00:00:10.920
it has been an awesome three days and we are going to end it with one of the best
00:00:16.139
sessions of all because I have the distinct privilege of getting to introduce our final keynote speaker
00:00:23.820
Rose is a senior staff developer at Shopify she's been a developer for over
00:00:28.859
25 years and has worked on a wide range of software from printer firmware to
00:00:35.219
Ruby on Rails applications she wanted me to mention that she is a mom to teenagers and I think this is
00:00:41.460
particularly important because for those who don't know Rose she's very active in both the wnb.rb communities and on
00:00:48.300
Twitter and as a person who is a really visible parent
00:00:53.840
and really uh distinguished engineer within the community it means a lot to have her you
00:01:01.980
know kind of Paving the way for some of us who might not see those like women with children who continue to be
00:01:07.320
engineers and to level up in their careers um she can often be found giving great
00:01:13.020
advice on wnb slack or on Twitter uh or public speaking uh at talks like this or
00:01:21.119
organizing panels also for wnb I truly could not think of anyone better
00:01:26.759
to end the rubyconf mini program with her first ever keynote so I would like
00:01:45.840
thank you everyone and thank you Emily for that wonderful introduction and for
00:01:50.939
entrusting the closing keynote to me um as you heard my name is Rose Wigley
00:01:56.820
my pronouns are she her I work at Shopify I'd just like to like to let
00:02:03.299
everybody know that even with the tech slowdowns we are still hiring at some
00:02:08.520
Mission critical roles so please check our website if you're interested on shopify.com careers
00:02:17.300
this is not the talk I originally planned on giving my original Talk
00:02:22.980
involves some very complex code I once wrote and the importance and supplements of Simplicity in code
00:02:30.300
but the more I thought about it the more it fell flat on my years I was writing a technical keynote
00:02:37.319
because I was a woman giving a talk at a programming conference and it felt like I needed to maintain my credibility
00:02:45.180
I have been programming for over 25 years I have a master's degree in
00:02:50.519
electrical and computer engineering I have as Emily said written code
00:02:55.800
ranging from C and assembly to Ruby on Rails web apps and I am a
00:03:02.280
senior staff software engineer at Shopify and I was worried you wouldn't think I
00:03:08.160
was technical enough to be standing here right now then I asked myself
00:03:14.640
if I wanted everyone here to walk away with a message what would it be
00:03:20.099
this is the talk that came from that leading from where you are
00:03:26.239
for this we're going to talk about four different questions where are you
00:03:32.519
why should you lead what is leadership and then some very
00:03:37.620
practical how do you lead first where are you
00:03:44.879
in the most literal sense we're all at rubyconf mini in Providence Rhode Island
00:03:51.299
we're here to learn about programming and connect with all our shared Ruby friends
00:03:56.519
but the literal sense does not tell the entire picture so first we're going to take a little
00:04:02.519
trip back in time 1959
00:04:07.799
to give all of you some perspective this was 15 years before I was born
00:04:12.959
since I know at least half of you are now busy doing some math in your head and and that programmers hate date math
00:04:20.699
I'm gonna yeah I'm gonna save you some trouble I'm 48
00:04:27.360
years old 1959 was a pivotal year in computer
00:04:34.979
programming it was the year Cobalt was created in a large part by the work of
00:04:40.620
Dr Grace Murray Hopper later to be known as real rear Admiral Grace Hopper
00:04:46.680
it was built on this really radical concept at the time the computer languages should be close to compute to
00:04:53.759
human languages and that they should be able to run on all types of computers
00:05:00.360
it's not surprising that the driving force behind one of our first major
00:05:05.460
programming languages was a woman at the time it's estimated between 30 to
00:05:11.639
50 percent of all programmers were women but this is already declining from the
00:05:18.240
earliest days when program was considered clerical work and thus done
00:05:23.400
mostly by women now before I want to go on I want to
00:05:30.360
pause and acknowledge that while women are a minority in Tech as an upper middle class straight CIS
00:05:39.479
white woman I am speaking to all of you from a place of immense privilege
00:05:45.840
a lot of the history I share with you today I had to learn for this talk
00:05:51.360
I think it is worth knowing and I only wish I had taken the time to learn this sooner
00:05:59.100
if we're going to talk about history we need to do it in the full context of the times
00:06:05.000
1959 was not a good year for all Americans it was the year of the Cooper Donuts
00:06:12.060
riots before I researched this talk I knew about the more famous riots
00:06:17.280
Stonewall riots in New York City I didn't know that 10 years earlier it was
00:06:23.039
common for police to use anti-cross-dressing laws to harass and
00:06:28.380
arrest LGBT people the Cooper Donuts riots occurred in downtown L.A when
00:06:35.460
police arrested five LGBT patrons in Cooper donuts and then tried to cram
00:06:41.280
them all in a single police car some historians view this as the first
00:06:46.800
LGBT Uprising against police harassment in the United States
00:06:51.900
at the same time that we're busy developing languages like Cobalt
00:06:57.419
now let's Jump Ahead a bit to 1972.
