Karolina Szczur

Future Web

2025-01-05T00:00:00Z

One day not that long ago, on a tram, my boiling frustrations with what the Web is becoming were particularly unbearable. Little rights, many wrongs. Is this what we’ll let it be?

It’s idealistic and very millennial of me to reminiscence the early days of Web innocence, unbound creativity it hosted and wonderful lack of monetisation of virtually every aspect of being online. We can’t turn back time. But, individually and collectively, we can strive for better as the Web evolves as a home for work, knowledge, community, and love. We can resist the ongoing enshittification and corporate capitalism.

So I jotted down an non-exhaustive list of what I’d love the future Web to be.

Be accessible affordably or free of charge, no matter where you are.
Operate on the principle of informed consent.
Be as usable and delightful with the help of assistive technology as it is without.
Be grift-free.
Not track you.
Collect the minimal amount of information necessary to do its core job.
Carefully protect the private information it holds.
Not be monopolised by mega corporations.
Be optimised for near-instant browsing.
Make it easy to be forgotten.
Minimalise the amount of energy needed to run it.
Not rely on JavaScript.
Protect vulnerable people from harassment.
Be safe to authentically show up.
Have no ads.
Value human curation over algorithmic feeds.
Not be a copying machine of someone else’s work.
Take responsibility for the harm it inflicts.
Focus on sustainability instead of hyper-growth.
Actively combat mis- and disinformation.
Be transparently open.
Protect human rights over capitalist wants.
Banish “it works on my machine” whataboutism.
Steward over its foundations over inventing ways to circumvent them.
Be unionised.

Founder burnout

2024-06-05T00:00:00Z

For the last seven years (four of which as a co-founder), I’ve been working with Ben↗ on Calibre↗, a software as a service platform for web performance. It’s been the most challenging, rewarding and informative time of my entire professional career nearing twenty years. Several months ago, I made the toughest decision yet—to leave the company I helped build.

Founders departure is still a taboo subject, often interpreted as a failure to realise vision or company potential. I see it quite differently. Leaving a situation that doesn’t serve you is a strength, not a weakness, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. No position has the right to an unbound period of my life, once it stopped serving me, or even more so, started being detrimental to my health and wellbeing. And while being a founder, I’ve experienced the most severe burnout that left me with no other choice than make a drastic change to heal.

I’m sharing in hopes that this will be helpful to other founders, creators, open source maintainers, anyone really—as nobody is immune to burnout. Frequently, it takes quite a while to recognise the signs and acknowledge that what’s happening isn’t temporary stress, but a long-term psychological, emotional and physical overload.

Recognising the signs of burnout #

This is not the first time I’ve faced burnout. Despite knowing how it feels like↗, I’ve found founder burnout manifesting itself in a very different way to previous stints. I attribute not experiencing physical symptoms to successfully managing anxiety with the help of cognitive behavioural therapy and SSRIs (medication used to manage depression and anxiety). I wasn’t waking up in the middle of the night or feeling the physical impacts of long term stress. While those tools shielded me from physical discomfort, but not mental and emotional suffering.

This time, I couldn’t attribute it to the lack of sense of purpose or disillusionment with someone else’s leadership (which often are the main drivers). I had a high level of control and was finally working 100% true to my values. A dream, some might say. Yet I found myself:

feeling worn out and depleted, no matter the amount of time off
feeling overwhelmed, as if I couldn’t keep my head above water
feeling hopeless, as if nothing I do matters or makes a difference
being “empty” and disassociating
unable to engage in activities during time off
starting to fantasise about departing the company

The onset of burnout is gradual—it doesn’t happen overnight. Periodically, it would momentarily improve, but then come back crashing like a wave. What I found most insidious was that I was already using numerous strategies, both at personal and professional level, to prevent stress and burnout. It still found me.

There’s no bulletproof burnout prevention #

I’ve spent a lot of time and energy making Calibre the best place to work it can be. From hiring practices↗, high-level principles to care for employees↗, to implementing four-day workweek↗, which are only the top of the mountain. We nearly never worked over time, managed projects carefully and sweated how well we treated anyone who interacted with us. One would think with so many boundaries and conscious strategies for sustainable, kind way of working, burnout wouldn’t be possible. Alas, for founders, it very much is.

You can create a great place to work for your employees. But as a founder, the level of responsibility you carry alone can invalidate the no-stress environment fostered. Even with a four-day workweek, thoughts of business strategy don’t disappear. Even with four weeks of annual leave, it might be difficult to find a “good time” to disappear for a few days. Even with near-full control over company strategy, you can feel lacking any control over its future. When working with respect to your values, your truth, you can still be disillusioned and let down that the same values don’t resonate or have the effect you expected.

My experience of both working for others and creating a business from the ground-up has taught me that you can burn out in any environment, for different reasons. As a co-founder at a small, bootstrapped company, you shoulder tremendous responsibility. For the future of the business, its financials (no VC to fall back on), employee wellbeing, the product road map. The amount of things to worry about only grows if you care about doing things right. Which we very much do.

Ultimately, while I always felt supported, respected, and had fun collaborating with co-workers and contractors, the weight of an ever-growing to-do list that must be executed accordingly to high standards (I blame you, perfectionism), crushed me. I ran out of tools to manage how I felt and keep going.

Road to recovery #

A lot of advice for managing and healing↗ from burnout includes therapy, mindfulness, setting firm boundaries, exercise and eating well. Some recommend shifting to a different role instead of company departure. These are great suggestions, but I’ve been practising them for a long time prior to burnout. In a small company (Calibre was four people at most when I was there) shifting roles wasn’t an option either.

After months of careful consideration, talking with Ben about my possible departure, counselling with friends, it became obvious the only way for me to begin healing was to part ways with the work I’ve been doing. Co-founder departures are always impactful, especially the smaller the team is. The choice feels even more challenging when your co-founder is also your partner. We were always intentional about managing the impact of work on our relationship (which can be catastrophic) and showing up professionally for our team. We decided it was best for me and us to leave.

Some weight has lifted immediately when I acted on the decision. However, burnout recovery is counted in months (sometimes years), not days. I haven’t been working for over three months, and only now I’m beginning to feel like myself—with more energy, creativity, and optimism for what’s ahead. If you’re experiencing burnout, give yourself time and grace. It can be a slow process, but it does get better.

I’m now embarking on the last step of recovery: finding something new. If you’re hiring senior designers and design leaders remotely or in Narrm, let’s talk.

2020: Books in Review

2021-02-24T00:00:00Z

In 2020, I read 32 books out of my 40 goal. The pandemic year brought swings and roundabouts: sometimes I’d escape reality by reading as much as I could, sometimes I was too exhausted to even think about consuming words. 81% of the books were written by women, up from 68% last year.

In no particular order, here’s the list.

Show Me Where It Hurts: Living with Invisible Illness #

Kylie Maslen ∙ 2020

I felt seen and validated by this book. Women’s pain is often overlooked and dismissed, resulting in years without relief and appropriate treatment. It’s also common to not believe how someone’s life-altering mental and physical illness can be because it’s not ”visible”. Kylie shares her own experiences and unveils how health professionals in Australia failed her.

Why We’re Polarized #

Ezra Klein ∙ 2020

I’ll admit that I picked up this book solely based on being intrigued by the title—I wanted to know! There are valuable insights in Why We’re Polarized, but I expected it to be more universal than focusing solely on partisanship in the United States.

F*ck Happiness: How the Science of Psychology Ignores Women #

Ariel Gore ∙ 2010

This book does an excellent job dissecting how psychology ignores women and tries to force false ideas about what makes them happy into their brains. I’m with you, Ariel. Fuck happiness.

Any Ordinary Day: Blindsides, Resilience and What Happens After the Worst Day of Your Life #

Leigh Sales ∙ 2019

What a challenging yet beautiful read. Leigh describes horrific life circumstances people faced and how they recovered and moved on. It’s a beautiful set of essays about resilience and hope—something I needed in a complete shitfight of 2020.

The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love #

Sonya Renee Taylor ∙ 2018

I read a handful of body positivity and neutrality books, but none hit the nail on the head as hard as this one. Sonya speaks of ways of treating yourself and your body I wish I had heard of since the beginning. They might have saved me a lot of pain and confusion.

You’ll Grow Out of It #

Jessi Klein ∙ 2016

Another hilarious memoir written by an author I have never heard of before. It’s close to Irby’s level of cackles, so if you need some laughs, it’s a good bet.

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body #

Roxane Gay ∙ 2017

I love Roxane Gay—everything she writes is exceptional. They are usually not easy reads, nor was this one. Roxane describes her relationship with body and weight. At times I nodded to familiar patterns she explained, and at others, my heart broke at how hostile the world is to anyone who even mildly doesn’t fit the toxic norm.

Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder and Things That Sustain You When the World Goes Dark #

Julia Baird ∙ 2020

Phosphorescence is not a self-help book, but it will move and inspire you. Julia draws on her own experiences (fighting cancer) and how they shaped her own search for purpose and contentment in life. Another must-read for the challenge last year has been.

Intimations #

Zadie Smith ∙ 2020

I must admit that this was the first time I read Zadie’s writing (I know). Intimations is a powerful set of short essays describing the experience of lockdown. Timely.

Net Privacy: How We Can Be Free in an Age of Surveillance #

Sacha Molitorisz ∙ 2020

Privacy is a vital subject that’s often at the front of my mind. I found Net Privacy a good introductory read but too broad and generalist for those already well-versed in the area. It also fell into the traps of repeating the same ideas repeatedly and quoting as much research as possible, which often got into the way of communicating points across.

Wow, No Thank You #

Samantha Irby ∙ 2020

I don’t know how I haven’t heard about Samantha Irby before. She’s by far the most real and hilarious person I have ever read. I found so many things relatable (gut issues! hating people!) as I cackled through her essay collection. Do yourself a favour and read it right now.

Meaty #

Samantha Irby ∙ 2013

Right after Wow, No Thank You, I had to consume more of Samantha’s books. It’s like coming back to a good, hilarious friend who understands. Samantha’s essays cuddle you.

Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close #

Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman ∙ 2020

I recall picking this book up not because I heard the podcast (I famously don’t listen to them) but because I wanted the answer to its title. As much as I wanted to love it, my expectation was to read more of a how-to, not a memoir of this specific friendship of women I wasn’t familiar with.

How to Be an Antiracist #

Ibram X. Kendi ∙ 2019

Not being racist is not enough—we have to be antiracist. Ibram explains how neutrality is not possible when it comes to racism and how we should be addressing it to create a better world.

Australia Day #

Stan Grant ∙ 2019

Stan Grant is an Australian treasure—his books should be a mandatory read. In Australia Day, he speaks on what it really means to be Australian and how Indigenous people struggle to belong in the colonized reality of current times. He asks uncomfortable but necessary questions nobody else seems to be asking.

We Need New Stories: Challenging the Toxic Myths Behind Our Age of Discontent #

Nesrine Malik ∙ 2019

Nesrine describes six toxic myths that divide society and analyses them to find new, more fitting narratives for a better future.

Fake: A Startling True Story of Love in a World of Liars, Cheats, Narcissists, Fantasists and Phonies #

Stephanie Wood ∙ 2019

OMG. This book brought chills down my spine as Stephanie described how her then-partner made up an entirely imaginary life of lies, which she had no idea about. She dissects this phenomenon with her investigative journalism skills.

Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto #

Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya & Nancy Fraser ∙ 2019

Three organizers of the international women’s strike in the US talk about how we need anti-capitalist, radical feminism instead of solutions for the 1%. Fuck leaning in.

Fight Like A Girl #

Clementine Ford ∙ 2016

I have been meaning to pick up Clementine’s books for a while. Her feminist writing does not take prisoners—she’s not here to discuss sexism or misogyny in polite terms or step around the elephant in the room.

Untamed #

Glennon Doyle ∙ 2020

I should have known I’m going to hate this book. While some of the sentiments are critical (setting boundaries, abandoning toxic societal expectations and standing up for yourself), I couldn’t get past the egotistic tone.

Whistleblower: My Journey to Silicon Valley and Fight for Justice at Uber #

Susan Fowler ∙ 2020

Susan’s post (and its aftermath) shook the tech world. Still, I can’t help but feel that her book focussed a bit too much on a personal story versus shining a light on systemic issues experienced by countless (not only white) women and other underrepresented groups.

Between the World and Me #

Ta-Nehisi Coates ∙ 2015

Between the World and Me is a lyrical masterpiece—a story about race told to Ta-Nehisi’s son. What is it like to inhabit a Black body? Is America going to reckon with its racism?

Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot #

Mikki Kendall ∙ 2020

I am so tired of white feminism, and Mikki’s book was a welcome respite. Easily one of the most critical looks at feminism: who it’s failing and what issues fall under its definition. Both mostly overlooked in mainstream feminism reads.

It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work #

Jason Fried ∙ 2018

I squinted enough to bypass the ableism in the title to consume another Basecamp book. Look, if you have never thought critically about capitalism and company culture, maybe you will find it revolutionary. I didn’t.

Uncanny Valley #

Anna Wiener ∙ 2020

I could quickly identify all tech companies Anna was avoiding to name but describing in excruciating detail. Maybe I didn’t find it revolutionary as many of the experiences she described I also lived in years prior. Love a good Silicon Valley burn, though.

