.
00:12:46.746 --> 00:12:55.836
Exactly like I have to do that work, even if it's distasteful, scary, stressful, annoying.
00:12:56.076 --> 00:13:00.606
Like, because what matters is getting progress to happen.
00:13:00.636 --> 00:13:03.697
Not like my personal relationship with these leaders.
00:13:04.027 --> 00:13:06.697
And obviously I, I wanna have a good personal relationship.
00:13:06.876 --> 00:13:14.346
I think it's important, but to me it's like, okay, I learned this.
00:13:14.346 --> 00:13:34.746
Working in education, if you're gonna go say I get to represent a public school and their data, you cannot hold your nose up about sitting in a room with like Republican lawmakers who profoundly disagree with everything about who you are sometimes and will tell you that, you know, like.
00:13:35.586 --> 00:13:38.917
These are the fights that we actually have in the world.
00:13:39.006 --> 00:13:42.187
And so I think you're either in a place where you can do that or not.
00:13:42.187 --> 00:13:48.037
And you know, honestly, if you're not in a place to do it, which I sometimes have not been, remove yourself, like go work on something else.
00:13:48.037 --> 00:13:48.397
Right?
00:13:48.907 --> 00:13:57.846
Um, but I feel really strongly that you can't be like selfish and narcissistic and sort of say, um, oh wow, I'm astonished.
00:13:57.846 --> 00:14:03.096
I'm so astonished that people in power, like are, are blinded by that.
00:14:03.096 --> 00:14:05.797
Like, okay, of course they are.
00:14:06.216 --> 00:14:11.197
And so, are you gonna help or are you just gonna take, up space and not help, you know?
00:14:12.996 --> 00:14:37.407
This kind of relates to something we were talking about last night, Cat, which is that like, if, if there's a, I think you were saying like if there's like a prejudice that is expressed in a group and I, I would say that this probably could extend to like, if a misconception is expressed in a group, then that will kind of like stick and people will remember it as the idea of the group as a whole.
00:14:37.437 --> 00:14:41.726
Like even if the whole group didn't agree with it and it was just one person.
00:14:41.726 --> 00:14:53.037
And I think this like speaks to the fact that like the dissenter in that group or the person, like actually willing to point it out, stand up for, you know, whatever marginalized community is being misrepresented, whatever it might be.
00:14:53.037 --> 00:15:00.626
Like, it's like ever more important because you don't want people to walk away from that space with an even like worse perception of how people think.
00:15:01.721 --> 00:15:01.782
Yeah,
00:15:01.807 --> 00:15:02.907
Yeah, totally.
00:15:02.937 --> 00:15:11.246
You're talking about like the ways that prejudices can be transmitted across our social relationships and it's, it's really, really powerful.
00:15:11.246 --> 00:15:23.846
Like there's these super interesting effects, like even watching someone that you're in a group with, be in a conversation with someone who's expressing prejudice group views, and that person is not part of your group themselves.
00:15:24.116 --> 00:15:28.287
We, we can misattribute it like we, we leave that observation.
00:15:28.496 --> 00:15:29.277
It leaks.
00:15:29.277 --> 00:15:42.356
Yeah, so there's, this is part of why psychologists say that, you know, some of these beliefs are somewhat self perpetuating and that we can be worse in groups than we actually all are as individual people.
00:15:42.356 --> 00:15:49.376
Like we have, we have our own values that sometimes get suppressed by these mechanisms.
00:15:49.376 --> 00:15:54.326
and, you know, understanding that is, is scary, but it's also very powerful.
00:15:54.326 --> 00:16:04.586
It, it lets you sort of realize, okay, we're fighting a pretty big battle here, you know, for like how our species interacts and how we see each other.
00:16:05.086 --> 00:16:24.256
If you've been listening and you're thinking that you too could benefit from a really thoughtful conversation with Cat Hicks about your problems in your workspace, I have really good news for you, and that is that Cat Hicks has a consulting firm called Catharsis Consulting, which can help you and help you think about things in an evidence-based manner.