00:07:02.699
the time and perspective we're now one year before my parents get married and
00:07:07.860
two years before I'm born notice my mother's beautiful hippie wedding dress
00:07:16.460
1972 is another big milestone in programming history
00:07:21.840
the first high-level programming language C is created by Dennis Ritchie
00:07:28.740
C has a really special place in my heart because in 24 more years it will be the
00:07:34.860
first programming language I use professionally a copy of my knr book sitting on the
00:07:41.400
shelf and I see some nods from the audience I know some of the rest of you may too
00:07:48.780
however even though programming is advancing quickly other things are
00:07:54.300
falling behind remember in the late 50s when 30 to 50 percent of programmers were women this
00:08:01.319
number has dropped in 1971 one year before I will be born I mean sorry three
00:08:07.860
years before I will reward 14 of computer science degree graduates
00:08:13.800
were women the world is changing in other ways in
00:08:19.500
the 1970s in 1973 the American Psychiatric
00:08:25.379
association issued a statement that homosexuality was not a mental illness
00:08:32.940
it was nearly in my lifespan that homosexuality was considered a mental
00:08:39.539
disorder 19 in 1975 one American city took the
00:08:47.820
United States first baby step towards trans rights Minneapolis became the first city in the
00:08:55.380
United States to pass trans-inclusive civil rights legislation
00:09:00.959
this legislation actually passed with barely a murmur not because it wasn't
00:09:06.720
considered controversial but because all the controversy had con had occurred a
00:09:12.360
year before when the city passed gay rights legislation and this was quietly
00:09:17.700
added on as an amendment to the law
00:09:22.860
before we look at another programming Milestone we're going to take a brief stop in 1986.
00:09:30.600
in 1986 36 percent of computer science degree
00:09:36.060
recipients are women 1986 is special because this is the only
00:09:42.180
time since the 50s that women have had this big a presence in computer science
00:09:48.360
from this point forward the trend will go down
00:09:54.019
1986 is also a useful stop because in 1986 I was 12 years old
00:10:00.959
I no longer need to rely on historical examples to talk about what the world was like
00:10:06.839
by 1986 my parents were divorced and my mom had started medical school as a
00:10:13.500
single mom with two kids but while 36 of computer science
00:10:18.899
graduates were women and while a woman could get into medical school that didn't mean it was easy
00:10:26.160
I remember Mom my mom telling me about an interview where she was literally told
00:10:32.220
how can you possibly expect to be a doctor you know doctors can't just run home at
00:10:38.700
5 PM so they can cook their kids dinner
00:10:44.779
1986 was also the year that Bowers versus Hardwick came before The Supreme
00:10:50.220
Court in this ruling it they declare that
00:10:55.519
anti-homosexual legislation was constitutional in the United States
00:11:02.339
it will be another 17 years before this decision is overturned
00:11:10.440
as a 12 year old I didn't know anything about this at the time but what I did know was that my parents
00:11:17.760
had gotten divorced because my dad had realized he was gay and that if I wanted to survive public
00:11:24.779
school I needed to always refer to my Dad's boyfriend as his friend
00:11:30.959
I don't think a single friend of mine knew that my dad was a day gay until I
00:11:37.019
was in college and I remember being it in incredibly
00:11:42.240
like deep careful trusting moment when I was willing to actually tell somebody
00:11:51.240
all right let's Jump Ahead to 1995. I'm old enough that it's hard to believe
00:11:59.540
1995 was only 27 years ago I'm old enough to say only 27 years ago
00:12:09.240
in 1995 I'm one year away from graduating with a master's in electrical
00:12:15.000
and computer engineering remember the knrc book that's still
00:12:20.339
sitting on my shelf I'm one year away from marrying the guy who gave me that
00:12:25.620
book instead of flowers you know
00:12:37.880
1995 is a year that all of you should be excited about
00:12:43.320
it's the reason we're all in this room together almost 27 years ago December 21st 1995
00:12:53.060
Motts announced the first public release of Ruby in Japanese news groups let's
00:12:59.579
give
00:13:05.279
thank you but at the same time that Ruby is
00:13:11.820
picking up speed woman's presence in computer science is starting to drop again the year I graduated only 28 of
00:13:21.120
computer science majors in the U.S were women that number got even worse for those of
00:13:27.300
us who took electrical and computer engineering of the 150 students accepted into the
00:13:34.139
program in my freshman year under 10 of us were women
00:13:39.480
I remember being in a software engineering class it was a class of 40 students every
00:13:46.680
morning the professor would greet us as good morning gentlemen and Lady
00:13:56.579
before I continue I would like to take another pause for the next few minutes I'm going to be
00:14:03.600
talking about anti-trans violence and for many members of our audience this is not a history lesson but a very