White Fragility #

Robin DiAngelo ∙ 2018

White Fragility seems to be (sigh) one of the most popularised books on racism. In reality, it’s a convoluted pat on the back of white people who want to feel better about themselves, solving or explaining nothing about systemic racism. Support and read Black writers instead.

Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion #

Jia Tolentino ∙ 2019

Wow. I wish I was so succinctly on fire with my observations as Jia Tolentino is. In her collection of essays, she shares witty observations on the internet, the self, feminism and politics—a must-read.

Convenience Store Woman #

Sayaka Murata ∙ 2019

It was refreshing to pick up the Fiction Book of the Year again (the fiction commitment is not going so well, seemingly). I know many people love Convenience Store Woman, but I didn’t. Maybe it’s my rusty fiction-reading muscle.

The Likeability Trap: How to Break Free and Succeed As You Are #

Alicia Menendez ∙ 2019

There’s a mountain of pressure on women to be always likeable, amendable, and in a way, obedient. Alicia shows how to stop caring about likeability and live your life instead.

Beyond Beautiful: A Practical Guide to Being Happy, Confident, and You in a Looks-Obsessed World #

Anuschka Rees ∙ 2019

I wouldn’t say that Beyond Beautiful is THE guide to read when discussing body neutrality and rejecting patriarchal pressures on women. Still, it does ask some critical questions that might steer you in the right direction. Unlearning what we have been conditioned to takes a long time.

This Too Shall Pass: Stories of Change, Crisis and Hopeful Beginnings #

Julia Samuel ∙ 2020

I bought Julia’s book, hoping it would be similar to ”Phosphorescence” and ”Any Ordinary Day” (mentioned above). In ways, it was—it pictured people going through all sorts of situations life threw at them. Overall, I didn’t find this book especially inspiring or filling my hope bucket.

Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism #

Wendy Liu ∙ 2020

Another Uncanny Valley-like book about working in tech in SV. However, it does not mention fixing systemic issues in Silicon Valley, but mostly focuses on describing Liu’s experience.

2019: Books in Review

2021-02-24T00:00:00Z

In 2019, I’ve read 44 books, which is 83% more than last year (not having a hyper-stressful job for half of the year definitely helped this goal). I consciously focused on reading women authors, which took up 68% of all books. The statistics on race could be better though (frankly, it’s challenging to assume writer’s race and ethnicity, but by my calculations it oscillated around 7-10%).

In no particular order, here’s the list.

Notes on a Nervous Planet #

Matt Haig ∙ 2019

I enjoyed the follow-up to “Reasons to Stay Alive”, this time focusing on how technological and social advancements bring more torment rather than joy into our lives. Matt Haig remains one of my favourite authors writing about anxiety and depression, in an accessible and informed way.

This is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn To See #

Seth Godin ∙ 2019

Seth Godin is one of THE marketing people to follow. In his latest book, he mostly focuses on building trust and permission as well as meaningful solutions to problems, rather than the usual marketing spam. Something I subscribe to.

Company of One: Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing for Business #

Paul Jarvis ∙ 2019

The best of Paul’s writing to date, focusing on values I deeply believe in; minimalism, sustainability, and not pursuing growth at any cost. Being small is good. A must-read for anyone, but especially if you feel weighted by capitalist definition of success.

Digital Minimalism: On Living Better with Less Technology #

Cal Newport ∙ 2019

I had high hopes for Digital Minimalism, but it didn’t offer any ideas I haven’t heard or thought of before. All in all, it was an okay, but not a revolutionary read on limiting the amount of technology we let into our lives.

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life #

Anne Lamott ∙ 1995

“Bird by Bird” is an all-time classic when it comes to primers on how to write well. With excellent storytelling, Anne Lamott will teach you how to become better at words.

Power to the Startup People: How To Grow Your Startup Career When You’re Not The Founder #

Sarah E. Brown ∙ 2018

This book has an essential premise—that you don’t have to be a founder or C-level exec to bring change and do meaningful work. Again, not enough novelty in it for me to categorise it as hugely useful, but I can see it being helpful to those who haven’t been in tech long and still are looking for meaning.

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup #

John Carreyrou ∙ 2018

I read “Bad Blood” on a single breath during a long-haul flight while constantly throwing my arms in the air and mouthing “what the f*ck”. If that’s not the most concise portrayal of widespread tech hero-worship, gross incompetence and overconfidence of Silicon Valley, I don’t know what is.

Gross Anatomy: Dispatches from the Front (and Back) #

Mara Altman ∙ 2018

A hilarious combination of fascinating research and hilarious anecdotes about often taboo topics surrounding women’s bodies (which, honestly, shouldn’t be taboo in the first place). Yes to open, honest conversations about the meat sacks we live in!

Bring Your Human to Work: 10 Surefire Ways to Design a Workplace That Is Good for People, Great for Business, and Just Might Change the World #

Erica Keswin ∙ 2018

“Bring Your Human to Work” was a good primer for managers, business owners and anyone willing to instil positive organisational change. Each chapter covered a separate issue and ended with actionable advice.

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle #

Emily and Amelia Nagoski ∙ 2019

Burnout spoke to the deepest corners of my being—a tired tech worker and activist. Emily and Amelia explain the causes, lifecycle and dealing with burnout in the amount of detail I’ve not seen before.

Against Creativity #

Oli Mould ∙ 2018

Oli Mould expertly dissects how the creativity “movement” effectively nestles itself into capitalism and maximisation of profits, rather than benefitting the society. Great ideas in a book that reads like a PhD dissection.

Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life #

Adam Greenfield ∙ 2017

Another Verso Books author, this time focusing on technologies that are shaping our life. I’d enjoy it much more if half of the book weren’t covering blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy #

Jenny Odell ∙ 2019

I had high hopes for this book. While the justification of resistance of the attention economy is essential, I was more looking for the “how” mentioned in the title, that wasn’t delivered throughout.

Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization? #

Aaron Dignan ∙ 2019

I felt like “Brave New Work” wanted to be the “Rework” of the late 2010s. It’s worth reading, especially if you’re looking to manage your company better, but again, I didn’t find much revolutionary content inside.

This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America #

Morgan Jerkins ∙ 2018

Another excellent collection of essays on living in America as a black woman and the oppression of whiteness. A mandatory read for intersectional feminists.

Fed Up: Emotional Labor, Women, and the Way Forward #

Gemma Hartley ∙ 2018

No matter who you are, Fed Up will make you angry. An acutely precise depiction of emotional labour, mostly shouldered by women. A necessary read for those wanting to understand it and bring equality to their homes and lives.

Calm: Educate yourself in the art of remaining calm, and learn how to defend yourself from panic and fury #

The School of Life ∙ 2016

School of Life is known for publishing varied and interesting content. I read “Calm” with the hope that it would offer actionable advice for those living with anxiety, but in the end, it didn’t.

The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment #

Eckhart Tolle ∙ 2004

Eckhart Tolle is supposed to be a spirituality and mindfulness guru (I digress). If you pass through the superficial reworking of zen, it’s advice you’re likely to hear in a therapy session. Being in the now is a valuable lesson, but I’m not sure if you need this book to learn it.

LOVE!: An Enthusiastic and Modern Perspective on Matters of the Heart #

Zoë Foster Blake ∙ 2019

I bought this book mainly based on the typography and beautiful print. I knew she was an acclaimed Australian author. The book was filled with shallow advice and self-deprecating, lazy humour. Please, spare yourself.

Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithm #

Hannah Fry ∙ 2019

Hannah Fry takes us on a tour of rising negative implications of the prominence of technology and the rise of biased algorithms. A must-read for anyone in tech, especially those working with artificial intelligence.

Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger #

Soraya Chemaly ∙ 2018

I loved this book as it justified so much anger I’ve been bottling inside, especially as someone who genuinely believes in equality. Soraya raises crucial points about the implications of bottling our anger and how to use it to drive change.

How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency #

Akiko Busch ∙ 2019

The notion of disappearing in the age of hyper-connectivity is enticing. Similarly to “How to Do Nothing”, this book was more of a philosophical exercise and a memoir, rather than a resource to turn for advice for.

Conversations with Friends #

Sally Rooney ∙ 2017

I promised myself to read more fiction, as my primary focus tends to be a collection of enraging to depressive non-fiction reads. Rooney’s books seemed like a good re-introduction. Excellent storytelling, confirming all the accolades for the novel.

Future Histories: What Ada Lovelace, Tom Paine, and the Paris Commune Can Teach Us About Digital Technology #

Lizzie O’Shea ∙ 2019

“Future Histories” is a throwback to the legacy of social movements and a testament to the history of computing. How can we leverage the past to inform a better future, asks Lizzie.

Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language #

Gretchen McCulloch ∙ 2019

The language we use is continually evolving, primarily online. Gretchen McCulloch, an Internet linguist, weighs on memes, bizarre grammar, words and emoji. An informative read for anyone these days.

No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work #

Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy ∙ 2019

Emotions belong at work—it’s impossible and, in so many ways, damaging to show up without them. “No Hard Feelings” is a charming and informative read how to be human, at work.

Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language #

Amanda Montell ∙ 2019

How we communicate matters—often, language is just another vector of oppression, introducing dozens of tiny cuts per day. Feminist linguist Amanda Montell explains how language is used to gaslight women. A mandatory read for anyone who cares about inclusion.

Thick: And Other Essays #

Tressie McMillan Cottom ∙ 2019{" "}

After seeing Tressie at the Broadside Festival, I had to read her latest book immediately. “Thick” is an expertly written collection of essays on race, whiteness and black misogyny.

Resilient Management #

Lara Hogan ∙ 2019

I’ve been looking up to Lara for a long time. Her managerial and leadership expertise is unparalleled. In her latest book, she gives actionable advice for becoming and being a resilient manager; skills deeply needed in this undervalued discipline and in desperate times.

Conversational Design #

Erika Hall ∙ 2018

Injecting conversation into design and development work isn’t foreign to me; a former Human-Computer Interaction student and purveyor people-first approaches—an informative read to those who are looking to build delightful, usable interfaces.

Katherine Ormerod ∙ 2018

Drawn by the title and drowned in anxiety-inducing bird website, I read. It’s necessary to evaluate our relationship to social media and its omnipresence in our lives. Most of the time, we’re better without it.

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones #

James Clear ∙ 2018

Atomic Habits came highly recommended by Elyse Holladay. I wasn’t disappointed. It’s one of my favourite books of 2019, if not the decade. It’s a fantastic primer on habit formation and sustainability.

Whose Story Is This? Old Conflicts, New Chapters #

Rebecca Solnit ∙ 2019

Oh, Rebecca, we meet again, old friend. Another incredible collection of essays, focusing on highlighting the most underrepresented voices, beyond men and whiteness. Discussing feminism, racial injustice, climate action, and other human rights movements, Solnit ponders on how they influence the future.

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed #

Lori Gottlieb ∙ 2019

For someone in therapy and an advocate for mental health, this was a glorious read. Lori unveils the backstage of therapists work, fights stigma surrounding mental health and simultaneously does so in a well-written, nearly fiction-like narrative.

On Fire: The Case for the Green New Deal #

Naomi Klein ∙ 2019

It’s hard not to pay attention to complete environmental collapse unfolding in front of our eyes. Climate change denialism has successfully led us to rapid global warming. Naomi Klein essays provide the necessary insight into how we let it happen and what to do next.

White Tears/Brown Scars #

Ruby Hamad ∙ 2019

Ruby expertly dissects white, colonialist feminism in Australia and worldwide. Her incredibly researched writing is the forefront of intersectional feminism, speaking hard truths everyone fighting for equality should hear. Fantastic book.

The Growth Handbook by Intercom #

Des Traynor, Karen Peacock and Andrew Chen ∙ 2018

I find most of the Intercom books valuable in varying degrees (depends on target audience and amount of good editorial). “The Growth Handbook” was one of their best ones, offering actionable advice for scaling your business.

The Witches Are Coming #

Lindy West ∙ 2019

In her successor to “Shrill”, West examines how we ended up in Trump’s America; rigged with misogyny, transphobia, racism and propaganda. An equally hilarious, yet troubling and concise depiction of current culture and society.

Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators #

Ronan Farrow ∙ 2019

One of the best pieces of investigative journalism. Ronan (son of Woody Allen and Mia Farrow) describes in the breadth of Harvey Weinstein’s abuse and the conspiracy surrounding it while trying to break the story of years of abuse that resulted in the spread of the #MeToo movement.

The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls #

Mona Eltahawy ∙ 2019

Mona isn’t here to politely explain the patriarchy. She’s here to eject it to the moon. In her fierce manifesto, she encourages women to reclaim stigmatised qualities and use them to dismantle the system of oppression. Incredible read.

Principles of Product Design #

Aarron Walter ∙ 2019

I was interested in InVision’s book collection and decided to start with something near and dear to my heart. This book might be more valuable to Junior to Mid-level designers, but I didn’t find any novelty or ideas I haven’t encountered before in my career.