00:16:24.792 --> 00:16:33.761
You can get a 90 minute consult with Cat, where you sit down and hash out your evidence strategy, tackle your human engineering problems, and bring psychology to your software teams.
00:16:34.091 --> 00:16:35.951
Check the link in the show notes to learn more.
00:16:39.409 --> 00:16:50.740
let's revisit something from, I believe, our very first episode, what is a technical person, and is this a useful question to even have?
00:16:52.048 --> 00:16:57.089
Is it a useful question, like, for employers or for society or for anybody?
00:16:58.813 --> 00:17:07.124
You know, let's let, sure, let's scope it to people's kind of personal experience of the workplace.
00:17:07.634 --> 00:17:08.203
Hmm.
00:17:08.413 --> 00:17:12.223
is this dividing line of technical versus non-technical?
00:17:12.223 --> 00:17:17.653
Is, is this useful to anybody except for pernicious goals?
00:17:18.388 --> 00:17:18.778
mm
00:17:19.823 --> 00:17:27.722
feel like, this is something Cat has been thinking about a lot lately, but I'll take a less informed stab at it, which is that,
00:17:29.178 --> 00:17:30.347
I wouldn't say less informed.
00:17:31.893 --> 00:17:33.182
well informed via cat, I guess.
00:17:33.538 --> 00:17:36.208
You're teaching at the beginning of the formation of these groups.
00:17:36.258 --> 00:17:42.317
Yeah, well, I guess, no, I mean, what I was thinking is like, you know, groups are helpful in human society.
00:17:42.317 --> 00:17:48.407
Like there's a reason we have groups whether or not, like the group of technical people is helpful.
00:17:49.413 --> 00:17:50.883
Um, I don't know.
00:17:50.883 --> 00:18:05.853
I have kind of mixed feelings about, I guess, I guess I wish that instead of it being a trait of a person, you know, instead of it being like who is technical, it was like, what can this person do or what do they want to learn?
00:18:06.153 --> 00:18:06.423
Right?
00:18:06.423 --> 00:18:08.492
Because that's more like, it's like a hobby group.
00:18:08.522 --> 00:18:14.012
It's like people who wanna sew together and then it makes sense for those people to like learn how to sew together.
00:18:14.373 --> 00:18:22.173
Um, obviously we have to be in groups at work that are around particular skills or you know, like things you have to do at work.
00:18:22.413 --> 00:18:30.482
But I think the issue that I have is with it being conceptualized as a trait, as like a thing that you either have or do not have.
00:18:32.462 --> 00:18:39.932
So you, you would be more comfortable with technical being a responsibility than an innate quality.
00:18:40.472 --> 00:18:40.893
yeah.
00:18:41.133 --> 00:18:41.583
Sure.
00:18:41.972 --> 00:18:42.333
Yeah.
00:18:43.127 --> 00:18:43.847
That's interesting.
00:18:43.847 --> 00:18:45.377
Like a responsibility, a thing.
00:18:45.617 --> 00:18:57.167
A thing that's within your purview at work is like you are the person who, I don't know, maintains the code base or you know this particular thing or works on this workflow, and that is quote unquote technical.
00:18:57.167 --> 00:18:57.557
Sure.
00:18:58.292 --> 00:19:03.633
falls over, but, but immediately now, now you're getting into like details.
00:19:03.782 --> 00:19:04.232
Right.
00:19:04.682 --> 00:19:15.363
And I think that where we fall short, where we use this technical label is that we're actually just leading a bunch of details that are the things that matter.
00:19:15.843 --> 00:19:18.992
The thing we're doing with that label is being lazy.
00:19:18.992 --> 00:19:25.442
It's like, okay, there's a specific skill that I need you to have and you either have it or you don't have it.
00:19:25.442 --> 00:19:34.292
But instead of getting into what that skill is, I'm just gonna call it this blanket technical thing, and now we're getting into traits and it's unproductive.
00:19:34.428 --> 00:19:38.282
It's a heuristic for people's pay level, right?
