I was talking about the positive aspects of religion with someone and they kept coming back to community as the best aspect of religion. I thought that was really interesting and something I could definitely understand. I personally have a skeptical view of the benefits of religion but the community aspect is something I hadn’t thought of and that I feel is missing living in a big city. In a small town, it’s relatively easy to find a community. I’m not sure why that is, but folks are very welcoming. In a large city, if you approach folks, they think you “want” something. Religion does seem like it could help people join a community of like minded people.

Now all that being said, I’m not sure if rather the conclusion shouldn’t be that we should be more open and willing to accept new people into our daily lives and incorporate them into our social circle. Why is it that it’s so hard to find a good circle of friends outside of work or school? If you think about it, a great majority of people share the same values. Most of those are actually the same shared by folks who are religious. Helping others out, compassion, friendship, making the world a better place.

And yet, when we meet people, do we assign those values to them? Why does there need to be something that links us (be it school, workplace, religion, board game community) before we open ourselves up and are open to people? Why are we so “scared” of the “others”? Is it really all the negative media? If so why do we keep wanting that kind of media? I’m a big believer that media doesn’t tell us what to think with what it gives us but rather that we tell media what we want it to feed back to us (especially online, where we can easily tell the difference between what people say they want to read or see vs what they actually decide to read or see).

All that to say, how can we create better communities? Thoughts?

I’m working on hiring recently. I’ve come to think that many things people base themselves on when judging applications are pretty useless.
There seems to be this focus on a few checkboxes. I understand why. there’s a sea of candidates, if you don’t have a list of objective criteria it’s hard to decide.
That being said I think most people go for criterias that don’t really mean much. For example years of experience or having a degree. One that really bothers me is people who ask questions about a gap in job experience. I don’t even understand why someone would think that not working for a few months or a year would be a valid indicator.
If someone took time for health (physical or mental) issues for themselves of a loved one, that’s a good thing in my books.

The most important thing that I look for in a CV is did they really want to apply here. Is their cover letter generic? on each job posting we ask 3 questions and we clearly state applicants who don’t answer the questions in the cover letter will be rejected. Still, only ~30% of applicants answer the questions.
It seems those candidates are at least qualified enough for an interview.
The interview is tricky and while it can weed out some folks, I worry it’s too hit or miss. Does the candidate know the answer or have they encountered the specific technical problem you ask about?
The interview stage is the one I’m the less certain about right now.

The one that gives the most insight is the trial. Seeing someone work in action is so much better. In a way I wish we could send folks directly there after the application but I suspect it would be too time consuming. At least in how we currently do it.
Perhaps there’s a way to implement it in a way that makes it scale-able.

I think part of why I don’t write blog posts is that often I don’t have the answer.
I don’t have a good way to finish the post.
It’s just a ramble of thoughts and ideas with no conclusion.
Perhaps that’s useful…

I seem to write more blog posts while on a plane.
Perhaps it’s the notion of being disconnected.

I feel like that’s something I should look into. Am I more productive while not connected to the internet? Would setting my phone on airplane mode for a few hours a day make me happier?

Right now I’m procrastinating. I have work I would like to do, or at least I think I should do. Work that I want to do that would help me grow. And yet, I’m not motivated to do it. Why is that? Is it that I feel I’ve already done enough work? That pushing myself more would be detrimental? That I should accept that I will want to play video games a certain amount of hours a week?

Oh sure, I know I need to accept that I’m enough and I’m working enough and doing enough learning and the like. But is that true? Or more accurately how do I know and find that balance? Mark Manson mentioned in an AMA that he feels the answer is to focus on specific things in your life one at a time. I understand the appeal of that. It’s how I focused on getting healthier for the last few years (with great success).

But if that is the answer, then I guess it means figuring out and prioritizing what I want to achieve. Something I know I should do, but still not easy.

It seems like many of my posts are really about my inability to write and just post it.