The F*ck It Diet: Eating Should Be Easy #

Caroline Dooner ∙ 2019

Navigating both body shaming and often false body positivity (wellness) movement can be a minefield. Many people have a disordered relationship with food. “The Fuck It Diet” was a good read trying to dismantle the typical nonsense that’s fed to us.

Year in Review: 2018

2019-01-12T00:00:00Z

This is the second time I’m writing a year in review. Still trying to find the best format for reflections and a framework for goal-setting for the year to come. If you’ve never written one before, I strongly recommend it as a great form of remembering your own achievements (and struggles!).

The way I can sum up 2018 is: it’s been a year.

Work #

In April, after wrapping the last CSSConf↗ and JSConf Australia, I begin looking for a job that aligns with my values and career goals. Turns out finding remote work that’s not US-centric, in a diverse and inclusive company is enough requirements to halt conversations with most of the 50 companies I was interviewing with.

Organizations which live up to their values, foster inclusion, take care of their employees and offer interesting roles are, sadly, still very scarce. I say “no” to many Silicon Valley clichés (cryptocurrencies, 100% white and/or male startups, being hired in one role but also coaching everyone on diversity and inclusion, hilariously bad remote practices, abysmal culture and glorification of “the hustle” to name a few).

Luckily, I stumble upon an opening at Help Scout↗, one of remote product companies I’ve been looking up to and following for a long time and end up being hired as a front-end engineer on the design team.

It ends up being the best job I’ve ever had. Everyday I’m humbled to be working with such talented, empathetic people committed to excellence on every front. Hats down to my design team friends.

In my spare time I still advise my partner↗ on his SaaS business—Calibre↗ (if you’re after a web performance and user experience monitoring tool, look no further).

Writing #

I love writing but this past year my anxiety flare ups were so severe I couldn’t find enough focus and worry-free times to be publishing.

I did write several presentations (more about that below), what I liberated myself from in 2018↗, a D&I report for JSConf and CSSConf Australia↗ and how we should all be an inclusion rider when choosing to partake in tech conferences↗.

I’ve decided to move away from Medium and own all of my content, so going forward I’ll be working on making my blog feature-complete and publishing solely here. I currently don’t nor intend to use any tracking, so your privacy is protected, too.

Speaking #

I was intending on limiting my speaking engagements in 2018 but, in reality, I’ve doubled the number of talks compared to the previous year:

Fundamentals of Effective Allyship at Tech Inclusion Melbourne↗ (writeup↗, slides↗)
Disruptive or defective? Towards ethical tech innovation at Web Directions Code Leaders Melbourne↗ (slides↗)
Towards a welcoming Web at DDD Perth↗ (slides↗, video↗)
Restart at Creative Mornings Melbourne↗

All of the talks touched on subjects I’m deeply passionate about: equality, inclusion, allyship, ethical technology and design as well as anxiety, burnout and surviving in the hyper-connected world.

I don’t expect to be doing any public speaking in 2019 but, as always, it might change if a value-aligned opportunity presents itself.

Diversity and inclusion activism #

This was my biggest failure of 2018. Mid-year my anxiety drastically worsened. I was unable to use social media or deliver on my Patreon promises (I suspended the campaign). To be honest, all of my energy was focused on simply surviving and showing up to work.

If you’re one of my backers—I truly value your support and am sorry for the lack of transparency and delivery. I still care deeply about D&I and all of the projects surrounding these issues but I had to step back to take care of myself. I’m hoping to get back on the publishing track in 2019 and continue advocating for fighting inequality.

Traveling #

Turns out, that even on “a year without travel” I ended up in nine cities, four countries and covering 143,000 kilometers (Australia is fabulous but incredibly far from anything, really) visiting the following:

Berlin, Germany
Kraków, Poland (twice)
Boston, USA
Perth, Australia
Portland, USA
Hilton Head, USA
Sydney, Australia
Canberra, Australia
Singapore

Apart from old favorites, I’ve seen new places and stayed at a handful of beautiful design hotels (if you don’t know this about me yet, I do spend a long time researching experiences and book only things that fulfill my high standards; sometimes it gets quite hilarious) such as Puro↗ (Kraków), The Alex↗ (Perth), The Paramount House↗ and The Warehouse↗ (Singapore).

I’ve already planned two trips for 2019 (Lisbon, Kraków and a road trip through New Zealands’ South Island) but otherwise I’ll try keeping it local.

Personal #

As you might have noticed, the overarching theme of 2018 was, sadly, anxiety. While I’ve managed to keep up most of self-care routines, I kept losing all the battles. Despite many positive aspects, it was quite a dark and stressful year, leading to anxiety-related health problems that I’m hoping to fully diagnose and address. I’m deeply grateful for everyone who weathered the storm with me.

I’ll be publishing about my experience, struggle and coping mechanisms soon.

There were a few highlights though, such as good friends getting married, engaged, having ridiculously cute kids or my parents travelling out of Europe for the first time, all the way to Australia!

Onwards, 2019 #

I’m not someone who commits to resolutions, instead I identify guiding values and areas of focus to cultivate:

Self-care and wellbeing
Friends, family, loved ones
Meaningful, impactful work
Inclusion and equality
Creativity and embracing failure

How was your 2018? What are you focusing on for the year to come?

2018: Books in Review

2019-01-10T00:00:00Z

In 2018 I’ve managed to go through 24 fantastic books—a little less than I’ve planned, but anxiety got in the way. The prevalent theme was undoubtedly feminism—especially touching on systemic racial oppression. Second most read subject was the effect of technology on humanity—an equally important issue.

In no particular order, here’s a short commentary that might be useful if you’re looking for thought-provoking reads that will help you grow both personally and professionally.

Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts #

Brené Brown ∙ 2018

Brené’s books, without a fail, have been the most impactful reads in my life. She tackles crucial subjects of shame, perfectionism, worthiness and thoroughly explains how to show up courageously, every single day. An essential guide to both personal and professional development.

Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All #

Tom & David Kelley ∙ 2013

A book by IDEO’s↗ founders describing how they approach and teach creativity at Stanford d.school↗. A truly fascinating read with actionable advice on how to flex your creative muscles.

Lost and Founder: The Mostly Awful, Sometimes Awesome Truth about Building a Tech Startup #

Rand Fishkin ∙ 2018

I’m going to admit I haven’t heard about Rand, or Moz↗, until recently. However, Lost and Founder is the most no-bullshit, anti-hustle startup book I’ve ever read. Big thumbs up for refreshing sincerity and vulnerability our industry is often lacking.

Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think #

Hans, Ola and Anna Rosling ∙ 2018

Factfulness is exactly the book we need in the time of fake news and widespread fearmongering. It provides necessary context on how much humanity has progressed and what else is left to be done.

A Uterus Is a Feature, Not a Bug: The Working Woman’s Guide to Overthrowing the Patriarchy #

Sarah Lacy ∙ 2017

The founder of PandoDaily↗ debunks patriarchal misconceptions on how women, especially mothers, are supposedly less skilled as employees and entrepreneurs. A great read on the “Maternal Wall” bias and how to overcome it.

Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship #

Kayleen Schaefer ∙ 2018

This book really moved me. A wonderful account of female frienships, emphasising how crucial those relationships are and how they should be treated at the same level as romantic partnerships. Love my besties.

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture #

Edited by Roxane Gay ∙ 2018

Roxane is one of the most important voices in the current day and age. It’s an excellent, albeit very confronting, collection of essays on assault, harassment and rape. It made me realise how many situations labelled as “not that bad” came back to haunt me years later.

New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future #

James Bridle ∙ 2018

I’ve stumbled upon this book somewhat accidentally but it’s one of the best dissections of the influence of technology on our lives. James paints a honest picture of environmental repercussions, surveillance, power inequalities and violence. A must read.

Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays) #

Rebecca Solnit ∙ 2018

I love Rebecca Solnit. Her recent essay collections have been one of my favourite reads. While a lot of her writing dissects American culture and current, difficult climate, she touches on universal issues. This book is a study of violence against women with a dash of hope for the future.

Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions #

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ∙ 2017

Adichie’s We Should All Be Feminists↗ is a modern feminist staple and I did love the successor as well. I’m not a parent myself but I’ve wondered how I’d raise children to be allies and Chimamanda comes to rescue with a lovely letter-to-a-friend format.

Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy #

Cathy O'Neil ∙ 2016

A quantitative analyst telling the story of how algorithms royally screw us over, promoting inequality, racial discrimination and oppression. A sobering read for those working on the Web platform looking to understand the true repercussions of their making.

Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor #

Virginia Eubanks ∙ 2018

An investigation on how software punishes the poor and ensures that economically disadvantaged can’t break the cycle of poverty. The stories told by Eubanks didn’t leave my head for a long time.

The Best Interface Is No Interface: The Simple Path to Brilliant Technology #

Golden Krishna ∙ 2015

A critical look on the current state of user experience design and infatuation with with technology. Great primer on usability and minimalism.

How to Write Short: Word Craft for Fast Times #

Roy Peter Clark ∙ 2013

I love writing and learning about how to write better. Following Several Short Sentences about Writing↗ it’s my favourite and most practical guide on the craft of concision.

Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley #

Emily Chang ∙ 2018

If you think you’ve heard it all about Silicon Valley, trust me, you haven’t. In her exposé, Chang reveals the worst of bro culture and shows how to end it, once for all.

Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action #

Simon Sinek ∙ 2009

Accordingly to Goodreads, this was the most popular book from the entire collection, but frankly, I can recollect very little other than it was horribly boring. If you’re after leadership advice, better check out Brené’s writing.

Shrill #

Lindy West ∙ 2017

West manages to simulatenously make you laugh uncontrollably and learn to confront prevalent negative programming about your body image. What an incredibly powerful voice taking on fat shaming.

Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World #

Adam M. Grant ∙ 2016

Originals offers a range of studies and stories on breaking the groupthink and embracing creativity. A good read on how to foster originality and how dissent can prove to be tremendously useful.

So You Want to Talk About Race #

Ijeoma Oluo ∙ 2018

THE BOOK every single white person should read, immediately. Cover to cover, multiple times. A succint primer allowing to start grasping race and racial oppression in the supercharged world of inequality.

Bitch Doctrine: Essays for Dissenting Adults #

Laurie Penny ∙ 2017

Laurie’s previous writing, Unspeakable Things↗ is one of the best feminist reads I’ve came across. She doesn’t disappoint here either—wittily tackling the end of patriarchy and the struggle of gender binary. Penny also manages to emphatize with those who she critiques most, which is refreshing.

Intercom on Marketing #

Des Traynor & Matt Hodges ∙ 2018

I’ve read most of the Intercom books and find them valuable and well edited. This was no exception. However, some of the advice only applies to bigger organisations, not startups.

Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic Tech #

Sara Wachter-Boettcher ∙ 2017

Sara offers a thorough walkthrough of harmful biases embedded in tech products we use everyday. She demystifies the lack of values leading to creating toxic technologies. A must read on ethical design.

Hopefully, you have found a few interesting reads for yourself. Onwards, 2019!

2017: Year in Review

2017-12-28T00:00:00Z

I haven’t done any year in reviews in the past, but I believe it’s a great way of reflecting on accomplishments and hardships I’ve managed to overcome. Without further ado, here it goes.

Work #

Being in tech hasn’t been great for me in the last two years. In Australia, I was tied to a job that didn’t allow me grow, and even worse, actively discriminated against me when I’ve attempted to apply for more senior roles. I’ve been verbally harassed at work (it’s not any news, it has happened at other jobs before), but what made it even worse was lack of appropriate action, basic response mechanisms and inclusion credibility of the company, that’s far from reality. It’s been a huge weigh on my mental health. My career stagnated.

Luckily, in October I quit, and now I’m focusing on recalibrating my goals and trying to establish what to do next year. In the meantime, I’m consumed by conference organising, personal projects and helping with product at Calibre, which is growing strong with no funding whatsoever (try it out↗ if you need web performance tracking and tips).

I’ll most likely be looking for a new role in the first quarter of 2018 (say hi if you’re hiring).

Diversity and inclusion activism #

In 2017, I took my diversity and inclusion activism to another level. I’ve launched a successful Patreon↗ to support my efforts. I’ve been publishing more and rallying for more diverse, inclusive events, workplaces and other initiatives. I’ve forced the hand of Github to postpone their conference due to abysmal lack of diversity in the lineup. I’ve been trying to set an example for tech conferences through JSConf↗ and CSSConf↗ Australia. Probably around six months ago, I’ve stopped retweeting men, and focussed on giving a platform to the underrepresented.

I’ve constantly been reading and educating myself to make my feminism and activism intersectional. Next year, I’ll put even more focus on creating shareable resources and scaling my impact.

Writing #

One of the things I thoroughly enjoy, but still takes a fair bit of time is writing. The amount of research, spellchecking and edits that goes in every single post I publish is frankly, maybe slightly too much. Nonetheless, I was able to triple the number of posts compared to 2016 (14 versus 4). These numbers exclude newsletters, conference announcements and any other communications, so in reality, I wrote even more.

If I was to trust Medium, my stories were viewed more than 111,000 times. Not too bad. My writing skills improved exponentially due to practice and using Grammarly↗. I aim to publish more regularly and frequently in the next year.