00:19:38.282 --> 00:19:40.053
And that's why this like really matters, right?
00:19:40.053 --> 00:19:45.363
Like people who are kind of quote unquote technical are in a different pay grade than people who are not.
00:19:46.218 --> 00:19:46.577
Right.
00:19:48.692 --> 00:19:49.143
Okay.
00:19:50.613 --> 00:19:55.593
I think that technical is like a location in multidimensional space.
00:19:57.827 --> 00:19:57.948
Please
00:19:58.022 --> 00:19:58.742
All right.
00:19:59.073 --> 00:19:59.522
Okay.
00:19:59.853 --> 00:20:09.482
And I think that you are allowed to enter that location if you hit enough of the criteria that we create for it.
00:20:10.353 --> 00:20:12.992
And those things are shifting.
00:20:13.022 --> 00:20:21.363
So like it used to maybe be that gender was more of a passport blocker, you know, into the location of technical.
00:20:22.083 --> 00:20:25.803
But I think that there's so many interesting things here.
00:20:25.803 --> 00:20:26.553
Like one is.
00:20:26.617 --> 00:20:26.837
is
00:20:28.397 --> 00:20:29.117
There's a really.
00:20:29.117 --> 00:20:32.958
core thing that we like to do in our minds, which is essentialize.
00:20:32.988 --> 00:20:41.117
So making something, a trait of an individual rather than an activity we perform, you know, and our beliefs about that.
00:20:41.147 --> 00:20:44.117
This is really powerful and it shows up all the time.
00:20:44.178 --> 00:20:53.327
Like across child development, across when people are entering a new field, do they learn that something's an essential skill or not?
00:20:53.327 --> 00:20:55.667
You know, do they essentialize it as a trait or not?
00:20:55.667 --> 00:20:57.258
So there's that.
00:20:57.587 --> 00:21:07.607
I, I like the shifting it towards an activity, you know, or a thing that you can bring into focus and You can think about it in your own day, right?
00:21:07.607 --> 00:21:09.728
Like, am I foregrounding?
00:21:09.728 --> 00:21:14.087
Am I starting to, am I using the part of my mind that can think in a technical way?
00:21:14.567 --> 00:21:17.387
Or am I gonna try to like, think in a different way?
00:21:17.387 --> 00:21:17.688
Right?
00:21:17.688 --> 00:21:19.367
And so I don't.
00:21:20.522 --> 00:21:32.643
And then of course there's like a, you know, the, the macroeconomic version of it, which is just all the people who get to go to the fancy offsite, you know, or all of the like, ways we could describe this technical or not technical division.
00:21:33.123 --> 00:21:41.343
Um, yeah, I agree so much with what you said to Nelo that we use it so much of the time when we're not being specific.
00:21:41.343 --> 00:21:43.772
And you can, you can elicit this from people.
00:21:43.772 --> 00:21:58.982
So like when I, I sat down in these interviews we did with software engineers a while ago and, and, I sort of experimentally asked people, um, also in this little like conference that I was part of, um.
00:21:59.492 --> 00:22:15.423
What do you think when you think, when you call something technical, or what do you think it means when we call something technical and like the, the arguments that you can spark, the absolute chaos that you can spark simply By asking that question.
00:22:15.873 --> 00:22:17.972
um, is, is so telling.
00:22:17.972 --> 00:22:28.442
And it shows that people deeply know, you know, that this division is doing things they don't want it to do, but then they also feel they need to use it.
00:22:28.502 --> 00:22:32.553
You know, they need to use it to protect certain activities in their workplace.
00:22:32.583 --> 00:22:35.643
And so you, you can just feel that tension.
00:22:36.482 --> 00:22:43.712
So to me it's so interesting to ask is it useful Like, like in some sense, everything that survives is useful, you know,
00:22:44.718 --> 00:22:48.317
It, it has survived a mimetic, um, selection pressure.
00:22:48.317 --> 00:22:48.708
Right,
00:22:48.903 --> 00:22:50.012
it's useful to someone
00:22:50.583 --> 00:22:52.893
if the, if the, if the, question is.