00:14:11.760
real and present danger in their lives if anyone needs to excuse themselves
00:14:17.040
please do so our last stop in history will be in
00:14:24.060
1999. 23 years ago four years after the first release of
00:14:31.079
Ruby just before the start of the 21st Century
00:14:36.839
November 20th 1999 marks the first transgender day of remembrance
00:14:44.399
one year earlier Rita Hester a transgendered black woman was murdered
00:14:52.019
her death led to the first transgendered day of remembrance a year later
00:15:00.300
22 years later in 2021 these are the people in the United States that were
00:15:07.980
lost in that single year to transgender violence
00:15:14.459
one year ago that's 57 lives that we know about
00:15:21.740
57 trans people 49 who were trans women
00:15:28.040
39 who were black Trans women are no longer with us just because they
00:15:34.680
were targeted for existing so why are we here
00:15:42.360
yes in the most literal sense we're at Ruby comp mini in Providence Rhode
00:15:47.880
Island but the real answer is another question where are we not
00:15:56.160
we are not in rubyconf in Houston Texas we are not at rubyconf because some of
00:16:03.720
our peers have safety concerns in situations where the rest of us wouldn't even think twice
00:16:11.160
we are not at rubyconf because those concerns become exponentially greater
00:16:17.160
when the government is actually trying to make someone's existence
00:16:23.220
illegal so
00:16:28.860
why should you leave because of where we are
00:16:33.959
we need leaders right now because we've hit the point where a certain subset of
00:16:39.000
people are getting very comfortable saying the quiet part out loud
00:16:46.500
sometimes with words sometimes with Deeds
00:16:55.920
and sometimes with life-shattering results
00:17:02.160
why should you lead we need leaders right now because those three slides of events
00:17:10.199
happened in a single in the single small City where I live
00:17:16.559
in the last few years and I didn't even include everything
00:17:22.500
and my city is not unique why should you lead
00:17:29.460
we need all of you to be comfortable being leaders because right now only 30 percent of programmers are women
00:17:37.140
and only 20 of computer science graduates
00:17:43.200
we need all of you to be comfortable being leaders because only 8.1 percent
00:17:48.960
of programmers are Hispanic 4.6 are black
00:17:54.299
and only 0.3 percent come from the people who
00:17:59.880
originally lived on these lands we need you all to be comfortable being
00:18:06.000
leaders because only 6.6 percent of programmers are LGBT
00:18:12.539
as Barbara Tannenbaum put it so eloquently in her Keynote
00:18:17.700
we need your voices we need people who care
00:18:22.980
even more than that if you or someone represented by these statistics
00:18:29.220
we need your voices we need to make sure that all of our voices are louder than
00:18:36.059
those who want to drown them out
00:18:41.760
I am asking you to lead but what is leadership
00:18:49.980
is it a fancy title senior staff software engineer this is a
00:18:55.980
fancy title the part of me that was taught never to brag or push myself forward cringe just
00:19:03.059
writing this into my presentation
00:19:08.280
but I want to bring up a really important question what came first
00:19:15.780
the title or the behavior one of the sometimes spoken but often
00:19:23.460
unspoken rules of text promotions is you don't get promoted for being really good
00:19:29.340
at your current responsibilities you also don't get promoted for being in
00:19:34.980
your role for X number of years no one went Rose has been a solid staff engineer
00:19:42.299
let's make Christine your staff and we'll see what happens you get promoted because you are already
00:19:49.380
doing the work at the next level and more importantly you have done it in a way that is noticeable
00:19:57.960
let me give another an example VP of engineering that's a fancy title
00:20:04.799
about four years ago I joined the nine person startup as the equivalent of a
00:20:10.860
staff software engineer however when I joined the docs were
00:20:16.679
totally out of date they had just made a major pivot and they needed to be updated so they would
00:20:23.460
work for external developers okay good onboarding activity
00:20:29.100
but then I realized the CEO was working off of a schedule that was also months
00:20:34.440
out of date well that's going to be a mess so I went and I talked to the other
00:20:39.900
Developers figured out what they were doing what they still needed to do and created an
00:20:45.240
up-to-date schedule but occasionally one of our most senior
00:20:50.640
developers would find a fascinating technical Rat Hole and Technical rat
00:20:55.980
holes are fun but at startups they do not pay the bills but this engineer would occasionally
00:21:02.520
Veer off schedule to go look down at this exciting problem and I'd have to go
00:21:08.640
over have a chat give a gentle little nudge back to the product work
00:21:14.880
and well our interns we have two interns in a nine person company
00:21:21.059
like and so they needed some Direction so I started working with them on what to be
00:21:27.059
doing and at this point I may be coding 50 of the time
00:21:32.460