Speaking #

I’ve very consciously limited the number of conferences that I present at. To be honest, they don’t bring as many benefits as they used to and preparing a talk implies of more than a month of work after-hours. Speaking at an event isn’t a decision I make lightly, especially with limited capability to travel. I’ve given two presentations in 2016, both well received by the community:

The State of the Web at Frontend Conference Zürich↗ (Writeup↗, Video↗)
Building Inclusive Communities at Nordic.js↗ (Writeup↗, Video↗)

In 2018, I intend to present a few times, mostly focusing on industry culture, diversity, inclusion, web performance and front-end engineering. If you’ve heard about any good, inclusive conferences—let me know (bear in mind, I do have requirements for events I speak at).

Self-care #

Self-care somehow became a trend, which I’d assume is a good thing. For me, self-care is much more than a fling, or a lifestyle choice—it’s essential for my wellbeing and firmly ingrained in everything I do.

I’ve successfully embedded various types of exercise into my workdays. I’ve done 20 strength training sessions, eight squash court appearances and approximately 66 yoga classes (mostly vinyasa). Speaking of yoga, I’ve tried many places and discovered the ultimate studio—Good Vibes Yoga. I strongly recommend it, if you’re based in Melbourne.

Sadly, I didn’t manage to cycle a lot—only 68km this year (I usually forget to turn on Strava anyway). I’d love to do more, but a new bike purchase is in order (cheap single speeds aren’t comfortable and versatile enough for longer distances than a daily commute).

In 2017, I also got diagnosed with chronic anxiety. Now that I have more understanding of generalised anxiety, I see how it’s been there for years, wreaking havoc on my wellbeing. It got so bad I was unable to feel anything but stress and worry. I’m only now starting to feel enjoyment and occasionally, sparks of joy. I’m lucky enough to live in Australia, where residents and citizens can be eligible for a mental health care plan↗, resulting in 10 subsidised counselling sessions a year. A good counsellor has been instrumental in my recovery (again, if you’re in Melbourne, I cannot recommend The Mind Room↗ more).

Additionally, I’ve taken up meditation with Calm↗ app. It’s been a pure joy to use and easier to get hooked up to than I’d would have assumed. I’ve managed a 58 days streak and almost 100 sessions over the year.

I've been very wary of my boundaries and preferences—saying „no” to alcohol more frequently (it’s never been something I enjoyed in excess), reducing screen time, removing all work-related apps from my phone and taking time to listen to what my body and mind needed at the moment. If you haven’t invested in your wellbeing yet, I’d recommend doing so. It can have tremendously positive payoffs to all aspects of your life.

Apart from all of that, it’s been my second year living in Australia, now finally with permanent residency. It’s been a huge weight off my shoulders to be able to decide about my future without visa implications and not being tied to any employers. It's been a tough year, but I came at the end of it thanks to continuous support of my partner, close friends and family.

I’m looking forward to what 2018 will bring.

Three things you don’t need to become a speaker

2017-09-15T00:00:00Z

Now and then I have a conversation with someone who’s interested in pursuing public speaking but too afraid of endless requirements and pressure correlating to doing so. My goal is to enable those individuals to try it nonetheless by debunking some of the common myths relating to the fundamentals for becoming a presenter. I base this on my own experience as a seasoned speaker and event curator.

Industry prominence and visibility #

Conferences vastly differ in the way speakers are selected. Some directly invite presenters, others deploy anonymous Call for Speakers processes to aid with bias. It’s up to the organizers to choose whatever suits their event best.

What I find inexcusable though is creating exclusionary platforms with spots reserved for only Fortune 500 companies employees with a high number of Twitter followers or other vain, arbitrary metrics. Now, I get it. Events have to make money, and it’s easier to do so with a recognizable lineup. Often those prominent individuals worked very hard to achieve their status, and there’s nothing wrong with that!

What’s important to remember though is that there are so many other voices out there worth hearing — we need to empower and elevate them. There are no “fame” prerequisites to becoming a speaker. Social acceptance and “cred” aren’t by any means an extension of your value or your ideas.

Get out there and start speaking. You deserve this.

Subject matter expertise #

Over and over I’ve heard potential speakers admit they don’t have enough knowledge to deliver a talk on a given subject. For a long time that was true for me as well. While I did burn myself trying to speak on concepts I didn’t fully understand, I firmly believe senior expertise isn’t always required.

Each one of us is unique, which means we often have entirely different personal and professional experiences. While most can develop a technical specification or a design concept into a talk, it’s your individual view and takes on the idea what makes it novel and worth hearing. Often it’s easy to disregard our observations and ideas as obvious to later learn they aren’t that apparent to others.

Don’t set incredibly high knowledge aspirations for yourself — research the subject and offer your interpretation, solutions, and thinking. You’ll be surprised to learn it has been tremendously helpful for others (this applies to writing as well).

Previous speaking experience #

Naturally, the more presentations we deliver, the better we get. Over time, we will learn from our mistakes and slowly start controlling stage fright (spoiler: it never really goes away, but we can mitigate some of the symptoms). Our skills will improve significantly with practice.

We all have to start somewhere though. There always will be a first time. I’ve seen dozens of talks by first timers that were by far more rehearsed, prepared, hilarious and informative than some of the “veterans” of the tech industry, who might take their experience for granted.

Just because you have never delivered a talk, it doesn’t mean your ideas aren’t worth presenting, or you aren’t capable of executing it flawlessly. Believe in yourself — you got it!

Even if your first talk doesn’t go as planned, there’s always room and time for improvement and trying again (trust me, some of my first talks were horrible, but I kept gathering feedback and doing it again).

Hopefully, these three points give you a little more confidence in experimenting with public speaking. Consider starting small; with local meetups and user groups. Find welcoming conferences willing to coach you and aid in developing your talk. There are plenty out there.

Good luck!

Women will never advance doing community work

2017-08-15T00:00:00Z

This article is inspired by my own experience and an insightful conversation with two lovely women — Susan Wu and Sarah Moran.

I’ve been in the industry for roughly ten years (you can read about it in detail here). I’ve recently fully realised why my career isn’t where I want it to be.

For the last five years, I’ve been heavily involved in community work; from meetups, workshops to established conferences with a thousand attendees. It was a great journey — I’ve utilised my communications, design, development, management skills as well as learnt obscure facts about AV, accounting, hospitality industry and so on. I’ve met a lot of people from all over the globe, and I’ve witnessed the effect my dedication to the community had on them. I’m grateful for that experience and proud of the work I’ve done.

It did consume almost every minute outside of my full-time job. Not entirely consciously, I opted out of progressing my technical skills and working on side projects that were slowly stalling in a never ending backlog. I poured the remains of my energy into the community. Last event I’ve ran left me on the verge of a breakdown (and it was our most successful conference to date). I’m not a founder (but could have been) nor a design leader at a Fortune 500 company (or whatever else success looks like these days), but I possibly could have been if I played my cards differently.

Now, that leads me to an observation that now seems obvious, but my judgement was clouded enough not to be able to see it.

We can’t have more women, people of colour, people with disabilities and other underrepresented groups in engineering, design and leadership if they’re all busy doing community work.

Not only are they fighting oppression on a daily basis but also actively trying to build platforms for safe expression and learning more than anyone else. Knowing the pain of being marginalised makes it an obvious choice to do so. Standing up for others and working tirelessly towards a better future is at the roots of activism. But this activism that we’re in dire need of is also the reason why we’re not progressing our careers.

Community initiatives are crucial. We shouldn’t stop organising, but we ought to carefully analyse what impact this work has both on the community and ourselves. There’s a right time to dedicate yourself and the right time to step away. We can’t feel guilty about making that choice.

We need more men stepping up and taking up the gauntlet of exhausting emotional labour; drawing from exemplary initiatives create new spaces for us to gather–workshops, meetups, incubators, funds, conferences or whatever form it might take. We still lack strong allyship and advocacy.

What’s even more necessary though is women and other underrepresented groups realising the impact community work has on their jobs. Lack of role models has been proven to be one of the biggest barriers preventing women from entering and staying within the tech industry. It won’t get any better if a significant amount of senior female leaders are busy organising instead of advancing in their profession. A balance between on-boarding underrepresented individuals into the industry and retaining them has to be struck.

Let’s reclaim our time.

“Reclaiming my time” was originally coined by Maxine Waters.

Conferences I won’t be speaking at

2017-07-28T00:00:00Z

I don’t take speaking at conferences lightly. Firstly, it comes with a significant time commitment — on average it takes me over 90 hours to complete a talk (including transcript, slides and rehearsal). I allocate evenings and weekends to do so, sacrificing downtime. The goal is to deliver a high-quality presentation, not only packed with actionable information but also presented in an accessible and transparent manner. Quality isn’t something I will forfeit, so if I don’t have time, I won’t decide to give a talk in the first place.

Secondly, I strongly feel that standing up on a podium comes with a lot of responsibility. It’s incredibly easy to spread misconceptions and misleading data. Often, speakers are put on a pedestal and treated as the single source of truth, which makes me quite wary of what I say on stage.

I don’t sign up to the hero worship. I’m here to pass on knowledge and challenge the status quo.

The latter contributes heavily to which events I choose to participate in (both as a speaker and attendee). As a seasoned speaker and organiser, I hold myself and others accountable for progressing the tech community. I refuse to participate in white male dominated, exclusionary culture. I challenge you to do the same if you haven’t yet (especially if you are a part of the leading demographic).

Next time you’re considering attending or speaking at a conference, please consider the following prerequisites for saying “yes”.

Enforceable Code of Conduct #

At this point, most of the events have caught up with the fact that Code of Conduct is a must have, no matter if they understand its importance or not. Code of Conduct adoption is simultaneously a great and a horrible thing. In the second scenario, it can become a dangerous safety false positive for underrepresented groups when not planned for acting on.

What I’m looking for: a prominent display (primary navigation and sections) of Code of Conduct in both Web and print (and by noticeable I don’t mean hidden deep inside a FAQ section or f*ck-knows-where). Contact details for organisers, enforcement and reporting guidelines are a must. Important contact numbers (such as police, medical emergency, etc.) should be listed as well. I can see straight through events that haven’t thought about it deeply at all if they cross-link to Conference Code of Conduct↗ or copy-paste and call it done.

Diverse lineup of speakers #

Now, often diversity is interpreted as a binary decision between two gender identities (male and female). Let me point out that’s a sweeping generalisation —diversity and inclusion are much more complicated than this. They compromise of ethnicity, gender, age, national origin, disabilities, sexual orientation amongst many others. Sadly, at this moment it’s wishful thinking to see genuine diversity and equal representation in conference line-ups.

What I’m looking for: at least 40% of speakers have to be women speaking on the subject of their expertise instead of being invited to present for the sake of adjusting the conference quotas. I want to see people of colour too. In an ideal scenario, I’d like to see as many gender identities, ethnical backgrounds, ages and races as possible.

Diversity scholarships #

Commitment to inclusion rarely manifests itself through Code of Conduct alone. It’s only a starting point for a bigger strategy↗. A big part of it is onboarding as many members of underrepresented groups as possible to challenge widely disproportionate demographics in the industry. One of the ways of doing so are free and subsidised passes.

What I’m looking for: a scholarship program with free tickets given out to individuals from underrepresented groups, who couldn’t attend otherwise.

No bad actors #

There are no lists of known abusers despite public accounts of harassment in the venture capital and startup communities which often don’t apply to the conference circle. It’s insider knowledge of whisper networks and for many reasons, rightly so. It’s a difficult situation to be in as an organiser trying to validate lineup choices, but not an impossible one — reach far and wide to trusted, fellow curators for their perspective and listen out for reports from other invitees to your event.

What I’m looking for: organisers pro-actively ensuring not only the speakers but also masters of ceremony weren’t involved in Code of Conduct violation incidents in the past. If I notice someone I’ve heard about or witnessed abuse from first-hand, I cannot partake in this event.

This list is nowhere near exhaustive. It’s a small collection of, to me, obvious guideposts for speaking and event attendance. I strongly urge you to adopt your these (and your own) standards that will enable fostering a more inclusive industry. The more we say “no” to the status quo, the more change we will see.

Story of a woman in the tech industry

2017-06-29T00:00:00Z

⚠️ Trigger warning: the narrative includes mentions of harassment and depiction or discussion of discriminatory attitudes or actions. If at any point you feel uncomfortable with the content, please stop reading and take care of yourself ❤️

I’m a CIS, white woman almost in her thirties, born in Eastern Europe. I’ve been lucky to receive all levels of education including university alongside a high-quality English course (I probably wouldn’t be writing this otherwise as English is not my primary language and public education leaves a lot to wish for). Objectively speaking life has been quite easy. I acknowledge my privilege. Still, I’m a member of an underrepresented group in the technology industry.

I’ve been in tech for over 12 years. I’ve started small in junior, but hands-on, multidisciplinary roles. I wasn’t sure why male co-workers sometimes asked to make them coffee or tend to various office duties that obviously weren’t my job. I’ve assumed it’s better to make friends than enemies. Casually, a sexist remark would fly my way. I shrugged at the worrisome status quo. I didn’t know any better what to do about it anyway.