00:22:53.688 --> 00:22:56.627
Is this the, way we solve whatever's going on with us?
00:22:56.627 --> 00:22:58.337
I think the answer's very clearly.
00:22:58.337 --> 00:23:02.627
No, we're not solving things with this, so we need something else.
00:23:03.887 --> 00:23:09.917
you you know what both you just said reminded me of a, a little allegory.
00:23:10.502 --> 00:23:14.583
Which is, you know, Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Mario.
00:23:15.258 --> 00:23:16.458
No, I don't.
00:23:17.432 --> 00:23:18.603
not personally, no.
00:23:18.768 --> 00:23:19.218
Yeah.
00:23:19.742 --> 00:23:20.732
so so me neither.
00:23:20.732 --> 00:23:22.742
We don't, we don't run in the same circles.
00:23:23.133 --> 00:23:23.853
You and Suge
00:23:24.363 --> 00:23:24.752
Me.
00:23:24.752 --> 00:23:33.542
And so, so the thing about Miyamoto that's wild is that at the time that he created Donkey Kong,
00:23:34.752 --> 00:23:34.833
Hmm,
00:23:34.893 --> 00:23:39.512
he was not supposed to be the guy who did that work.
00:23:40.653 --> 00:23:46.923
The people who were creating video games at that time were like hardcore engineers.
00:23:47.522 --> 00:23:47.643
Hmm.
00:23:47.643 --> 00:23:56.613
had this like kind of literal mindedness to them that was more about just like, can we get something interactive out of this incredibly meager set of.
00:23:57.048 --> 00:24:00.887
Constraints and chips and costs, right?
00:24:00.978 --> 00:24:03.617
And Miyamoto is this guy in like the planning department.
00:24:03.617 --> 00:24:05.988
He's such just this like apprentice planning guy.
00:24:06.077 --> 00:24:10.938
And Nintendo is just flat out, they are so resource constrained.
00:24:12.018 --> 00:24:21.857
And so it just falls to Miyamoto like, Hey, can you, can you rescue this arcade game that we sent to America that nobody wants?
00:24:23.387 --> 00:24:29.807
And they let this guy who on paper was not technical, the game for the first time
00:24:29.952 --> 00:24:30.173
Hmm.
00:24:30.407 --> 00:24:33.468
he created a franchise worth, worth, billions.
00:24:34.008 --> 00:24:37.458
And so I guess when I ask like, is it useful?
00:24:38.508 --> 00:24:50.567
Is it in the long-term interests of any of us to have like a really narrow conception of who gets to do what work, including work that has very technical underpinnings.
00:24:50.712 --> 00:24:50.833
hmm.
00:24:50.837 --> 00:24:53.117
Yeah, well That's definitely not useful.
00:24:53.178 --> 00:24:57.018
Like that just flat out is terrible, you know?
00:24:57.347 --> 00:25:07.577
And is maybe one of the worst things that we do on this planet is just constantly foreclosed on the future of the people who could be solving our biggest problems.
00:25:07.607 --> 00:25:14.357
And I mean, we do that by not caring about the health of, you know, people in other countries.
00:25:14.357 --> 00:25:15.887
I mean, we do that in any number of ways.
00:25:15.887 --> 00:25:23.688
I don't just mean that we do, we do that because some child in America didn't get into a gifted class and should have, but it's like a whole global problem.
00:25:24.202 --> 00:25:24.553
Right.
00:25:24.843 --> 00:25:31.653
I think there's like more acknowledgement of the necessity for people to switch fields in scientific research.
00:25:31.682 --> 00:25:38.343
Like there's actually some mechanisms for funding that very explicitly incentivize people to switch fields.
00:25:38.583 --> 00:25:38.913
Right.
00:25:38.913 --> 00:25:40.323
And, and maybe the, maybe the
00:25:40.397 --> 00:25:42.288
Do we, do we still have that funding?
00:25:42.948 --> 00:25:43.458
I don't know.