and one day the CEO comes and talks to me and he says you know we're fundraising we need a VP of engineering
00:21:40.500
would you like the role oh and by the way you don't need to change what you're doing
00:21:46.679
now this story raises two questions
00:21:52.140
first was I lucky and I don't mean right time right place
00:21:58.200
luck I mean a lot of the work I was doing was generally light on the
00:22:04.320
technical side it required a large understanding of building software products but it sure
00:22:10.980
wasn't technical like the engineer who was optimizing encrypted video streaming
00:22:17.900
if you have never seen Tanya Riley's excellent talk on being glue I highly
00:22:24.960
recommend it you put on your watch list to give a really quick summary glue work
00:22:32.159
can be summed up as the work that keeps your software team running but doesn't
00:22:37.740
actually contribute directly to the product things like documentation
00:22:44.340
for example external documentation now the startup unblocking others developer tooling
00:22:51.419
taking notes planning team activities glue work is often picked up by women
00:22:58.320
and it is often one of the reasons women will be passed over for promotion as
00:23:04.440
excellent but not technical enough so yes I was lucky
00:23:10.679
I was lucky to be somewhere that saw the value in what I did I walked that fine line between
00:23:17.700
leadership and glue work and I fell off on the right side
00:23:23.640
second question if you have to do the work before you can get the title
00:23:30.120
if titles can vary so wildly between companies that I have to explain why VP
00:23:37.620
of engineering is on my resume should we even care about them
00:23:45.360
to make it clear on my opinion yes yes titles do matter
00:23:53.640
if someone tells you titles don't matter they're most likely talking to you from
00:23:59.159
a place of privilege where titles don't matter for them or Worse they're trying to undercut the
00:24:06.720
title that you have earned titles are shortcuts that remove the
00:24:12.419
need to establish your credentials every time you walk into a room with new people
00:24:18.059
I didn't have to list my entire resume to all of you at the start of my speech because senior staff software engineer
00:24:25.559
at Shopify sums it up in a couple words I am a short
00:24:31.860
soft spoken most of the time older blonde mother in Tech
00:24:40.740
I most definitely use my title when I need it
00:24:46.980
so what does my title useful for well to quote my kids favorite musical
00:24:54.059
I want to be in the room where it happens being invited to into the room is
00:25:01.559
important at a different level you get to be in higher level planning meetings you get
00:25:08.100
to be in more cross-team discussions so that title brings you into places
00:25:14.940
where you have a chance to know things and let your voice be heard in places
00:25:20.400
where you wouldn't already do so
00:25:25.620
what else are titles useful for clearing space to be heard
00:25:30.960
I'm an introvert to this day I will still struggle with shoving myself into conversations but 25
00:25:39.480
years in Tech has definitely helped me with that however I've noticed it is a lot easier
00:25:47.340
to say things now because if I start to talk people are much more likely to
00:25:53.580
pause and listen here's a useful one
00:25:59.640
titles get us closer to being paid fairly there is that since by no means
00:26:05.460
everything there is still a tech pay problem in Tech especially
00:26:11.340
for people who are women or in minority roles however it's a lot easier to know if
00:26:18.179
your Indus if your salary matches industry standards when you have a title
00:26:23.640
that reflects the level of work you're doing and my favorite
00:26:29.640
laughs I tend to not toss my title around
00:26:35.820
unless I have a reason to use it if I've introduced myself to any of you at the conference I've introduced myself at
00:26:42.900
Rose I might say I work at Shopify however occasionally someone will give
00:26:49.380
me a reason to say well as a senior staff software engineer at
00:26:56.640
Shopify with over 25 years of experience
00:27:07.580
thank you and this is my polite way of saying what
00:27:13.559
I'm thinking which in my head sums up to Hey kid you might want to quit Burning
00:27:19.919
Bridges right now
00:27:26.220
all right weather titles not useful for contrary to certain social media
00:27:33.659
examples a title does not mean you should always get your way
00:27:39.600
this is especially true if you're on the tech track where you're often advising
00:27:45.000
instead of directing the strength of your ideas matters
00:27:51.480
my title can get me in the room it can get make space for me to be heard
00:27:57.539
if I spout total nonsense I really hope nobody's going to do what I say
00:28:05.100
this means that in a healthy organization there should be room for
00:28:11.039
everyone to push forward good ideas all right what else are titles not
00:28:17.760
useful for getting others to talk freely there is a reason I don't introduce
00:28:24.840
myself to you with my full title besides the fact that I'm a woman and that would seem really pushy
00:28:32.460
um it's it stops people power and balance
00:28:37.980