Years went by, and I significantly levelled up my expertise. I’ve started periodically publishing articles on high-traffic tech websites. I contributed to a few Open Source projects with either code or design mentorship. I’ve spoken at many conferences. Heck, I’ve co-organised 12 high-quality events, bringing thousands of people together. I worked very hard.

Despite the efforts, my career progression was nowhere near I wanted it to be (or a white male equivalent of myself would end up being). I moved through jobs with a relatively fast turnover — one or two years on average, usually refusing to accept complete inability to get a raise or level up despite flawless performance reviews from peers and managers. I’ve consistently seen white men being offered promotions, I should have gotten. I’ve been passed on roles while not being offered a fair chance to apply because a hiring guy who didn’t know me at all condescendingly felt like I had to spend time “doing some research” on the field of my expertise (and a role I’ve held and succeeded at in the past). I was forced to prove myself on a daily basis to a much higher degree than my male counterparts.

In worse cases I was escaping harassment .The latter resulted in thousands spent on therapy. It still haunts me to this day. As much as I feel a strong urge to write about it in detail not only as a warning to fellow women but also another eye-opener to those who believe supervisors or peers cannot be capable of abuse I’m horrified of the possible repercussions it would have on my career.

I’m afraid of abusers publicly shaming, turning it against me and winning. Like many other stories of women, this one will have to stay untold.

With experience, my awareness of inequality, bias, sexism and unfairness has risen significantly. As my community and industry reach progressed, I couldn’t stay silent and passive. I started openly speaking up about those issues. Challenging companies, conferences and individuals to do better and live by their words and supposed beliefs.

That’s when I first time encountered public and private harassment from strangers. Tweets and emails citing I was a stupid bitch, wishful harm and death threats became the norm every time I questioned the status quo. Sadly, it became a given in activism.

So far I had one long-term job that I felt completely safe, valued, supported, rewarded and challenged. One job. My friends from &yet, a small consultancy in Washington State, United States will continue to be a standard I hold against others. I’m yet to find a match. I find it worrisome that a little organisation without a massive budget cared so much more than tech giants. In some ways, it made me somewhat sceptical about companies vocal about their values. I just couldn’t see anyone living up to them.

In my career my opinions were suddenly invalid compared to sometimes inexperienced men, whose expertise seemed more valuable to managers. I’ve been tone policed. I’ve been told to “chill out”. Over and over I was undermined through micro-aggressions and direct unfairness, sexism and stereotyping. Fellow women whispered their similar stories to me explicitly saying they’re afraid of saying it in public.

Multiple times I anonymously advocated for them. I’ve tried to fight their fights with my influence. I persisted through quiet, behind the scenes battles for inclusive events through banning harassers, abusive behaviour and acting on Code of Conduct violations. Conferences that I wasn’t even a part of but they needed help in addressing these concerns, and I couldn’t say no to creating a better community for all of us. The amount of emotional, non-paid labour slowly begun to reach its peak. I’ve paid the price for feminism and activism multiple times. I’ve paid in tears, stress, therapy bills, neglecting personal projects, not advancing my career and negatively affecting my personal life. I had to do it for myself and others out there.

Women hold only 25% of tech jobs, whereas a staggeringly low 1% and 3% constitute for Latinas and Black women. Even fewer are found in software engineering or technical leadership. (Women in Tech: The Facts)

Women are fleeing the tech industry where unfairness seems to be far more pronounced than elsewhere. Where sexual harassment and unwanted attention often goes unreported, let alone faces repercussions. While Diversity and Inclusion initiatives appear to be on the rise, sometimes they end up being a PR and marketing stint rather than anything else. So many still fail to acknowledge and believe the surfacing stories of women.

This isn’t a tabloid-controversial story. I kept it general to protect myself but still paint a fairly comprehensive picture of what a woman can face in the tech industry. There are more accounts of women out there. If you’re not a member of an underrepresented group, I strongly urge you to seek them out, read them and ask yourself why is this happening and how you can be a better ally. Because no matter your reach, you can have a positive impact. Believe the stories.

Your tech job posting is broken

2017-05-13T00:00:00Z

Over a year ago I wrote on the subject of empathetic hiring and how we’re still failing to make it efficient, respectful and inclusive. Changing employers can be frequent in the rapidly growing tech industry, and it’s reasonably easy to hear fellow developers opinions about what went well and not so great:

Overall, I found the process to be dehumanising, stressful, chaotic, inaccurate, opaque.

There are innumerable amounts of tech job postings. A good deal of them are gendered to favour male candidates, full of meaningless buzzwords and failing to picture what the job actually requires, let alone mentioning what you’ll get in return. We need to fix this.

It’s a complex undertaking, incredibly hard to get right, let alone offer generic advice on. Nonetheless, I’d like to gather my personal experiences from both sides of the process, hopefully empowering you to improve.

Use inclusive language #

Sadly, it’s still fairly frequent to see “ninjas”, “gurus”, “rockstars”, “unicorns” (often derogatory to bisexual individuals) or “gangsters” (yes, gangsters, believe it or not) being sought after.

Hero-worshipping and harmful clichés not only fail to describe the person you’re looking for but also do a marvellous job on excluding candidates, especially from underrepresented groups.

Same does gendered language. In 2015, 49.55% of the world population were women↗, which hardly justifies sweeping “he” generalisations we’re used to seeing.

Fortunately, there are tools helping to ensure inclusive, non-gendered language—Joblint↗, an Open Source project by Rowan Manning↗ validates against an editable list of rules. Alternatively, Textio↗ offers a collaborative environment for writing effective job listings. These services can’t guarantee perfection but certainly, will bring benefits to the table.

Include timezones if hiring remotely #

Remote work is still on the rise, which I wrote about in length in Building Remote-First Teams. Unfortunately, there’s an important distinction to be drawn between fully remote and so-called ‘remote-friendly’ jobs.

A significant amount of organisations advertise as remote, but in reality, hire only within the United States. It’s understandable to have timezone requirements, especially for roles that have direct reports, but the lack of clarity is inexcusable.

Here’s a good example of transparency from Helpscout:

Work from our office in Boston or anywhere else, provided you have 4 hours of overlap with the team.

If synchronous overlap is necessary ensure this information makes it into the job ad. Not hiring remotely at all? Call it out too.

What’s a crucial requirement to many members of underrepresented groups still hardly makes it to career pages.

As a woman, I cannot imagine joining a company without understanding who I’d be working with and whether there’s a quantifiable commitment to inclusion and diversity.

I’ve heard the same opinions from many fellow women in tech as well. A recent Kapor Center report, “Tech Leavers”↗, highlights:

78% of employees reported experiencing some form of unfair behaviour or treatment; Women from all backgrounds experienced/observed significantly more unfairness than men and unfairness was more pronounced in tech companies than non-tech companies.

Fortunately one of the other key findings is that Diversity and Inclusion initiatives can improve culture and reduce turnover if done right.

The report on its own is a great resource, especially for those who still don’t quite understand why diversity is a huge problem in the tech industry and has to be challenged. Alternatively, Project Include↗ has published extensive articles from defining culture, progress tracking to conflict resolution and leadership. Last, but not least, follow the example of other organisations, such as Slack and their diversity report↗ or Buffer and their transparency page↗. Ideally, the reports should include employee retention data, which is by far more indicative of inclusion and culture rather than headcounts.

Additionally, when discussing team structure remember to avoid tokenism. One member of an underrepresented group cannot be used as leverage, nor makes a team diverse.

Consider removing the experience level #

As a big fan of empowerment, I strongly believe people are capable of rapidly growing into more senior roles if they get a chance to. While some jobs are senior by nature (C-level, tech or design leadership, etc.), requiring significant expertise others could easily skip naming experience levels, encouraging more diverse candidate pool, who wouldn’t feel confident to apply otherwise.

Next time experiment with looking for “Front-end Developer” or “Designer” rather than “Senior UX Guru” and see how it affects the results. Note that this strategy might not work that well for candidates specifically looking for an introductory job in the tech industry. In that case keeping the “Junior” and emphasising learning environment and mentoring might be more beneficial.

Outline the interview process #

It’s virtually impossible to guess how much time interviewing with a company could take. I’ve been spending three months on average to find a reasonable place to work at. This isn’t uncommon — see Jeff Kolesky’s Thirteen thousand, four hundred, fifty-five minutes of talking to get one job↗ for more detailed insights.

Outline how many interviews have to be conducted, whether there’s a need for an assignment or a reference check. Have a peek at DuckDuckGo’s hiring process↗ to get the ideas going.

Don’t forget to mention how fast one can expect an answer. Nobody enjoys frantically refreshing their email.

Reveal the salary range #

It’s baffling that including salary ranges in job postings doesn’t seem to be a baseline requirement yet. Leaving conversations about money to final stages of the interview process raises red flags and sets up for disappointment.

In most cases, budgets have been set well before the interview phase commencement. While there’s always some wiggle room, those numbers are known to HR departments, who’s responsibility should be to communicate it outwards to the applicants. Hiding wages is especially damaging for underrepresented groups, who are frequently discriminated against↗ and don’t negotiate as fiercely as their white male counterparts.

Gender and ethnicity pay gap isn’t a myth, it’s a fact.

Don’t perpetuate the status quo and enable equal opportunity by sharing wage brackets.

Name the employee benefits #

Most organisations excel at listing countless must-haves for candidates, but forget that hiring is a two-way street — building a mutual, successful relationship, beneficial for both sides.

Be as dedicated to highlighting the perks as you are to checking the boxes on the dream candidate.

Different individuals have varying requirements for their future gig—from generous annual and family leave policies, medical care to a conference and learning budgets. Make it easy for them to decide whether applying for your job is worth their time. Disclose as much information as possible.

Describe a day on the job #

Writing down an endless list of tools or frameworks applicants are supposed to know doesn’t tell them much about how a regular day could look. Consider describing the range of tasks, duties and specific areas to be worked on. Is it common to lose a day or two to meetings? Throw that in as well.

For example, Basecamp discloses recent Ops team backlog↗, which they’re hiring for, painting a good picture of possible day-to-day tasks.

Quite a few great companies misrepresent themselves by failing to describe how the employee-employer relationship looks. Take an opportunity to explain how people will grow, and how you’re going to help them get there.

All of the above tips are actionable and reasonably easy to implement. But don’t forget that doing so without dedication and commitment to diversity, inclusion, respect and a fair-go you’ll end up with a vast difference between what you write and putting your mouth where the money is. The candidates can see straight through dishonesty and lack of values.

Honesty and radical candour↗ won’t hurt your company, they’ll likely save thousands of mismatched hires and a lot of disappointment.

Good luck!

How to write a successful conference proposal

2017-02-01T00:00:00Z

There are probably thousands of tech-oriented events being ran each day. From casual meetups to full-blown, multiple-day conferences with large budgets. A significant amount of them sources their speakers through an often anonymous, Call for Proposals process.

Thanks to platforms like Lanyrd, Call to Speakers or Callback Women it has become fairly easy to browse through potential speaking opportunities, but the materials advising on writing proposals or preparing a great presentation are still fairly sparse.

I was lucky enough to experience being both a curator and a reviewee. Drawing on my involvement with such events as JSConf.eu, JSConf.AU and RealtimeConf as well as over 20 speaking engagements I would like to share a few practical tips that hopefully will land your next conference speaking slot.

Always follow outlined Call for Speakers rules #

This might seem too obvious to state but you’d be surprised to learn that at least 30% of ~2,500 proposals I’ve ever read violated the predefined rules for talk abstracts and submissions that have been set. I tend to think that some of the more experienced speakers simply skip the guidelines and copy-paste proposals for many different events but the only thing this leads to is the proposal landing straight in the “rejected” pile.

There are hard requirements and more forgiving guidelines, but no matter how adept in speaking you are do read the instructions carefully before submitting and ensure the proposal is following them.

A great example is the following instruction from CSSConf.eu↗:

If you need more than two paragraphs to get to the point of your proposal, we ask you to slim things down.

Alternatively conferences may ask for not disclosing names, employers or gender in the proposal itself amongst many other factors. Make certain you’ve understood what you’re being asked for.

Steer clear of sloppy formatting #

When writing copy we frequently check for spelling and grammar mistakes, especially when launching product campaigns or applying for jobs. Conferences are no different in that regard. Typos, errors and general laziness are easy to spot and reflect negatively on submissions.

Take time to spellcheck the abstracts. If English isn’t your first language (it’s not for me!) ask a native speaker to help you out.

Ask friends to proof-read #

No matter if you’re certain of the talk abstract quality or not it’s often invaluable to ask a few colleagues to proof-read not only for errors but also confusing statements (your spellcheck won’t catch that one, my friend). There’s nothing better than a set of fresh eyes, especially after butchering a proposal all night (we’ve all been there).

Be succinct #

Many language exams set a minimum and maximum limits on their writing sections. Care to guess why? Imagine going through hundreds of papers if every participant decided to go well over the threshold. Skill and knowledge don’t require extraordinary lengths of text.

Most of JSConfs receive an average of 500 proposals, assuming a very strict 1-minute reading time per submission it’s still a full workday of reading. Each potential candidate deserves a thorough read and understanding of their pitch before rating, which is hard to achieve taking into account the volume and too wordy applications.

A good rule of thumb is two to three paragraphs clearly expressing your idea.

