tech etc...

sarah young

sre | dev | historian

This is how I work ... give or take

21 Apr 2019

This is a belated response to my Team Lead’s challenge to fill out “This is how I work…give or take”.

It’s a neat interview format to get a sense of how I got to where I am now, what my work is like, and bit about my interests.

Here goes!

Location: London, UK.

Current gig: Shared Infrastructure Software Developer at Unruly

Current mobile device: Samsung something

Current computer: Mac

One word that best describes how you work: Sensibly


First of all, tell us a little about your background and how you got to where you are today?

So I’m cultural historian of gender turned software developer. Bit of a weird one.

As a historian, I focused on gender in education and ultimately specialised in constructions of masculinities in computer science.

While developing a PhD proposal on the impact of gender norms on women’s pursuit of careers in technology, I was shocked to see a version of my own experience.

A growing body of research indicates girls grow up believing computers are a “boys’ thing” (these studies focus on the UK/US, it’s different elsewhere in the world).

When I was growing up in the 1990s/2000s computer stuff, anything STEM really, was something my brother did, something the boys I knew did. Not something I did.

Fast forward fifteen years. When I read about women in the technology industry (or the lack thereof) I realised I’d internalised the gender stereotypes and narratives I was researching.

As a feminist, I decided one way to live my activism was to challenge these stereotypes and narratives and do what I’d never thought possible: become a software developer.

I wanted to fight every internal voice that said “you can’t do this”, refute every experience growing up that reinforced the idea that I didn’t belong in tech.

In 2014 I graduated from the software intensive course Makers Academy and began my career as a software developer.

I started as a web developer before switching to backend Java development and ultimately infrastructure.

Take us through a recent workday

A typical workday looks like getting to the office around 8:30 to gather my thoughts and do a bit of what my team calls ‘gardening’. These are tasks which improve our codebases, enable the team to move faster, or help us learn more about our stack.

Stand-up starts at 9:45 when we Walk the Wall, surface any blockers, and decide that day’s focus.

We pair program on our production code so I spend most of my day pairing, unless I’m on support or gardening.

Pairing can be intense which is why I’ve invested time in learning more about effective communication tools and human psychology.

We put huddles at the end of the day when we need to share knowledge, make a decision as a group, or check-in about a direction.

What apps, gadgets or tools can’t you live without?

Google. I’m pretty curious and love looking up the how and why of computers…or just about anything.

What’s your best shortcut or life hack?

Learning the power of breathing.

When you breathe out slowly, focusing on the exhale, you engage your parasympathetic nervous system which can help reduce stress.

It allows your pre-frontal cortex (the thing in charge of empathy, attuned communication, emotional regulation) time to catch up with your limbic brain (the source of flight/freeze/fight).

Take us through an interesting, unusual, or finicky process you have in place at work

Probably our continuous integration process. We do CI but without the official integration servers. Deployments happen straight from workstations to production (no staging or pre-prod environments) with any new features enabled/disabled with feature toggles. We also do trunk-based development.

Historically the team has discussed on a number of occasions whether the maintenance and cost of a CI system outweighs the benefits and the answer has so far been ‘yes, for now’.

How do you keep track of what you have to do?

A notebook which functions as my second brain. I read our Trello board as some folks read the paper in the morning. Our physical board is an equal source of information. I enjoy making sure items/tasks are up-to-date.

It’s like pruning a bonsai tree: meditative.

What’s your favourite side project?

I recently got back into coding katas in Java and have really enjoyed exploring OO calisthenics.

When I’m not doing code katas, I like working on my meeting-tracker spike. It started as an experiment to measure how my team spent our collaboration energy (and to experiment more with Python).

The project seeks to answer some of the following: How many meetings vs huddles do we have in an iteration? How frequently do we include agendas, goals, or context in an invite? Does this matter? Is there one person on the team organising the majority of our sessions? Is this important to the team?

What are you currently reading, or what do you recommend to read?

Currently reading: Difficult Conversations, Righteous Mind

Recommend reading:

(I could go on…)

Who else would you like to see answer these questions?

My team. Grace Hopper from beyond. Leslie Knope.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

Seek first to understand, then to be understood - thank you Steve Hayes for introducing me to this.

Set the pace that’s right for you right now - my partner.