00:25:43.728 --> 00:25:57.157
Probably not, but you know, but like, it's not as clear as like technical to non-technical, but maybe you are a cancer researcher and you think about the way cells work in a particular way, but then you are incentivized to think about, the nervous system or something different.
00:25:57.157 --> 00:26:01.768
Like take you know, your scaffolds for how you understand how biology works and apply that to something else.
00:26:01.768 --> 00:26:09.657
And I think there's like a lot of really good research around the power of that and how, you know, you can get locked into a particular way of seeing the world.
00:26:09.657 --> 00:26:11.907
And like so many, yeah.
00:26:11.907 --> 00:26:25.498
And so many paradigm shifts in science have come from people from the outside, you know, the motos of the scientific world coming in and just thinking about it differently and being like, yeah, but what if cells did this actually?
00:26:25.498 --> 00:26:30.478
And I feel like, yeah, that, that just like to me feels like a known feature of how.
00:26:30.897 --> 00:26:41.097
Progress happens is like you need different opinions and people who haven't been steeped in the same shit for like decades, you need fresh perspectives.
00:26:41.932 --> 00:26:46.343
For a solution to propagate, for innovation to happen, it has to be shared.
00:26:46.732 --> 00:26:50.573
And I talk about this when I talk about social learning and developers.
00:26:50.623 --> 00:27:06.113
We imagine this genius who's working alone and, even if that were true, which is often not true, but like even if that's true, when that happens, other people need to be able to receive that idea and that is actually something they do.
00:27:06.173 --> 00:27:08.423
It's not just them being robots.
00:27:08.452 --> 00:27:10.252
That is a capacity we have.
00:27:10.252 --> 00:27:15.863
Our ability to successfully imitate and transmit solutions is.
00:27:16.613 --> 00:27:17.692
Phenomenal.
00:27:17.962 --> 00:27:26.663
And if we could actually respect that, you know, it, it really allows us to propagate solutions in ways that we've never imagined.
00:27:26.692 --> 00:27:32.752
And so you'll see these moments that happens, like, I mean, open source software is a pretty famous location for this to happen.
00:27:33.623 --> 00:27:45.593
And the free revealing that people want to do because they have joy in solutions because they have made a connection between some seemingly niche problem and a solution and others might share it.
00:27:45.593 --> 00:27:56.673
And then it turns out, you know, understanding some niche possibility for mRNA could be the thing that gives us a vaccine against pancreatic cancer if we're allowed to work on it.
00:27:56.732 --> 00:27:57.153
You know,
00:27:57.772 --> 00:27:58.083
Right.
00:27:58.742 --> 00:28:02.192
I mean, it's not just that we can't predict.
00:28:02.613 --> 00:28:04.923
What kinds of people will matter to our future?
00:28:04.923 --> 00:28:19.803
We also can't predict what kinds of work will turn into huge game changers for our future, and I, I think that is, that's something that you and I talk about a lot, Ashley, that there's this ex exploration attitude in science.
00:28:19.803 --> 00:28:38.643
There's this awareness of this when you're a scientist and we both, when we go have to work on the edges and try to work cross disciplinarily and maybe work with more people who are really steeped in that there's technical and not, and they're in that siloed, I would call it, kind of computer science kind of thinking.
00:28:39.423 --> 00:28:44.343
Then we get really frustrated because they don't have that curiosity and exploration.
00:28:44.373 --> 00:28:50.492
What they have is like a lot of rigidity that is deeply not innovative in my opinion.
00:28:52.018 --> 00:29:07.768
The reason that I wanted to invite each of you to talk your shit, to celebrate a year of change technically, is that I know in the pursuit of your good work, you've had to eat plenty of it.
00:29:08.218 --> 00:29:19.323
And so for people who are listening, who are eating shit in their own way, I wonder if there is anything you would like to offer to make the journey a little bit.
00:29:20.252 --> 00:29:21.002
Less lonely.
00:29:21.502 --> 00:29:30.393
Grifters always lose eventually the people who are faking are exposed Yeah.