I’m hoping that by starting with one mediocre post like this I can get the ball rolling and just keep posting mediocre posts. We’ll see how that goes.

I was having a discussion with an intern about how it’s quite possible that whatever I say or do or that a colleague does is “wrong” or at least not the best solution and how they should feel free to comment on that with their thoughts.
It’s really easy to say that, but doing it, especially when you just started somewhere is super challenging and they mentioned it. I can understand, you don’t want to make people think that you think they’re stupid. You also might not be sure if you’re right! I mean if this more senior person said it, then I mean I probably just don’t understand it!

I think this goes back to framing and to framing questions compassionately. What I mean by that is, you can even change the phrasing of your question to make it so you’re not “questioning” what they wrote, but asking for more information.

I try to do this as much as possible when helping clients. If I don’t understand, or if I suspect they are wrong I won’t say “I think you’re wrong and this is why” but rather “Can you elaborate on what you mean by xyz? I’m not sure I follow the connection to abc. I was under the impression that xyz123 meant that abc456.” Asking for more information is always a good thing. And while in many circumstances you should stick to not saying what you’re thinking while asking a question (great read here about it) in cases like this I think it can be quite useful to move the conversation.

All that to say, don’t be afraid to ask questions, framing them as compassionate questions has helped me:
1) Have less anxiety about asking questions / questioning things of people I believe are smarter than myself.
2) Which in turn has helped me learn and grow!

Reviewing and debugging a lot of code gives you some interesting insight. In the past when I’ve written code comments I’ve often answered what and how.

[code]// Grab the remote content and transform it to JSON[/code]

That comment for example is useless. Anyone can read the code and see what it’s doing and how it’s doing it.

[code]// We need to re-fetch the remote content here because our cached version may be stale after a write operation.
//We know this by checking the $potentionally_stale_cache variable.[/code]

With this comment we know why we’re refreshing the cache and can understand if this code is still needed or might not be because of changing requirements.

I’ve never liked the term “woke“. It sounds like something you achieve once and well that’s it, you now are aware of all the struggles people encounter and don’t need to focus on understanding and compassion towards others who you disagree with because clearly, they are not “woke” like you.

I had a good reminder of this a while back. Someone I look up to greatly in terms of diversity and inclusion and who has first hand experience with a lot of the biases, the prejudices and harassment that people may endure made a comment regarding Bronies (Adult fans of the My Little Pony TV Show, generally male).

Something to the effect that Bronies were freaks or weird. I challenged them and mentioned I knew someone who was a Brony and that they were on the Autism spectrum. I also mentioned that while actual data is sparse, there seems to be many bronies who are on the Autism spectrum. (# #)

There are various theories as to why the correlation but one seems to be that people on the Autism spectrum appreciate how clear the emotions of the characters are. In a world where some struggle to understand human interactions the characters of the show are clear and understandable. They make sense.

I think my friend was taken a bit aback by the revelation that even with all her knowledge of the various struggles people endure she had just made a comment that could be taken as offensive towards an under-privileged group.

It was in a sense relieving for me, that even people who I look up to and who I would want to be as “woke” as could still make mistakes and still had things to learn about various groups and the privileges they may or may not have.

To be clear here, I don’t fault them for it. It’s just something that’s never been part of their life and has been a part of mine. And much like I have much to learn, I think it’s a good reminder that maybe if someone says something that is offensive or could be re-enforcing stereotypes or makes a comment that indicates they do not fully understand the day to day struggles of a particular group that they may not be malicious. They might not of had the experiences I’ve had or have had people who they are close to in their lives who have had those experiences.

I think it serves as a good reminder that when someone says something or acts in a certain way, that I shouldn’t start by assigning ill intent to their actions but rather have compassion and try to help grow their understanding of the issue. And that means that I don’t think one can, or should, believe themselves to be “woke” as it will have a detrimental impact on their willingness to learn, listen and grow as an individual.