EngineeringFairyTales.pdf

From 2013 Distill Conference. Analyzing Engineering Dysfunction. Axes for Understanding Fairytales and Culture.

1. Friday, August 9, 13
2. life love morality values cultural knowledge history tribe family lessons traditions Friday, August 9, 13
3. but aren’t they also about... Friday, August 9, 13
4. 300-399 supernatural opponents 560-649 magical items 750-799 god rewards and punishes 870-879 woman marries the prince 1000-1029 labor contract 1200-1349 stories about a fool 1525-1639 stories about a man Friday, August 9, 13
5. beneath the surface Friday, August 9, 13
6. snow white Friday, August 9, 13
7. necrophilia? Friday, August 9, 13
8. racism? Friday, August 9, 13
9. filicide? filcide? Friday, August 9, 13
10. superficial pursuit of beauty? Friday, August 9, 13
11. cinderella cinderella Friday, August 9, 13
12. wealth gaps? Friday, August 9, 13
13. wealth? aristocracy? Friday, August 9, 13
14. sexual assault? sleeping beauty Friday, August 9, 13
15. sexism? Friday, August 9, 13
16. sexual assault? Friday, August 9, 13
17. then there’s disney... Friday, August 9, 13
18. repackaging for mass audiences, submerging conflict and meaning, profiting from -ist representations, misrepresenting historical facts, normalizing inequality , glamorizing violence and assault Friday, August 9, 13
19. Analyzing Dysfunction in Engineering Culture Friday, August 9, 13
20. shanley kane Friday, August 9, 13
21. writing. cultural studies. semiotics. feminism. Friday, August 9, 13
22. writing. cultural studies. semiotics. feminism. infrastructure. databases. distributed systems. APIs. platforms. Friday, August 9, 13
23. writing. cultural studies. semiotics. feminism. infrastructure. databases. distributed systems. APIs. platforms. @shanley on Twitter and on Medium Friday, August 9, 13
24. what do fairy tales have to do with... Friday, August 9, 13
25. engineering culture? Friday, August 9, 13
26. it’s never just a technical decision. Friday, August 9, 13
27. hidden world Friday, August 9, 13
28. let’s discover it Friday, August 9, 13
29. we get past a thing to its meaning through a process of interrogation Friday, August 9, 13
30. this is important because being an engineering culture does not mean that we are good at engineering Friday, August 9, 13
31. being technical does not mean we will make good technical decisions Friday, August 9, 13
32. axes that help us figure out what is really going on Friday, August 9, 13
33. rewards values power homogeneity history Friday, August 9, 13
34. reward Friday, August 9, 13
35. praise recognition credit raises promotions preferential treatment Friday, August 9, 13
36. prototypes invention creativity new ideas Friday, August 9, 13
37. focus problem unshipped products “cool” but not useful Friday, August 9, 13
38. shipping fast shipping often shipping early Friday, August 9, 13
39. unmaintainable features incoherent products ops challenges Friday, August 9, 13
40. shipping perfection Friday, August 9, 13
41. shipping nothing Friday, August 9, 13
42. the savior putting out fires intervening in emergencies working unreasonable hours death marches Friday, August 9, 13
43. more emergencies? Friday, August 9, 13
44. values Friday, August 9, 13
45. what’s most important what’s good what’s valuable Friday, August 9, 13
46. easy-to-use APIs robust querying amazing clients Friday, August 9, 13
47. no evaluation of core technology unable to profile operations burden not testing for scale and ops Friday, August 9, 13
48. openness portability interoperability standards Friday, August 9, 13
49. nothing is portable nothing interoperates there are no standards except adoption Friday, August 9, 13
50. blog posts about trivial implementations someone on the internet conference circuit Friday, August 9, 13
51. academic papers real experts in the field cases from large-scale implementations Friday, August 9, 13
52. hacker news press tweets Friday, August 9, 13
53. building products for an unpaying audience of syncopathic journalists and 18-24 year olds with no technology budget? Friday, August 9, 13
54. power Friday, August 9, 13
55. influence control enforcement Friday, August 9, 13
56. centralized decision making executive directive top-down Friday, August 9, 13
57. uninformed choices low morale lack of true responsibility Friday, August 9, 13
58. charisma popularity Friday, August 9, 13
59. emotional decision making allegiances loyalty belonging Friday, August 9, 13
60. punish dissent blame fear Friday, August 9, 13
61. no risk-taking failure to report/escalate problems endemic dishonesty Friday, August 9, 13
62. pressure timelines roadmaps Friday, August 9, 13
63. low quality software burn out dates, not utility Friday, August 9, 13
64. homogeneity Friday, August 9, 13
65. who the fuck did you hire. Friday, August 9, 13
66. white male straight Friday, August 9, 13
67. brogramming homophobic sexist racist assholes? Friday, August 9, 13
68. shared technical principles Friday, August 9, 13
69. application developers? ops? distributed systems? front-end development? Friday, August 9, 13
70. architectural beliefs approaches to building services methodologies for operating teams strategies for evaluating technologies Friday, August 9, 13
71. people tend to do what they’re good at. what’s missing? Friday, August 9, 13
72. people tend to do what they know. what’s missing? Friday, August 9, 13
73. history Friday, August 9, 13
74. historical patterns and context Friday, August 9, 13
75. firings layoffs outages failed projects Friday, August 9, 13
76. past success glory processes practices entrenched technologies existing knowledge bases Friday, August 9, 13
77. still relevant when you’re trying to get somewhere new? Friday, August 9, 13
78. Friday, August 9, 13
79. rewards values power homogeneity history Friday, August 9, 13
80. duality Friday, August 9, 13
81. create a culture where it’s safe to examine what is really going on Friday, August 9, 13
82. everything is broken Friday, August 9, 13
83. but how broken is up to you Friday, August 9, 13
84. thank you Friday, August 9, 13