Photo by Johannes Plenio.
So, in our past lives we both worked in internet security. In a sense, every person working on a web browser does. And security is a funny community, even within tech. Its own norms, its own in jokes and long running feuds. And its own gatherings. This week one of the more beloved of those (at least in its early days), Derbycon, announced it was shutting down.
What makes this interesting to non-security-nerds is the why. Last year derbycon seemed to hit a tipping point. A lot of trashy, misogynistic behaviour started to get called out. It’s not surprising stuff, even if it is toxic. In the last few years every tech gathering has wrestled with how to change norms, make expectations clear, and build a more inclusive event.
Or at least they should have. The derbycon post, instead, talks about “drama,” and people fabricating outrage to grow their social media following. Instead of putting the concerns of marginalized folks at the center and trying to learn and be better, they felt gotcha’d and said so. It’s quite remarkable in 2019 that the post doesn’t contain a single attempt at “we also acknowledge some people were hurt and we feel bad about that.”
Anyhow, when we grumped about all this, we got a couple of quiet, private replies asking if we were being too harsh. Noting that the organizers’ hearts were in the right place – basically, that this was ignorance, not malice. That’s probably true. it probably is ignorance. But that’s still a problem.
We benefit from the work of so many amazing people in this space. Ashe Dryden has been an absolute force on designing more inclusive events and giving away what she’s learned. Karolina Szczur’s work and writing is also exceptional and voluminous. Project Include gives away free materials as does Frameshift Consulting, who will even train your team up if you have a budget to support it. XOXOfest even CC licenses their code of conduct for others to build off (and they’re far from the only ones).
There are giants among us. They are inviting us, begging us, to see further by standing on their shoulders. We should be thanking them. We should be helping them. But in 2019, we should, at the very very least, be taking them up on the offer.
— Melissa & Johnathan
What Melissa’s reading
People Said This Instagram Influencer’s “Tour” Was Fyre Fest 2. Here’s Her Side Of The Story.
Most of you know by now that we’re running our first ticketed event in February. And while we’ve attended, spoken at, participated in, and organized events before, this one feels different. Primarily because if we somehow end up Fyre-festing it, there’s really no one else to blame.
So it’s fitting that this week, not one but two separate Fyre Festival documentaries came out. And then Buzzfeed had a piece about an Instagram influencer trying to pull off a multi-city event with no planning, no prep, not team, and no idea of how incredibly complicated it would be.
We teach people about the four stages of competence. If you’ve ever uttered the phrase, “it’s just ____, how hard could it be?” there’s a good chance you were deep in unconscious incompetence. In unconscious incompetence, you’re not just bad at a thing. You’re so bad at it, you don’t even have the skill to assess what it might take to get good at that thing.
Conscious incompetence is the next phase. It’s where you begin to realize how much you don’t know about a thing. It’s when the daunting, “oh, oh, oh dear” kicks in. This is what the shift from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence sounds like:
“I said I didn’t plan this because I’m dumb, but that’s not true,” she corrected herself. “I didn’t plan well because I didn’t know. I would be dumb if I did it again like this.”
Learning new stuff can be such an incredibly humbling experience. We’re over here getting up to conscious competence on running events as fast as we can.
Johnathan and I have this thing that we do when we don’t know anything about a topic. We make a list of close friends who know the most about that thing. And then we buy them pizza. And beer. And then we pepper them with ridiculous questions. “Start at the very beginning,” we say. “Pretend you’re training up a new intern.” For the two of us, this is the quickest way to get out of unconscious incompetence.
Whatever you’re learning and wherever you are on the path to competence, may you have good and patient friends along to help you.
What Johnathan’s reading
Being Promoted Into a Job that Makes You Miserable
We’ve obviously got our career event on the brain so everything about people struggling in their career takes on new colour for me right now. Hunter Walk, in this piece, is channeling Arthur Brooks on this phenomenon of rising to your level misery.
Is it just me or does this read like the modern re-telling of the Peter Principle? The Peter Principle (for those of you without boomer parents obsessed with this dreadful book) says that since promotions are based on performance in your current role not fitness for the next one, everyone will get promoted until they find a level where they’re incompetent, and no longer promotable. Hunter/Arthur say that being promoted because of competence can lead to misery because it’s not the work you want to do. 40 years ago the lens we applied was talent/skill, now the lens is self-actualization and satisfaction.
Anyhow, I don’t like it. I believe it’s true, for what it’s worth. I believe it describes real things that the authors have seen/experienced. But read Hunter’s prose. When he describes this stuff, it’s so passive (he’s not usually like this!):
“…but eventually you find yourself doing a job that you no longer enjoy.”
“…you end up miserable and unproductive.”
“…my job eventually became dominated by resource planning and managing upward.”
Blerg. Listen. This is not an inevitability, folks. Your disaffection and stagnation is not an inevitability. A thing I like about Hunter’s version is that he describes it as a trap to be avoided, not a done deal. That’s good, do that thing. And as you rage against the dying of the light, consider two things:
- If this job is shit, stop doing it. Hunter says it was hard for him to imagine giving up his success to go back to a job he enjoyed. His honesty is good because it makes a thing clear. You don’t want to be that guy.
- But before you do, ask yourself: do I hate this, or do I just not know how to do this? So many leaders we work with think management is not for them because they tried and failed at it. Because it doesn’t feel smooth. But you can learn to do these things well. And then it might not be shitty to do them at all. But if it is, well, go back to step 1.