Use inclusive language and avoid shaming #

While it entirely depends on the curators, I strongly believe inclusion and the way we choose to express ourselves in both writing and spoken language are something to pay close attention to.

Unfortunately, it’s fairly common to see ableisms and shaming in talk submissions. To clarify what that means I’d like to quote “Disabling Ableist Language↗” post by Andy Hollandbeck:

Ableist language is any word or phrase that devalues people who have physical or mental disabilities. Its appearance often stems not from any intentional desire to offend, but from our innate sense of what it means to be normal. When we use words like lame, crazy, insane, schizo, dumb, psycho, and spazzed without thinking, we silently imply — and readers infer — that mental and physical disorders are avoidable personal failings and not medical conditions out of a person’s control.

“How to stay sane as a developer”, “crazy hack” or “a dumb framework” are just a few examples I’ve seen around. As an organiser we always want to ensure safe, welcoming space for everyone and while oftentimes these mistakes happen fairly unconsciously it’s easy to educate yourself and avoid exclusionary, hurtful phrases. Shaming competitors, tools or individuals won’t get you far either.

It’s worth going through a Glossary of Ableist Phrases↗ to cross-check your writing (and probably learn something in the meantime).

Stay away from product pitches #

Most of events specifically state product pitches or any forms of upselling are strictly disallowed. However, it’s important to note the difference between a pure marketing talk (essentially trying to sell your business to the attendees) from an interesting case study that happens to consider the product you’ve helped to build.

The latter involves lessons learned that could be universally applied in solving problems the audience is experiencing in their day-to-day work. A product pitch doesn’t offer solutions, but focuses on highlighting the advertised product. Think of it as a 30–60 minute ad. Don’t be a salesperson (at least directly).

Show, don’t tell #

“Show, don’t tell” is a well-known technique equally applied in fiction and non-fiction writing. Why is this relevant, you might ask? A few successful proposals implement it flawlessly.

Instead of simply stating opinions or facts (e.g. “React is the most popular JavaScript library”) as well as revealing all of your cards instantaneously, tell a story. Create a scene that can be visualised, especially from an attendee point of view. Is there a theme? What will I learn? Focus on take-ways and leave out some unknowns, that organisers will want to see clarified.

Use your creativity and be original #

At tech conferences it’s easy to see framework or library-oriented presentations. While some curators see that as a benefit, I personally find it almost detrimental, with a few exceptions. Unless you’ve actually created the library you’re talking about and are able to offer first-hand insights that can’t be found in online documentation and blog posts I don’t see it offering much value to the attendees.

It’s fairly easy for anyone to step in, read available materials and prepare a mediocre presentation. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done it too, which now makes me able to see why we can do better. Trust me, we’ve all seen the Angular 2 talks already. Don’t copy your predecessors. Interesting angle on React Native? Experimental usage of Rails to build a realtime app? Your own personal experiences and unexpected solutions? Yes please.

Submit more than one proposal #

No matter how confident you are, never bet the farm on one idea—brainstorm and prepare several talks. No proposal is too experimental or not advanced enough to pass. It takes no mathematician to calculate your odds rising with the number of proposals submitted.

Be wary of remixing the same topic though; each one should have different talking points, angles or possible learnings for the audience to be considered as a possible winner.

Hopefully these few tips will get your proposal over the line. Happy writing!

Here are a few more excellent resources that you might want to consider reading:

How to write a conference proposal↗ by Mike Moore
What your conference proposal is missing↗ by Sarah Mei
How to write a compelling talk proposal↗ by We Are All Awesome
Is your conference proposal good enough?↗ by Raquel Vélez

Designing actionable emails

2016-08-09T00:00:00Z

Receiving beautiful, functional emails from companies and services that we we use is hard to come by. We reviewed emails from our favourite products to see how their transactional emails looked, we were often surprised and disappointed by what we saw.

There’s a discrepancy between stellar marketing sites (or interface design) and crucial communication mediums. What’s being forgotten is that the latter is a core part of product design that should be treated with equal importance (after all, this is how you talk to your users!).

After successfully gathering a list of examples worth following (hello Trello, Slack and Stripe, just to name a few!) we’ve decided to set some key improvement areas we’d focus on for Calibre email redesign:

brevity
clarity
connection
context

Here’s a few important details that we think make for really great emails from your app to customers.

Make it short #

It’s tempting to make use of a medium that doesn’t have character count on it. Sneak in a reminder on what the product is. Embed a tweet. Quote a blog post. Unfortunately, especially in the realm of the tech industry, we get a lot of email and we’re not particularly great at dealing with it.

At Calibre we want emails to be short and sweet. It shouldn’t take more than 2–3 minutes to skim over the content, which is why many of transactional communications are two liners.

Make one, distinct call to action #

As an extension to the previous principle we believe each transactional email should offer a single call to action. With less distractions you might observe more conversions.

The action you specify should be relevant to both your business and customer goals.

Make it contextual #

Context is a very powerful concept especially in the world of design. With the right amount of information we can make well-founded decisions. In the world of product email communications we encounter several types of recipients:

Newsletter subscribers (might or might not be users)
Trial users
Invitees (yet to have an account)
Paying customers with accounts

Each of these groups expect (or don’t!) a certain number of mail notifications. To avoid surprises and reassure the relationship with the product we diversify our footnotes.

By offering enough context to why someone’s receiving an email as well as prominent notification opt-out we extend respect towards users’ time and privacy.

Make it personal, but don’t fake it #

Most of us have probably received drip email from the founder of a product we use semi-frequently at least once. We believe that it’s obvious that the CEO of a prolific company probably didn’t hand-write a note to each Jane or John Doe from their user base, and our technical audience feels the same.

While personalisation and maintaining a healthy level of real human interaction is an admirable goal it becomes impossible at certain scale. At Calibre we believe customer communication should be genuine and direct, which is why we implement the following strategies:

Automated emails are personalised with customer data (i.e. names)
Provide direct, friendly and helpful personal customer support outside of transactional emails

These little touches create a more than superficial bond with your customers and are worth investing your time in. Further Resources

Good Copy↗ — Email copy from great companies.
Great Email Copy↗—A dose of well-crafted emails from around the web.
Email Toolbox—Hand↗-picked resources for email marketers and designers.

Calibre is for teams who want to monitor, alert and improve the performance and user-experience of websites and applications. Sign up today↗!

Building remote-first teams

2016-05-03T00:00:00Z

What does remote mean? #

There’s a lot of misconception about the meaning of remote. Two of the key identifiers are being juggled around—asynchronicity and distribution. Neither of them alone describe the complexity of fully flexible work. Co-workers can be effectively asynchronous while sitting in the same office—when working on multiple projects or taking extended amount of time to reply to messages. Lack of synchronicity is part of every workday. Another factor is distribution—the ability to work from wherever in the world. There are many flavours of remote, most still limiting the exposure to extensive timezone differences. At its core, remote embraces worldwide spread workforce that can effectively collaborate even without working hours overlap.

Some, especially bigger organisations, don’t realise they’re already doing remote. From outsourcing to specialists to daily communication happening without face-to-face interaction at all—a plethora of emails, messages and discussions conducted online. Oftentimes the amount of actual in-person work boils down to a minimum.

Excuses about remoteness #

Countless excuses can be made to disfavour remote work, and truth be told there are definitely scenarios and industries in which it couldn’t be effective and plausible. Let’s have a look at why, in the tech world, most of them can go straight to the trashcan.

Innovation has to be centralised #

It’s easy to assume that valuable ideas can only spark when a group of people is sitting in one room. Nothing more wrong—innovation can’t be forced; locking individuals in doesn’t foster creativity. Ideas can appear at any time, so we have to be ready to act on them wherever and whenever they come from. The overhead of meetings nowadays is well known, thus all-hands should be extremely intentional and reasonably timed.

Work won’t get done #

Probably most common misbelief strictly correlates to lack of trust in employees. The opinion that allowing your peers the freedom of remote work will directly lead to slacking and no work being done is toxic.

Speaking of a flavour of slacking, namely, distractions, we can’t avoid that either. No matter home or headquarters office environment they will be present, and it’s not a bad thing. Humans performing intensive intellectual work simply cannot stay full focused for extended amount of time. We need rest and headspace.

I can’t get this ASAP #

There are very few things that require instaneous reply or attention, such as a service being down or a major security flaw. Most of the questions, doubts or bugs can be resolved at later notice. We are an attention hungry generation, but it’s disrespectful to assume that anyone we ping will immediately drop whatever they’re involved in. With multilayered communication we can choose an appropriate medium for the severity and urgency of the message where about to convey. We need to value each others time and attention.

The recurring inability to access information due to working asynchronously requires a mindset of being able to re-prioritise and pick up tasks when others are blocked. Remote workers are doers and know how to maintain productivity.

There are many more myths and concerns about remoteness that we could elaborate on, most of them are based upon the lack of control and oversight over employees and misunderstanding of remote.

Transitioning into a remote-first organisation #

As any major organisational changes adapting a remote way of working probably shouldn’t happen overnight. Depending on the size of a company there’s a sizeable amount of planning surrounding a full remote transition.

While it’s a decision at a leadership level, it’s important for all employees to understand the change, its benefits and potential downsides. Take time creating a plan for remote implementation, describe when it’s going to take an effect and distribute it.

It’s not necessary to go from zero to hero, from no remoteness to full flexibility. Start with a day or half a week and slowly progress towards no office time required at all. That transition time will be a test to processes and communication skills that your employees wield.

Focus on ensuring meetings can be conducted online or watched asynchronously. Don’t introduce more micromanagement or communication tools; they’ll only create more confusion and overhead. Stick to what already works. And most importantly—hire people who have expertise in working remotely as they will be an invaluable resource of knowledge and shepherds of remote culture.

Remote hiring and on-boarding #

Remote work has grown exponentially popular in last couple years and a lot of people are trying to grab the opportunity of untamed freedom. Not everyone’s cut out for it though.

As in hiring in general the main challenge is finding the right fit, which in remote scenario becomes even more complicated. Spending time on adjustments and research will result in improved process for all candidates, not only remote.

Write a damn good job description #

Hiring cannot start before defining clear expectations of a role and writing a compelling, descriptive ad, which I elaborated on a little bit in A guide to empathetic hiring processes. The job posting should be clear, concise and ideally picture how day-to-day work would look like. What we want to convey is both company culture and the way of working. An important thing to remember about is timezone legibility, especially when for some organisations a difference of 6 hours+ becomes unmanageable. If that’s a case, ensure adding maximum difference that will work for your team.

Search outside of your circles #

It’s a common hiring strategy to pass the word about a new opportunity internally, promote at meetups, conferences and local user groups. To hire worldwide you have to think globally though. That includes putting the ads on remote job boards, spreading the word in communities you wouldn’t normally reach out to and positioning yourself as a remote-oriented company. The latter can be achieved through publishing materials and being vocal about flexible policies. In this case, it’s essential to put your money where your mouth is.

Define character traits #

Hiring great remote employees requires defining character traits of such. I’d dare coining the remote worker trifecta with: initiative, excellent communication and trustworthiness.

While working remotely sometimes you might have nothing to do. Initiative means that in these situations you’ll find yourself something to work on, no matter if program or non-program. Initiative bases upon a strive for productivity, being self-driven and requiring the least amount of managerial overhead.

Excellent communication is a requirement in virtually all job postings. As a pillar for remote work watch out for red flags such as exclusionary language, lack of clarity and cohesiveness in writing. The team has to communicate effectively and efficiently as well as convey the human, casual aspect of working together (emojis!).

Trust always has to bidirectional. Remote or not, you have to trust your employees that they will get the job done, especially when you’re not looking, the same as they have to believe you’ll do right by them.

Design a process #

Hiring process is something teams consciously design. For remote candidates, it’s crucial to give an opportunity to meet and talk to potential team members. Schedule calls, and when feasible face-to-face time to answer any questions about workflow and culture, as that’s what enables building long-lived teams. Again, look out for communication red-flags in the meantime.

Conduct a test task, especially for technical positions, but be wary of creating a project that has nothing to do with the actual work the candidate would be doing. No one likes working in a vacuum and it doesn’t attest for how well a person would fit in the team. Last but not least—value their time and pay for assignments that take more than 5 hours (in reality, most of them do).

Match perks with on-site employees #

Too many remote jobs work on the premise of a contract, due to legal and taxation gimmicks. That nature of employment becomes a well known tradeoff in some cases, but can be mitigated with the right approach. Employees working full time, but not legally hired as such often lack in perks, annual or sick leave among others.

While an organisation might not be able to offer a mobile carrier plan or private healthcare in a given country, it surely can offer a monetary benefit on top of a salary to be used for such purposes. Oftentimes remote workers can be treated as cheap labour, receiving salary at below market rates because of their origin, as well as not being offered any benefits. Make sure to ensure equality for worldwide staff members in all aspects of employment. For inspiration on matching salary based on location head to Buffer’s calculator.

Write killer docs #

Sadly, not everyone can bring an employee in for in-person on-boarding. Effective on-boarding, especially in bigger organisations, usually requires some synchronous meeting time to handle information overload that the candidate is facing. It’s beneficial to pair them with a wingman to be the guide in this somewhat intimidating adventure of a freshman.

