Sessions by Philip (culture) and Irena (inclusion). Written by @NarigoDF.
The two talks were very related and the discussion happened to be about both topics.
My take-aways for culture ownership:
- Use 1-on-1s to sort out people issues yourself.
- A company let a bot choose random team members (worldwide, could be anyone) to have a meeting / conversation just to let them experience each other cultures.
- Let everyone be at least a bit fullstack and not have a battle frontend vs backend. Does not solve issues due to "toxic" people.
- Mediators can be good for personal problems.
- Non-violent communication means to think about WHY you think a different code is better and try to show that you are not against the person. "Non-violent communication" should be a good keyword to search for to get suggestions. "This bothers ME, because ..."
- "Niederschweigen" does not always help.
- "Tech is the easy part, it's usually the people that fuck it up." -Tankred
- Toxic people should be confronted with their toxic behavior in a 1-on-1.
My take-aways for inclusiveness:
- Talk to people, approach people who are usually not involved in a topic and ask for their opinions.
- Apprenticeship program of a company has 60% women, the standard application for a software developer has a lot less.
- "The only thing you need is curiosity and empathy."
- Do not lower yourself, take responsibility.
- The right people always gravitate to each other - you can accelerate finding them by being open minded actively create something.
- To understand issues that minorities have, calculate the "rude comments ratio" for a minority: As an example, think of someone telling 10 rude jokes about males and 10 jokes about females. It looks equal, so if you have a team of 5 to 5, everyone gets about 2 rude jokes. But if you have a team 8 male to 2 female, the 2 females have to deal with about 5 rude comments each while every one of the 8 males just has to deal with about 1.25.
- "Do not wait for someone in a wheelchair to make the doors wide enough."
- If you just hire people "like you", you create your own echo chamber and narrow your views.