Will the Real Technical People Please Stand Up?

Will the Real Technical People

Please Stand Up?@lhawthorn - Eurucamp 2015

mikecogh

$PERSON

isn’t

TECHNICAL

My Parents*

* Not Drawn to Scale

thedailyenglishshow

Unix Programmer Learned to use the ATM when I was 14

© D. Taranik used with permission

What does $PERSON isn’t TECHNICAL

even mean?

see also its ugly relatives: “not very technical” and “not technical enough” and “not as technical as $SOMEONE_JUST_LIKE_ME”

Does It Mean ….

• Doesn’t have a university degree in Computer Science or Engineering of some sort?

• Doesn’t write code? (Or doesn’t do it for their career?)

• Can’t solder and has no idea what thermal compound is?

$PERSON isn’t TECHNICALimplies some kind of immutable binary

hape_gera

This phrase is toxic.

This phrase is code for…

• “I don’t have to challenge my own biases”

• “The work $PERSON performs is much less valueable than my own work”

• “$PERSON is a woman / person of color / not enough like me to ‘fit in’”

This phrase prevents us from …

• Having better educated and more empowered colleagues

• Fully respecting the value of our team mates

• Having more effective collaboration throughout our organizations and projects

Why would I stay in an industry

that defines me by what I can’t do instead of all the things I can do?

Read awesome things by Kara: http://bit.ly/AlcoholAndInclusivity Kara’s Twitter bio pic used with permission

86979666@N00

Thank You!

Further Reading & Legal Bits• Fantastic related article:

The Myth of the Non-Technical Startup Employee (http://bit.ly/MythNon-TechEmployee

• All images in this presentation are copyright their respective owners and are used with their written permission, including via Creative Commons licensing.

• This presentation is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Please reuse, remix and share widely!