What can be done effectively and used asynchronously though is documentation. Centralise useful resources and make them easily findable and searchable. Keep everything up-to-date, as following up asynchronously on outdated information is frustrating and a waste of time. Everything that caused confusion or a blocker has a well-deserved place in docs.

Last, but not least, follow up on the entire experience and implement adjustments wherever necessary.

Remote collaboration through better tooling #

Let’s be honest here; remote is a possibility because of the rapid progression of technology that we’re experiencing within the last decade. A foundation for an effective remote organisation is appropriate process, tooling and culture. And we have a lot of tools available at our hands.

Communication #

Communication is the pillar of remote work. I can’t emphasise the importance of clear, honest and concise way of expressing yourself in both written and spoken form. While the Web might make communication more realtime, it definitely doesn’t mitigate misunderstandings. For remote team it’s crucial to be effective and emphatic in the way they talk to each other.

On the technical side there are quite a few options to make it easier. For regular standups or 1-on-1—Whereby. For all day chatter—Slack (but beware of too much noise and too many channels!). Remote pairing? Screehero. Company wide discussions and announcements—recordings and transcriptions for offline access for those who weren’t present. Email updates with important organisational changes or concerns come handy too. And let’s not forget in-person company getaways.

Progress tracking and project management #

There’s a handful wonderfully executed project management tools out there, such as Linear or Asana. Depending on the size of the team and complexity of each project they’ll bring transparency to where everyone is at with their tasks.

In the world of remote identifying blockers and having enough context to achieve your goals is to for shipping.

Security #

Security is a critical concern, fortunately, there’s a fair bit of tooling catering to distributed teams. 1password, Lockify and GPG signature verification on Github are a few strategies that should be incorporated in your workflow, remote or not.

Securely sharing secrets and access to sensible log ins is another layer of information necessary to get the job done.

To avoid data lock-in make sure to use one of the distributed file sharing platforms such as Google Drive or Dropbox. Don’t forget about accessible HR docs and policies either (Github-hosted docs and Wikis anyone?)

Design and code reviews #

Peer review is an important aspect of both collaboration and building quality software. For code; Github, for design; Figma, provide excellent platforms for both version control as well as rounds of feedback and discussion.

It’s only a tip of an iceberg of available tooling. Remember to choose wisely and try not to overcompensate the lack of face-to-face contact with the overhead of SaaS services. Only introduce tools that keep your team closer and on the same page.

Advantages of working remotely #

Flexibility in choosing a place to live #

Historically many jobs required relocation and future employees more or less willingly left their current homes to establish a new life wherever new opportunity was located in. Working remotely offers a unique opportunity to move wherever you ever dreamt of living without losing a job. Many are facing a choice between family or partners and work, and that alternative can be made completely obsolete. The pliability of remote strengthened the notions of nomadism—seeing and experiencing places one might never had a chance to see otherwise. Overall it leads to more happiness and diverse cultural experiences, which are beneficial to work as well.

Ability to fully govern and enjoy life #

Choosing a place to live is only one aspect of flexibility that remote work brings in. What it boils down to is full governance of your schedule, allowing for better managing sleep patterns, cooking, sport activities, more time with your children and more. Some errands require taking leave unnecessarily as now they can be easily incorporated into new working routine. There’s endless opportunity for a healthy lifestyle and being a more present parent. Remote work enhances inclusion by letting employees take care of their mental and physical health.

Enhanced productivity #

It doesn’t take an introvert to be constantly distracted with open plan offices. While workplaces are supposed to bring teams together quickly they can become a giant water cooler talk room where in order to get anything done we enter a world of noise cancelling headphones at all times. Because everyone’s at your fingertips it’s tempting to over communicate. As research shows, it takes 23 minutes on average to recover from an interruption, not counting the stress factor and frustrations of such. Working remotely mitigates that for face-to-face conversations and background noise, offering quiet focus time whenever it’s needed.

Less time wasted on commute #

Averaging global statistics on commute time each person spends at least 55 minutes per day travelling to and from work. While it might be a relatively small number for one day, if you put it in perspective of a year of a country’s population, it gets big:

With that amount of time, we could have built nearly 300 Wikipedias, or built the Great Pyramid of Giza 26 times—all in 2014 alone.

Commute is oftentimes, depending on the mean of transport, frustrating, costly and unpleasant. Being able to dedicate that time to family, rest or even work is extremely valuable.

More career opportunities #

As a person coming from Eastern Europe, a block of countries that were heavily economically disadvantaged due to their history, ten years ago I had limited options for employment in the technology sector. Remote brings so much more opportunity that in the past was unheard of, fighting against disadvantage of location, troublesome immigration and simply, lack of willingness to relocate for whatever reason it might be. Now some of the jobs we hoped for are within our grasp, sometimes offering above market pay due to foreign capital.

Downsides of working remotely #

While the perks of working remotely sound great some of them have a dual nature introducing positive and negative impact on employees life.

It gets lonely #

While not being around people can definitely be a perk, after couple days of isolation it simply gets lonely. There are two ways of tackling that problem; from employee and employer standpoint. Firstly, it’s important to make sure we have enough social interaction and breaks outside of work. Secondly, as an organisation, it’s crucial to ensure that everyone feels like they’re being included in the life of an organisation. That can be achieved in many ways; frequent 1-on-1 meetings (not only manager-to-subordinate, peer-to-peer!), internal mailings with important information on how the business and team are doing and in-person getaways.

Remote leadership is rare #

People willing to pursue more senior roles in leadership still find these positions scarce in the world of remote. While distributed developer force is growing strong, aforementioned management opportunities are often limited to on-site offices, with small exception of fully remote organisations.

Timezones aren’t equal #

Remote is still often constrained by timezones. It’s quite a common practice for US-based companies to seek candidates only between Pacific and Eastern timezone, which is a fair requirement but to me it somewhat denies the idea of distributed and asynchronous work. While a large part of remote jobs come from the United States they automatically become unavailable to those residing in Oceania due to large timezone differences. There are more scenarios like that, covering 9+ hours span.

Lacking in structure and motivation #

With full flexibility at hand it might be challenging to clearly delineate start and end of the day. Suddenly it becomes the worst enemy as we’re never able to switch off the work mindset as it’s at our doorstep at all times. Motivation becomes a struggle and distractions are endless, just not necessarily induced by office comrades. Remote requires planning and discipline for productivity and ability to achieve reasonable work-life balance.

Struggle with process at partially remote companies #

Organisations often stumble during the process of implementing remote-first approaches. Communication lapses, it’s hard to forge relationships and at worse, those coming to the office are envious of employees working in the peace and quiet of their household. It requires frequent feedback loops, experimentation and empathy to work it out.

Work-life balance as a remote worker #

Let’s face it—remote work is glorified, but as most of things that are being put on a pedestal, it has a dark side. Countless of lifestyle writers are searching for the Holy Grail of work-life balance and despite contradictory, sometimes hilarious advice an equilibrium can be struck.

Have a routine #

It might sound contradictory to introduce routine into newly earned flexibility, but structure is crucial to remote work. Time has to be divided into chunks of work and rest, otherwise it’s easy to clock over 10 hours per day without noticing.

Start with the basic scheduling rules for your day: breakfast, snack and lunch are strictly times without work. Time in-between is allocated to full focus and productivity. It’s essential to remember about 5-10 minutes breaks on every hour to rest your eyes and stretch. If you’re having problems with remembering, try BreakTime or Time Out app (there are many more alternatives). Set clear start and end times for the day so work doesn’t leak into downtime. As much as we want to escape from 9-5, remote is just more flexible version of it.

Create a “no work” zone #

It’s challenging for humans to sit in one spot for an extended amount of time, hence when we have a chance we circulate around our apartments and houses. That makes it easy to mentally associate the entire living space with work, which prevents us from unwinding.

It’s absolutely necessary for our wellbeing to firstly, have an ergonomic home office (proper desk and a chair at minimum) and secondly avoid performing work-related tasks in places of relaxation. While living room might be acceptable for lazy tinkering, devices in the bedroom are completely off limits. Again, it’s as much about mental association as the detrimental effect blue light has on sleeping patterns.

Schedule socialising time #

In the case of having a primary, home office, remote work becomes quite alienating. It’s effortless to stay in and reduce social interactions to a minimum, even without noticing. For a change of environment and some exposure to fellow humans, work from a coffee shop couple times per week.

On top of that schedule regular catch-ups with friends and family. They don’t necessarily have to be disruptive to your productivity (i.e. working hours). From quick coffee, lunch to dinner or a walk in the park; all have glorious effects on your happiness and wellbeing as a remotie. Take care of mental and physical health

Working from home can have a detrimental effect on all aspects of health if we let it slip. Without set schedules and conscious effort put into physical activity we can undoubtedly land in bad pattern of overworking and purely sedentary lifestyle. All of the aforementioned strategies help prevent that, but there’s more to do.

The nature of the industry is that significant amount of work happens when we’re sitting. Humans weren’t really made to be desk-bound though. While a lot of people are wary of going to a gym, it makes a huge difference to start exercising twice to three times per week at minimum. Everyone can pick whatever fits their preference and schedule and enjoy a rush of endorphins afterwards. Exercise doesn’t have to be expensive or unpleasant at all—you might want to try home yoga, extended walks or jogging with a friend.

Another step to better health is back problems prevention. That start with ergonomic workplace and follows up with massages, swimming and wherever necessary proper therapy. Unfortunately these issues are somewhat tied to our generation.

Finally, is extremely beneficial to try counselling. While there’s a somewhat negative connotation with seeing a specialist, there’s no shame in doing so. Most people benefit from professional counselling even if they assumed it wasn’t necessary. Remote workers can be especially prone to burnout and impostor syndrome thus entrusting an expert can bring a lot of solace.

Remote-oriented companies to look up to #

There are a lot of organisations to mention, but these companies have done an exceptional job on documenting all angles of remote work and culture:

Automattic
Buffer
Help Scout
Zapier

For remote-oriented job boards head to We Work Remotely↗, Working Nomads↗, Remote OK↗ or use one of well-established job boards with advanced search: StackOverflow, GitHub or Dribbble.

This article is only touching on the complexities, challenges and perks of remote work, but hopefully it sparks positive change in you or your organisation. There’s far more writing available that might be helpful, such as:

Remote Work Resources↗ by Helpscout
The Ultimate Guide to Remote Work↗ by Zapier
Top Tips, Tools and Tricks for Remote Work↗ by Buffer

The Web isn’t uniform

2016-04-23T00:00:00Z

Yesterday I was working on a progressively enhanced user interface (without JavaScript) — a scenario that we cater to very frequently at a company I’m currently employed with.

Accidentally, it completely slipped my mind to flip the switch and enable JavaScript back. A door to entirely different Web was suddenly wide open. Let me tell you—I didn’t like what I saw.

It took me a good minute of genuine confusion to figure out why most of the applications I use frequently were hardly usable and content barely available.

The Web without JavaScript is empty and broken #

Here are some of the Web giants—Trello, Facebook, Gmail, Dropbox and AirBnB, sans JavaScript. Some of them handled it better, some worse. From zero information or pointers, that might as well be flipping a bird, to half-functioning interfaces informing about the potential bottlenecks.

As an active empathy practitioner I imagined what the ongoing no JavaScript Web browsing experience could be. While the percentage of these users might be relatively low, we fail to remember that until the scripts load, that scenario is true for all of us.

The Web isn’t always blazing fast #

Even now, I’m sitting in one of the most expensive cities in the world, that offers the highest quality of life, on a DSL connection (barely maximum of 15mb/s down, slower than 3G that can reach 56mb/s, an infrastructure introduced over 10 years ago). According to Akamai’s Q4 2015 rankings↗, the average Internet speed worldwide is at whooping 5.6mb/s. The global connectedness is rapidly growing, but there’s still a vast space of unmapped territories (for more insight into Internet penetration see Global Internet Maps↗).

That brings me to a point; the foundation of the Web is plain ol’ Hyper Text Markup Language along with Cascading Style Sheets. I’m not suggesting we should stop using JavaScript at all—it’s a great language and the ecosystem is growing rapidly. npm already surpassed more than one billion module downloads weekly↗ a while back. The community will continue to expand, improve and evolve, as others do too. This is a problem that spans way further than one programming language.

The Web and its technologies have to be treated differently #

It’s a privilege to be able to use breaking edge technologies and devices, but let’s not forget basic accessibility and progressive enhancement. Ultimately, we’re building for the users, not for our own tastes or preferences. Sadly, not everyone is born with an equal chance.

Having endless opportunities at our hands is great, blindly obsessing over the stack and not putting people in the forefront never is.

Programming communities are heavily opinionated, very vocal and oftentimes hostile in defending their views. In these completely irrelevant microaggressions we lose sight of the humans we build software for.

If suddenly your audience disappeared, would you continue building and releasing into the void? If you were the end user and no one cared about you, how would you feel?

These questions have to be asked constantly. Empathy is necessary for everything we do. It boils down to understanding how our seemingly user-invisible decisions shape what the Web is. There’s no one programming language that will divide and conquer.

The Web isn’t uniform—it’s countless flowing layers, each affecting user experiences in its own way.