is a real thing we have to be aware of I don't feel very scary
00:28:45.120
but the title can make me look very scary
00:28:50.580
I remember a time that the VP of engineering ended a q a by asking people
00:28:56.360
to send slack feedback if they had any and I had some feedback
00:29:02.580
I spent somewhere between 30 to 60 Minutes finally crafting the perfectly
00:29:09.480
toned five sentences spent some time thinking about my
00:29:16.440
previous job where giving leadership feedback had led to me needing to get my
00:29:21.840
next job the side that I might as well know sooner rather than later hit send at 6
00:29:30.120
pm and spend the white night wondering if I had just tanked my career
00:29:36.419
the reply I got back the next day was positive and thanked me for being willing to share my thoughts
00:29:43.919
all that's us and no big deal but past experience had taught me it
00:29:51.059
could be a big deal so one thing I try to think keep in mind is
00:29:57.120
if an intern or a new developer needs to disagree with me they would probably
00:30:03.179
feel the same way I did messaging the VP
00:30:08.460
this is one of the reason this talk on leadership is aimed at everyone in this
00:30:13.919
room independent of your current level independent if you have only written a
00:30:20.940
single line of code you may hear and be able to help with
00:30:26.279
something that somebody at a higher level would never even be told
00:30:33.860
finally and since this came up in the great discussion yesterday thank you Betty
00:30:40.200
titles do not mean someone knows all the answers experience May teach us how to find the
00:30:47.340
answers quickly it may teach us what questions to ask
00:30:52.980
it will definitely teach us even more things we don't know yet
00:30:58.799
a good leader is willing to say I don't know let's figure this out
00:31:06.840
now let's go back to our original question what is leadership
00:31:12.659
it can't be a title since you need to show leadership before you get the title
00:31:18.419
I think the best way to answer this is with some examples
00:31:24.059
leadership is stepping up and creating a solution when you see a problem
00:31:29.940
and while we're at this slide can we all please give our wonderful conference organizers a nice round of applause
00:31:51.179
leadership is teaching your peers something that will help you all work together better
00:32:01.140
leadership is talking about hard things so other people can learn and feel
00:32:07.440
supported what I do really want to emphasize is
00:32:13.980
leadership is not about just these big things I am not asking this entire room
00:32:19.919
full of people to be the next rubyconf mini organizers I'm not asking you to go out and try to
00:32:27.360
solve all the world's problems not even all of texts leadership can be as simple as a single
00:32:34.860
conversation with another developer luckily for me I happen to have another
00:32:41.880
developer in my house early in our careers during.com 1.0 my
00:32:49.620
husband Doug and I worked together at a small email startup
00:32:54.779
one day after work I was venting about how frustrated I was
00:33:00.419
I had been trying to get a raise for some time and I still hadn't gotten one
00:33:06.659
after listening for a bit Doug asked me one single question
00:33:12.360
have you asked for a raise at which point I looked truly horrified
00:33:19.200
and said of course not I have been working very
00:33:25.440
hard and putting in lots of extra hours eventually they will give me one because
00:33:30.899
I deserve it and then he said okay please sit down we need to have a talk
00:33:40.679
and that's when I learned exactly how naive my views of raises and promotions
00:33:45.960
actually were you do not need to be somebody's spouse
00:33:51.059
to give them career advice like that however I do recommend kittens
00:34:00.960
for me leadership boils down to one big thing
00:34:06.000
as developers we judge ourselves based on what we do
00:34:11.099
features created lines of code added even better lines of code removed
00:34:23.760
As Leaders we have to flip that metric we have to judge ourselves based on what
00:34:31.260
we enable other people to do
00:34:38.460
so far we've talked about where you are why you should lead
00:34:44.040
and what leadership is for the last part of my talk I want to
00:34:49.679
get very practical how do you lead what are some skills you can walk away
00:34:56.040
with today that will make you a stronger leader
00:35:02.339
if leadership is about what you enable others to do then the biggest and
00:35:07.859
easiest thing you can do is help build up others
00:35:14.220
let's start with one we already touched on friends don't let friends do all the
00:35:21.180
glue work here are some simple phrases to help spread out the glue work in the team
00:35:28.320
one of my favorites let's rotate let's rotate who does the notes
00:35:35.339
let's rotate who plans the social another one I like
00:35:42.900
can one of the managers please do this thing a lot of times what's glue work for you
00:35:50.240
might be your manager's job a manager isn't just there to tell you
00:35:58.020
what to do they're there as your team's buffer against the world and sometimes
00:36:04.740
they need you to point out what you need buffering against
00:36:11.780