00:29:30.962 --> 00:29:40.712
And I don't know, I think the hardest thing has been having to ride that out a little bit and to wait for it to happen, you know?
00:29:40.712 --> 00:29:49.532
And in the initial stages of someone making claims that are bullshit or whatever, like it sucks, it's really, really shitty.
00:29:49.532 --> 00:29:59.972
Or like someone telling us that like I shouldn't be teaching programming or I need to teach math as a part of my programming course, or whatever it is that is just like completely unfounded.
00:30:00.272 --> 00:30:09.633
Like, you know, those people will, will see the light maybe someday they probably won't tell you that they saw the light, but like it's coming for them.
00:30:12.363 --> 00:30:13.803
Um, I don't know.
00:30:13.803 --> 00:30:15.153
That's my initial feeling.
00:30:15.873 --> 00:30:16.712
Mm.
00:30:17.182 --> 00:30:18.442
I'll say something that.
00:30:18.532 --> 00:30:22.762
I think both of you have really helped me see.
00:30:22.913 --> 00:30:29.817
So like a personal thank you to both of you is never let them take your swagger.
00:30:30.698 --> 00:30:49.748
And your chutzpah and your cool, you know, like when you know what you're about and you know what you've done and you know why you're doing it, there is a quality of just untouchable power to that.
00:30:50.498 --> 00:31:01.567
And, and I think people hate it who are grifters, you know, and if, if you can become, and then realizing they can't take you away from that is just a, is such a game changer.
00:31:01.567 --> 00:31:03.548
And, And realizing
00:31:03.603 --> 00:31:03.803
that
00:31:04.807 --> 00:31:08.798
you truly can have tremendous joy in what you're doing.
00:31:09.188 --> 00:31:21.307
You can walk, and I told, I mentioned like being in the room with say, you know, like folks who are deeply politically not aligned with me and whatever, being able to leave that room like, well, that was fun, You know?
00:31:21.698 --> 00:31:22.837
Oh my gosh.
00:31:22.837 --> 00:31:29.798
You just see the real estate that is created in other people's minds when you can have that attitude because.
00:31:30.113 --> 00:31:37.643
They, they cannot, by the structure of their beliefs and how they're entangled, their self-concept is entangled.
00:31:37.853 --> 00:31:42.893
It's like why they're, you know, opposing what are clearly things that are good for us to do.
00:31:43.373 --> 00:31:46.282
They're so trapped in like a cage of their own making.
00:31:46.282 --> 00:31:54.923
And honestly, you don't have to be, and I think there's like this quality of letting yourself be free and it's, it's healing.
00:31:54.952 --> 00:32:06.182
And it's like, when I, became a leader in tech and I started at the same time sewing my own clothes and just thinking, I'm gonna wear the colors that I like.
00:32:06.262 --> 00:32:20.512
I've had so much of people looking at me and just making unwanted comments about how, I look and who, I am, and how could you be here and have you ever thought about the fact that you're like a woman, you know, and just a thousand comments like that.
00:32:21.442 --> 00:32:25.492
I was like, well, you know, I might as well make myself.
00:32:25.583 --> 00:32:45.772
X-Wing jumpsuits and, and just have this, this joy, and I think joy is like electric and charismatic, and it, it actually helps you find people, helps other people who are genuinely well intentioned, feel good about themselves and like perhaps they too could be themselves.
00:32:46.462 --> 00:32:49.343
And so that is socially transmissible as well.
00:32:50.113 --> 00:32:50.232
Hmm.
00:32:53.012 --> 00:32:57.067
Well, and that is one year of"Change, Technically".
00:32:57.067 --> 00:33:05.768
If you have been listening to us since the start, we really thank you for tuning in each time we show up on your podcast app.
00:33:06.067 --> 00:33:11.077
And if you are new, there's a whole year of fun stuff just like this.
00:33:11.222 --> 00:33:14.732
We do this'cause it's fun and'cause we care about these subjects.
00:33:14.792 --> 00:33:18.932
And I think you will have a great time with them too.
