It's Not How Well the Dog Dances

The Playing Field

25 March, 2019

I spent the weekend at a Hackathon. I mean fortunately I didn’t spend the entire weekend there, unlike the participants who actually in fact did spend the weekend trying to produce some decent code, taking catnaps on the floor in between work sessions. No, I am much too old to do any productive work this way, but I did spend a lot of time there talking to some very smart young people who were trying to solve interesting problems and competing to win prizes. My employer Red Hat was one of the sponsors of the event, called Tech Together, and from our standpoint it was a great success — we have signed up I believe five interns for this summer, possibly more, and we learned a lot about how to make the event more successful for us in the future.

The interesting thing about this particular Hackathon is that it was restricted to people who prefer to be referred to as “she/her.” There are lots of good reasons to have a Hackathon so devised, an important one being that young people who prefer the same pronoun I do (“he/him”) are so goddamned obnoxious and horrible in large groups. (I say “are” without speculation as to the reason why, although being a staunch relativist I think it’s mostly just the way us he/hims are socialized.) At any rate, Hackathons restricted to she/hers provide participants a way to work in groups, learn, and compete without some he/him dominating the conversation, keyboard-barging, and otherwise impeding the group dynamic. The teams involved actually do write useful code and solve interesting problems, and my guess is they become more confident in their own abilities and meet a bunch of other interesting people taking a similar path in life.

There was one aspect of Tech Together that struck me as problematic, though, and to be honest I’m not quite sure what to make of it. The point of a Hackathon, for the participants at least, is to compete to win prizes. Some of the prizes are quite substantial — Microsoft gave away like 5 X-Boxes, for example — and worth competing for. Yet I found Tech Together’s overall vibe, from the name on down, was mostly about inclusiveness and “Isn’t this great that we’re all here together you are all so amazing.” It very much did not feel like it was about “Our team is going to kick all your asses and win this thing.” I think we can take it as a given that she/hers are every bit as competitive and even cutthroat as he/hims, so why sublimate the competition part? I suppose it is a natural consequence of trying to make the event a protected space, which is absolutely a good thing… but could we have a protected space, that nonetheless still has a little ass-kicking going on inside it?

I think what I mean to say here is that finding the right approach to rectify an imbalance — like the ridculous “she/her” deficit in tech — is subtle. You have to provide a space where people can achieve, without feeling like their achievement was only made possible by having the space. To that end, I’d like to see a little more explicit acknowledgement or even encouragement of the competitive aspect of Tech Together. Let the winners come away feeling like they have triumphed; it will make the losers leave determined to return the next year and crush everything in their path.

More Still Water

21 March, 2019

The Fort Point Channel from the Congress Street bridge

Late-March stillness is producing some really neat images.

Not Ranting

20 March, 2019

I have a few pent-up rants that I keep thinking about posting here, but every time I go to launch into them I remember that there are at least one or two people who actually read this thing. Ranting will make me feel better, but will it help them or resonate with them? Unlikely, I think.

(I will happy to rant to any of you in person about our annoying landlords or any number of other subjects any time you like, but let’s put that off for now.)

What prompted me to write about this was a meeting I was in yesterday in which a very knowledgeable person whom I respect took up most of everyone’s time with a predictable rant on an unsurprising topic. Nothing he said was wrong, or even exaggerated (much), but it did not in the end serve any purpose. So why did he do it? Frustration? Hope for a solution to magically appear? An evil desire to waste fifteen minutes of everyone’s time for no reason?

All of these are part of our motivation when ranting or snarking or being generally counterproductive, but the primary driver is always a search for connection. A sufficiently succinct and powerful description of how desperately fucked up things are, with no apparent solution, brings commiseration and hence camaraderie. Rants are not requests for solutions or advice, they are attempts to bond. Sometimes, they work; sometimes they work too well and political parties are formed out of them. What is a Trump rally, after all, if not a large-scale rant?

The problem with bonding over ranting, though, is that agreement on the problem does not constitute agreement on the solution, or maybe more importantly agreement to help work on the solution. Identifying a problem and proposing an approach to solving or at least reducing it is a Better Thing To Do, in all respects, than uncorking a full-scale diatribe. Unfortunately it’s also hard, and it immediately opens the proposer up to criticism, bike-shedding, and all sort of other evils.

I am as guilty of ranting or, perhaps worse, corrosive off-hand snark as anyone in my industry. I am however trying to be better — I’ve resolved this year to at least pause and try to think of a better approach before launching into a full-scale airing of grievances. I don’t know if this will make me any more effective — maybe people will just stop listening to me — but I’m pretty sure it will make me happier.

More Water

18 March, 2019

I’ve gotten into the habit of taking photos of the Fort Point Channel whenever I walk over it, assuming the water looks interesting. Maybe some day I will do something with all of them, but for now here are a couple more.

Between the Congress Street and Northern Avenue bridges, 16 March, around 5:45 p.m.

Looking at the Summer Street bridge from the west side, 16 March, around 5:50 p.m.

No Wrong Way

16 March, 2019

Kim and I were lucky enough to be having dinner at the bar at Les Zygomates last night when a unique (to me, at least) trio came on called The Gatsby Trio. They had a guitar player with a super chill hollow-body, a trumpet/flugelhorn player, and most interestingly a singer in a kind of 20s getup who was keeping time with brushes on a music stand. Turns out she is called Gabriela Martina and she also does a bunch of other stuff than the 20s shtik.

As a drummer I was both intrigued and mildly annoyed when I realized this singer was really going to keep time with nothing but a pair of brushes on a music stand. On the one hand, cool idea — brushes are idiomatic for 20s swing, after all, and good drummers know well that you can play anything that makes an interesting noise. On the other hand, given she’s mainly singing, can she possibly be doing a great job of keeping time at the same time? Doubtful.

Well I was very pleasantly surprised. She did in fact keep good time once she got warmed up and truth be told she’s better with brushes than I ever was. Plus she was a very accomplished singer who did a credible job scatting (hard to pull off with a straight face, much less well) and also took a couple solos whistling. Whistling, no less. All this while also keeping decent time with brushes on a flat music stand. We thoroughly enjoyed the music, which was not at all confined to 20s swing thank heavens but ranged through a whole bunch of interesting styles.

When Kim and I were revisiting the experience later, we realized that the great thing about this trio was that they had pulled together a very non-standard configuration — no bass, no drummer, no keyboard — and made us forget about it. That in turn put me in mind of one of the things I like most about jazz, which is that there is no wrong way to play it. In most cases, you have a tune — a melody — with a suggested harmonization. You’re not bound to play the tune as written and you’re not bound to the suggested harmonization, or to any particular combination of instruments. You play the tune at the beginning of the number and then you repeat (usually) the form while various people improvise over it, and then you play the tune again. It is just enough structure to let you play and bring your audience along with you, without limiting you very much at all. All you have to do to succeed is assemble good players, listen to one another, and not let your mind wander.

(Truly great players, of course, can discard even this meager framework. Coltrane’s Live In Seattle for example is one of the all time great jazz recordings ever, but it pays almost no homage to conventional form. But do not deceive yourself into thinking there is no form or structure — there absolutely is, you just have to be really familiar with jazz to know where to look for it.)

The question is, is it possible to live and work according to these same principles? Can a team at work function like a jazz combo — assemble good people, provide the absolute minimum structure, listen to one another, don’t let your mind wander, and success will follow? In some cases I think yes, and it is absolutely the best way to work when it is appropriate. But be careful: because there is no wrong way to do it, there is also no formula for how it’s done. So as a manager, if you want to assemble the best group you can, you’re forced to improvise every time.

This must be why I like being a manager…