The technological choices are important for teams, but have even more impact for the audience. The Web can and will be built with and on anything we can put our hands on. Let’s not forget who we’re creating it for.

A guide to empathetic hiring processes

2016-03-11T00:00:00Z

During over ten years in the tech industry I went through the hiring process at small startups, mid-sized agencies and well-funded corporations at least a dozen times. I’ve seen colleagues struggling when interviewing and being under tremendous amount of stress and so was I.

At the beginning of my career I assumed that seeking employment simply cannot be a pleasant journey—it’s one of those situations when you grit your teeth and push forward, looking forward to (hopefully) exciting times ahead when being already hired.

There’s a lot of talk on company values, equal opportunity, diversity and transparency in hiring. Unfortunately it seems like even companies that are publicly known for exemplary ethics and culture make the same mistakes. During last couple months of heavy interviewing I’ve personally experienced unacceptably unprofessional slips and widespread lack of empathy. Sometimes mishandling was obviously a part of not-so-great culture but often recruitment was simply an afterthought.

The dynamics of hiring #

Employers looking for filling the gaps in human resources are naturally in a privileged position, holding major advantage over the applicants. They hold the power to decide who’s going to be most valuable to their goals and needs, forgetting there’s an actual human on the other side of the line.

The hiring scale is tipped in employers favour. The fact that finding a great fit isn’t a single-sided operation and means living up to your values even before new employee joining sadly slips unnoticed.

Nowadays in the tech industry more senior, experienced candidates, feel comfortable and empowered to not to take on recruitment processes that seem unfair, too long or lacking in transparency. Even though, that’s still a very privileged position to be in.

Changing these dynamics is a hard problem to solve, but we definitely can improve and make hiring processes more humane, as they should be in the first place. Having had said that, let’s dive into what the common missteps are and how to avoid them.

Define clear expectations and process #

It’s a common problem to struggle with defining what skills are needed and what type of people would make a great addition to a given team. There are several reasons why that is happening:

job ads are written based off other companies’ postings, which might relate to a similar role, but reside within entirely different context — this leads to ads that over-emphasise common buzzwords/patterns and misrepresent real needs,
individuals working in given roles aren’t involved in defining what’s necessary to get the work done,
career openings rely on specific technology not necessarily willingness to learn, collaboration skills and other character traits that are more important, especially long term.

Building teams and products strongly relies on clarity in understanding the necessities, context and future goals. Expectations have to be transparent and customised for each use case (organisation) and even more importantly base off character traits a little bit more than learnable technologies.

Doing that alongside with describing the hiring process in detail, in the open, will filter out candidates, who’d realise it’s not a good fit early on and by proxy show respect to everyone’s time.

Keep job postings up-to-date #

Startups are especially prone to exponential, rapid growth but it’s no excuse for keeping up ads for positions that have been filled long time ago. In all cases it’s a waste of candidates time, and oftentimes, on larger scale, weeks waiting for an answer simply saying “we’re not hiring right now” or never receiving one at all.

There are multiple solutions, the easiest one being accepting accountability for weekly or bi-weekly quick check-up whether everything’s up to the minute.

Over-communicate, especially when it’s hard #

Usually there’s a fair bit of back and forth when interviewing, unfortunately the communication lapses when it’s crucial. Delayed in reviewing a code test? Notify the applicant. Can’t make a decision to hire when you promised to? Notify the applicant immediately. Employers often fail to acknowledge these breakdowns in communication are a major stress cause to future team members.

Being upfront about the state of the process is even more important when the company decides not to proceed. We’re dealing with two cases:

obvious mismatch between the opening and candidate’s skills on applying initially,
rejection further in the process.

Ideally in both cases you’d be given reasons why it’s not a good fit, but looking realistically at number of applicants in some places and available bandwidth simple email saying “Unfortunately, we can’t proceed” is better than silence. While over-communication is key, over-promising lets people down and sets them up with expectations that are far from reality (ever got one of those emails saying “check back in couple months”? We all know how that ends up going.)

Over-communication sheds additional light and empowers to make the decisions important to careers and make them quickly.

Use inclusive language #

In the male-dominated tech industry often job ads are written using exclusionary language sub, or consciously, perpetuating sexism. When composing a career posting make sure not to make any gender assumptions.

Moreover, don’t facilitate unrealistic expectations by referring to people with “ninja”, “guru” or “wizard”. That approach has been dubbed a dark pattern long time ago but keeps resurfacing. In professional settings, we’re dealing with people, not mythical creatures. Additionally, that language is alienating for less senior developers or designers.

Gear up for better company culture #

These are only a few pointers to multidimensional process that hiring is, but I strongly believe, from both the position of employer and employee, that taking these steps leads towards more empathetic approach.

The dark side of open source

2015-01-19T00:00:00Z

This post was inspired by a conversation about Open Source↗ between Adam Yeats and James Seymour-Lock and an article↗ by Remy Sharp. Please read them thoroughly before continuing.

Open Source software is a thriving market that supports thousands of startups and gets them off the ground — freeware with a “small” price of a few dependencies. Anything can be open sourced; from the smallest code snippet to giant, complicated systems. You can kick off a career because of contributions and meet like-minded people. It’s great.

I love Open Source. It has taught me many things going beyond programming — better collaboration, patience, compassion and mentoring. But it has a very dark side too, that often gets swept under the carpet of shiny benefits of a new career and so-called fame.

The numbers game #

It’s all in the numbers — followers, contributions, comments, stars. Have none? Less than twenty public commits per week? What have you been doing lately?

For, I’d presume, security reasons Github doesn’t show pushes to private repositories within the contribution graph. Such a simple design decision that causes one of the most tireless races to prove yourself a worthy developer.

Searching for the ultimate productivity hack we push our boundaries of comfort to perform. Or at least to be seen as incredibly prolific. Github facilitates that mindset with a shiny badge full of green squares, so easy to build. Don’t get me wrong — I love Github, but this, what might seem irrelevant part of user interface, fundamentally changes how we behave.

We want to be seen and have our work acknowledged. We’re humans after all.

That number and credibility game makes us forget our humanity. It fosters neglecting physical and mental health. It breaks relationships. The time we might come to realise that, it might be too late. Stop racing.

Privilege #

Privilege might be a vague, abstract idea if you’re not a member of an underrepresented group (Open Source has been historically more development than design focused). I’ve been working simultaneously as a designer and developer for almost ten years now and it has been tremendously challenging to break the barrier to entry and start collaborating in the open. It mostly happened thanks to encouraging, empowering people from the community. No one judged me based on my empty collaboration graph as I offered design advice and mentoring. That was my entry point. As someone coming from a non-English speaking country I’ve been quite lucky with getting quality education, so communication wasn’t an issue.

I am privileged.

Not everyone is so lucky and I elaborated on this here (last post, at the bottom of the page). Designers and front-end developers without JavaScript knowledge struggle to create projects, fear judgement and rejection if they participate. The language barrier amplifies the anxiety.

I wish every single person who’s willingly contributing their free time (in healthy doses) was welcomed without assumptions but with open arms and empathy instead.

Open Source is privileged.

Impostor Syndrome #

Open Source often is a constant, vicious cycle of ego games. Ever-present expectations of performance and arbitrary success bring people to a breaking point. We confuse approval with love and self-worthiness, which becomes dependant on achieving. At the lowest levels of behaviour we engage in phenomenon called impression management— we’re always thinking about how we appear to others, even when no one’s around.

That might push us to impostor syndrome. Coined in mid-80s by Dr Pauline Clance this phenomenon is described as experiencing feelings of inadequacy — conviction that our achievements are undeserved and accompanying it worry that we will be exposed as frauds.

Impostor phenomenon fosters such behaviours as avoiding failure at all costs, outperform others (where performance infers ability, which we’ve talked about when mentioning Github) and focus on task mastery, where mediocrity isn’t acceptable.

Social and internal pressure makes us work even harder, intertwining impostor syndrome with burnout—a relatively new term to psychology, described in the 70s.

The standards we’re trying to live up to are disastrously crippling the quality of our lives and we’re letting them do so while, deep down inside, pursuing one of the most basic, humane needs—acceptance and interaction.

My Grandmother used to say that everything can be good in reasonable doses and it applies to Open Source as well. But before pulling several all-nighters in a row stop for a minute and think if your health and relationships are worth another green square.

You’re amazing.

Where to work

2014-02-18T00:00:00Z

Some of my friends ask me for advice on how to find a job. Every single time I feel extremely flattered by the trust they have put in me. They may all have different goals, expectations and experiences, but they all deserve one thing—a chance for quality employment.

This can be hard to come by these days though—in the world of overworking, chasing after money, and lack of respect for yourself and others. Companies grow too fast, teams lose intimacy and closure, goals shift.

During eight years of my career I have worked at more than ten product-oriented companies or agencies—and I’ve also had dozens of clients when freelancing. Some of those jobs were terrible, some of them were ok, but almost none made me happy. Up until now.

Hopefully this will make you think before you choose to accept a new job or leave the current one. Or it may help you think about how you can help your current company better.

If you were to ask me what to look for in a prospective employer, team or client, I would tell you to work where…

Your work is being appreciated #

In an honest and public way (be it internally or for the entire world wide web). And if you’re doing a mediocre or lousy job, it will be clearly communicated. In those cases—help will be given.

Your workplace is a safe place #

When conflict arises or there are uncomfortable situations or clear violation of personal space or the team’s code of conduct, everyone feels confident to voice their concerns. Action is taken. People creating a non-safe environment are held responsible for their actions, no matter their position.

Your time is valued #

There is no expectation for you to compromise your mental and physical health for the sake of more money in someone else’s pocket. Overworking is considered a bad example, overhours accepted only if voluntary and appropriately rewarded.

Your health is crucial #

If you need a break—take it.

Your salary is equal #

Your income should be based on the market—if you work in UK—you get UK rates, no matter if remote or on-site. You are not paid less because of your nationality, geographical location, race or gender.

You are not a trophy #

You are not your boss’s possession—you’ve been hired for your expertise, not to be a prize on a shelf, that your employer can brag about acquiring. You’re not a conference popularity card or PR campaign face either.

You make a difference #

You are pushed and encouraged to make a difference, be it tiny or huge, in the lives of your co-workers, clients or buyers of the product.

Setting those expectations is crucial for taking care of your mental well-being, self-esteem, and creating a productive, happy work environment. By doing that you also push those who fail at improving inclusivity and equality, in the right direction.

The important thing to remember is—no one will do it for you. Respect yourself and expect respect from others.

Good luck.

Design is not a democracy

2013-12-16T00:00:00Z

Democracy is an ideology we’ve grown to love and historically fought for (still fighting in some cases) over the years. As human beings we share our opinions which need to be acknowledged and sometimes, incorporated by others.

Unfortunately while democracy flourishes in politics it can be quite dangerous in the design realm. Remember the saying “Too many cooks spoil the broth”? With too many people involved, lack of proper communication and responsibility you might end up with seriously over-cooked soup.

There’s no shipping with democratic design. There’s stagnation.

Creation and then exhibition (shipping) of our creations is the ultimate goal. But how can we avoid stagnation and infinite feedback loops that the try-to-include-everyone approach brings?

Learn to trust #

Designers are hired to do a certain job. Like a plumber fixes your leaking sink, we build and fix experiences that make peoples’ lives easier and thus, more pleasant.

With no trust there’s no design.

Unfortunately, we will fail if there is no trust. Trust is fundamental in human relations — both personal and professional, yet often is so lacking. Our clients tend to be scared and feel the need to control the process to avoid failure. Somehow, the trust that led them to hire us vanishes when they are presented with actual work that needs to be accepted.

We need to learn to trust each other. Trust our co-workers that tasks they own will be completed. Trust that the people we hired will use their expertise to our benefit. Trust their judgement and knowledge. If not, decisions will be always questioned and designs will never see the light of the day.

Take ownership #

The lack of trust closely correlates to who takes ownership of a project. It’s easier to distrust flaky and uncertain figures. Often though, leaders have strong personalities. They’re not afraid to speak up and say: “Stop” when someone’s overstepping.

Ownership doesn’t imply dictatorship.

One could say this suggests that every single decision is made by the project owner. Nothing could be more wrong. Ownership assigns responsibility, both for success and failure. It enforces being as good of a listener as a dictator. Ownership is one of the key ingredients to getting things done.

Leadership doesn’t necessarily lay in the hands of designers though. If that isn’t the case, our job is to trust their judgement, give valuable feedback and empower them to create.

Request feedback responsibly #

Being able to give, and more importantly receive, feedback is crucial. It’s easy to get offended and treat feedback personally. To doubt our skills. While some amount of reasonable self-doubt is necessary, the important thing to remember is that by requesting and getting feedback we make our creations better: No man is a an island.

Feedback is essential. Constructive feedback is priceless.

We need to learn to let go of our personal taste and preferences. Learn to hear (see Take ownership), but also learn to say “this is good enough”.

Design is by nature an iterative process. As much as we want to avoid design by the committee (unless you want a horse instead of a camel) we need contributions from others to make it happen. The key is to be responsible about the help you’re given.

There’s no perfection, nor will there ever be. Embrace it.