and then there is always oh sorry and then there is calling out
00:36:19.200
leadership when you see it often the difference between glue work and
00:36:24.900
Leadership work is whether or not somebody sees that it's happening
00:36:30.119
so feel free to drop into somebody's manager's DM and say Hey you know so and
00:36:37.200
so showed really good leadership skills when they reorganized all of our docs or
00:36:44.339
hey I really appreciate when this person explained this technical concept to me
00:36:49.740
it was totally unclear and they had a way of taking all the complexity away go
00:36:55.920
out be each other's advocate managers do not get enough information
00:37:02.359
about all the wonderful things people are doing so make sure they hear about
00:37:07.800
it and then occasionally if you are in a
00:37:13.320
position where you feel safe doing it just say the thing
00:37:19.260
I have noticed that all the women in our team have been planning all the social activities let's change this
00:37:30.359
here's another one all right if you're comfortable sharing let's have a raise of hands who here has
00:37:37.740
been in a meeting where you have felt like you couldn't get a word in edgewise
00:37:43.440
okay we need to work in Tech to change this
00:37:50.820
and there are a few things we can do often it is easier to speak up when you
00:37:57.720
are helping somebody else than when you are speaking for yourself I wish we were all comfortable
00:38:04.560
protecting ourselves like we protect our peers and co-workers but a lot of times we're not but if we
00:38:11.579
all work together to protect each other then it can have a similar Effect one
00:38:17.160
thing I want to bring up inclusive meeting guidelines my team was
00:38:22.440
lucky enough to have a staff engineer called Julia who set us up with some inclusive meeting guidelines that where
00:38:30.300
we set rules about like when do you put the raise hand thing and Google me and if there's so many people in the meeting
00:38:37.800
like how do you decide who's going to talk so that there was a natural way and
00:38:43.260
we weren't just worried about who was the person who was speaking first or the loudest
00:38:49.859
something else look out for places where you can make space for others
00:38:56.460
did you notice that your intern was starting to say something got one sentence in and got cut off
00:39:02.400
pause the meeting John were you about to say something
00:39:08.700
as well as help to elevate voices and this is especially important the higher
00:39:15.960
up you get in leadership as a company because people have amazing ideas at all
00:39:23.220
levels but sadly because of the title if somebody at a higher level says
00:39:29.339
something it is going to carry more weight but if somebody on your team
00:39:35.160
shares a good idea then you can in the meeting refer back to that person and
00:39:42.420
say earlier Mary said this and I think it's an excellent idea for this reason
00:39:50.820
and this is a little step in leadership where you are helping to boost those around you and raise the voices and
00:39:57.839
ideas that need to be heard and then finally also important the higher up the chain
00:40:04.140
you go for some of us talk less
00:40:09.420
you want to stand back in team meetings and let other people at a different
00:40:16.440
lower level than you have a chance to solve the problems come up with the
00:40:21.839
answers consider asking questions instead of just stating Solutions
00:40:29.460
and then stand back and give them a little time and then speak up if you need to but create that space for others
00:40:40.500
and more there's so much more you can do to support your peers you can mentor
00:40:47.040
you can be that good ear to listen to somebody when they share with you a work frustration that they may not be willing
00:40:53.940
to tell their manager you can share your learnings
00:40:59.640
right now I'm at rubyconf and one thing I'm supposed to do is bring back to my
00:41:04.859
team learning so I have a little thread I started that was my day one thread and
00:41:11.400
I'm a little behind on my day two thread so it'll probably be a day two and day three thread but all of you can go back to your teams
00:41:18.839
pull back share what you learned from the conferences say hey when this comes
00:41:24.480
out on streaming you really need to watch this presentation or here is one
00:41:29.579
takeaway or resource that I think we should use even more importantly
00:41:35.820
share your mistakes it is really important that we all talk
00:41:41.280
about messing up because nobody in Tech is perfect we
00:41:47.640
have all made mistakes once again if you're willing to raise
00:41:54.180
your hand if you've ever been responsible for taking out production
00:41:59.760
exactly and going back to what I mentioned
00:42:05.280
earlier say nice things compliment people when they do something
00:42:10.920
good go up to that presenter and tell them that you appreciated their presentation
00:42:17.099
and how you're going to use it go to that co-worker who helped you out and say thank you
00:42:23.880
foreign how else do you lead
00:42:29.040
find problems I recently did a talk on at Shopify on
00:42:36.060
what it means to be a staff software engineer one of the biggest distinctions
