Life is growth. If we stop growing, technically and spiritually, we are as good as dead.

—- Morihei Ueshiba

I started studying aikido about 12 years ago, shortly after I moved to San Francisco. I had no idea how much I would enjoy it, or how much it would change my life.

I didn’t know what it was when I first started, but the translation I like the best is “Path of Life Harmony.”

This is one of those posts that I’m writing mostly because I’m still frequently hearing people say they’re struggling with the question of how to interview data people. I’ve blogged and spoken previously about the misery of being an interviewee, so suffice it to say I have a ton of empathy for how awful it is to go through a bad interview process, and how disappointing it is to go through a long, grueling interview and not get an offer.

Question: How come we don’t have more diversity at our company?

This is one of those posts, I’m writing it because I keep hearing people asking the same questions over and over. I hear these questions at meetups and in Slack groups every week, and I hate seeing people trying to reinvent the wheel when it’s really not necessary.

Answer: You haven’t tried that hard.

For the purposes of this blog post, let’s go with the hypothesis that there are plenty of nontraditional candidates out there like me. We didn’t major in computer science, but we learned how to code and we enjoy it. We’re coming from other kinds of backgrounds. For some of us, this is a second career. We have tons of transferable skills. You should be hiring more people like us.

I was chatting with some friends recently, and this question came up:

What does a good working relationship with your manager look like?

This is the list I came up with. I’m not saying I’ve been perfect at all of these myself as a manager, but it’s what I strive for, and it’s what I look for in a good manager.

1. They trust you
   • They ask for your input when appropriate
   • They promote your work to others in the company where appropriate
2. You trust them
   • No surprises
   • You feel safe asking them for help when you need it
   • They discuss your career goals with you, and help steer you toward them

This post is just an elaboration on what I mean by each of the things on that list.

Over the years, I’ve attended a lot of technical (read: software) talks. Once upon a time, I attended PyData, at Facebook. I’ve noticed at all of these events that the quality of presentations varies widely.

If you’re like me, and you go to technical meetups and conferences around the Bay Area, for example, you’ll notice that some talks are well-rehearsed.

But some seem like they were thrown together at the last minute.