00:42:41.940
I made between a senior engineer and a staff software engineer is that a senior
00:42:48.300
engineer is a problem solver you give the senior engineer a problem and they
00:42:54.660
can either themselves or with a small group of people run off and create an amazing solution
00:43:01.140
a staff engineer is a problem finder they should be coming back for planning
00:43:07.800
and to leadership and presenting things that the team should be working on
00:43:13.140
and I put in solver in there because they do work on that too
00:43:20.099
we often hear phrases like think outside the box when you're looking for problems to
00:43:27.000
solve I want you to look in a few places first look inside the Box these are the
00:43:34.380
problems you already know about if you've been working on the developer team you know what frustrates you that
00:43:42.119
is a problem if you change something in the tooling
00:43:47.160
that makes everybody on your team save two hours of work do you know how much
00:43:53.579
impact that has on your team next
00:43:59.700
think outside the box level your thinking up like try to become like
00:44:05.460
think about the product as a whole think beyond your scope like think
00:44:11.280
other teams you're interacting with what sort of problems exist there but then finally
00:44:17.640
zoom out to the warehouse I want you to pause and think about
00:44:22.859
things that are too ridiculous to even consider not because I want you all to
00:44:29.040
go do that but because it's a useful exercise because by zooming out really
00:44:34.200
big that pushes you to see really big things that might actually be able to be done
00:44:44.160
you have a problem but do you need permission to do something about it
00:44:49.859
so that really depends um I'll tell you a story of one problem
00:44:55.020
I had where I did not need permission Shopify hosts hack days which is really
00:45:01.200
awesome because for about three days we can go off and work on anything we want to work on
00:45:07.560
and I participated in the my first hack days and it was awesome and then on my
00:45:12.900
second hack days one of our data scientists dropped into our team Channel and said hey I know all of you are
00:45:19.440
working on hack days but my hack days team has a lot of data scientists and we
00:45:24.839
are stuck on the JavaScript problem can somebody help me so I went off and took a little break
00:45:30.900
and helped with that and that's when I realized that this was actually a very common problem in hack
00:45:37.859
days anybody at Shopify can go hack on hack days but depending who ends up on
00:45:43.800
your team in your project you may not have all the information you need
00:45:48.900
but also anyone at Shopify can create a hack days project so that hack days I
00:45:55.319
went up and spun up a little hack days project called hack days helpers didn't need permission that was part of what I
00:46:03.300
could do and then I like told some people about it and tried to share it in some places
00:46:09.560
asked for volunteers got some volunteers and so for the last two days of hack days anybody who needed it could drop
00:46:17.700
into the channel and ask questions technical Marketing sales we would try
00:46:22.740
to find you somebody who could help you so you would get unstuck the cool thing is now hack day's helper
00:46:31.200
is an official part of shopify's hack days all because it was started
00:46:37.380
because I was able to put it in in a way that I didn't need to ask somebody for
00:46:42.420
permission thanks to hack days but a lot of times what you need to do
00:46:50.220
you are going to need permission so what to do if you need permission
00:46:56.579
I like to tell people about the five-step mini proposal
00:47:02.359
this takes a problem that you want to solve and sets your manager up so that
00:47:08.099
they will want to give you permission to work on it hopefully there are five parts and each part
00:47:14.760
should only have a few sentences we wanted to make it easy for a busy
00:47:20.400
manager to get the gist of it and make a decision quickly
00:47:25.800
part one problem State the problem in a couple sentences
00:47:31.500
and make sure to give supporting data so that they will know the scale and impact
00:47:37.500
because we need to speak in managers language with this if you don't know the scale and impact
00:47:44.880
then the first mini proposal might be just we don't know the scale and impact
00:47:51.180
of this so we need to do x y
00:47:58.200
next State your proposed solution once again just a couple sentences you want enough
00:48:06.000
information so your manager will have a general idea how you're going to solve
00:48:12.000
this problem a lot of us have fairly technical managers so you'll have to judge the
00:48:19.500
kind of level of detail but try to keep it short because remember for a manager time is important
00:48:26.839
oh and one second
00:48:38.700
next now for those first two steps we were very much talking like a developer
00:48:44.940
problems Solutions now we need to really start talking
00:48:50.640
managers language we need to add a sentence about time
00:48:56.819
and I know I also hate estimating
00:49:02.700
we are not talking perfect we are talking General range a few days few
00:49:09.240
weeks few months but we need to tell the manager not only the time but the number of Engineers we
00:49:17.640
think because they're going to need this information for scheduling and planning
00:49:22.880
next trade-offs if you are doing something you are not doing something
00:49:30.140
more talking in the manager's language what will you not be doing what will the
00:49:36.119
team not be doing in order to do this and then finally
00:49:42.300
my favorite part the permission because you want to ask for permission in a very
00:49:48.540
certain way ask your manager if they see any problem
00:49:55.740
with you and possibly others working on this why do we ask
00:50:02.460
not can I do this but do you see a problem with me doing
00:50:07.500
this because it flips the thought process around you're no longer having
00:50:12.900
the manager looking for reasons why you can they're looking for reasons why you
00:50:19.260
can't Let's do an example problem and I've made this a very simple
00:50:26.220
example so it would fit on the slide you should probably have a few more sentences with each one
00:50:32.819
every week we are wasting hours finding error data in the logs solution
00:50:39.119
I would like to add a page to our internal Diagnostics tool that makes it easier to see the errors
00:50:45.780
time this should take one to two days to complete
00:50:51.319
trade-offs it will delay that design document you knew I was working on by two days
00:50:57.599
permission do you see any problem with me prioritizing this work
00:51:03.599
and then drop it into a slack message especially if that's less scary than
00:51:08.880
saying it in person
00:51:15.900
okay I saved the hardest most important part of leadership for last
00:51:23.280
I was lucky enough to get to run an earlier talk Outline by Eileen and one
00:51:29.400
of her suggestions was to add be visible
00:51:34.740
she is 100 right it is significantly harder to lead if people don't see what
00:51:42.000
you are doing I love this quote from Tanya Riley's
00:51:48.540
being glue speech getting promoted is diversity work
00:51:55.380
if you are underrepresented in Tech and you get yourself promoted you are
00:52:03.000
now a role model and a mentor and that is going to have an impact on everybody
00:52:09.000
else who is climbing that ladder after you visibility is not self-serving
00:52:17.760
especially those of us in the audience who have been taught to be quiet to
00:52:24.240
blend in to take up no space and to let the world not notice us we
00:52:31.020
have to get over that and allow ourselves to be seen
00:52:38.760
how do you do that well I love Julia Evans writing but my
00:52:45.119
very favorite piece of her writing is her blog post get your work
00:52:51.359
recognized write a brag document and I want to quote the first line from
00:52:56.819
it there's this idea that if you do great work at your job people will or should
00:53:05.839
automatically recognize that work and reward you for it with promotions and
00:53:12.240
increased pay remember my naive opinion from earlier
00:53:18.780
you have to keep track of what you are doing
00:53:24.000
and so that you can share it with your manager so they can see what you are doing this is not being pushy this is
00:53:32.520
just doing your job and making your manager's job easier
00:53:38.579
foreign okay why is the slide blank
00:53:44.040
maybe I ran out of time writing so no more slides
00:53:49.619
not actually true this is blank because this is what
00:53:55.079
leadership looks like when you don't make yourself visible
00:54:02.640
verses I've seen you a lot on Shopify Slack
00:54:10.099
my friends told me I should listen to your summit talk
00:54:15.900
thank you for your feedback I wish more people were comfortable giving it
00:54:21.180
and then my very favorite your self-reflection was very
00:54:32.579
was entertaining I took shopify's internal document that is our career
00:54:37.980
Matrix and it has categories and subcategories of where like what you
00:54:43.319
should be doing with little definitions of what those things should be I took all those subcategories I dropped it
00:54:49.500
into the self-reflection under each sub-category I wrote out what I was
00:54:55.079
doing at my level and at the next level I didn't say hey manager this is next
00:55:01.200
level but I figured they would be able to figure that out
00:55:09.020
leaving from where you are this brings us back to the beginning
00:55:18.540
what was the one message I wanted all of you to walk away with
00:55:25.980
leading from where you are because every single person in this room
00:55:31.260
is in a unique position more and more Tech drives the world
00:55:38.640
and we are the drivers of tech in the trans issue panel they discuss
00:55:46.440
the difficulty of doing something as simple as changing your name in an app
00:55:53.119
we are the people who make that difficult
00:55:58.500
we are the people who can make that simple so please
00:56:04.559
take a moment and ask yourself where are you
00:56:09.960
and what can you do to help us lead
00:56:15.599
then if anybody wants to check all my stats and dates
00:56:22.859
and finally I just want to say thank you and thank all of you for this amazing conference and thank you for the
00:56:29.940
organizers for entrusting this closing talk to me