John K. Sawers
Co-Host of Greater Than Code
Amongst John’s weaponry are public speaking, doing the rails thing, and talking about feelings in public. His technology talks aren’t about technology and sometimes he has time to meditate. He remembers the sound of dialup.
Soon, John will no longer write much code, having intentionally (yes, intentionally) moved into management. He seems to think that making people better is more satisfying than making computers better. With that in mind he’s also spent a lot of time mentoring bootcamp developers and supervising workshops focused on deep emotional work.
He spends days at Privia Health, nights as co-founder and CTO of Data Simply and all the rest of it at johnksawers.com and emotionalAPI.com.
John K. Sawers has hosted 95 Episodes.
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181: Normalcy Theater with Aaron Aldrich
May 6th, 2020 | 56 mins 7 secs
In this episode, Aaron Aldrich joins the show to talk about how everything has a technical aspect, connecting high-performing resilient teams, how a virtual tech conference has actually worked in the wake of COVID-19, and a concept called normalcy theater: maintaining a sense that everything is okay when it’s clearly not.
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Special Edition: COVID-19
April 9th, 2020 | 53 mins 7 secs
In this special episode of Greater Than Code, several of our panelists have a candid conversation about the current COVID-19 situation, how it has been affecting them personally, and how they believe it will affect the tech industry as a whole. Discussion topics include how it feels both to be working and unemployed during the pandemic, productivity while quarantined, the effect on WFH and conference culture, the current political climate, and human resiliency in the face of the unknown.
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177: Source Docs and People with Chris Stead
April 8th, 2020 | 55 mins 5 secs
In this episode, Chris Stead joins the show to talk about source documents and their relation to people, encouraging others to write code for people, interviewing for the benefit of the interviewee, and the fact that code stores emotion.
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175: Developing for the Long Term with Eric A. Meyer
March 25th, 2020 | 1 hr 6 mins
Eric A. Meyer talks about developing for the long term, diving into the topics of the legacy capability of the web, ethical dimensions, stress cases, and the designated dissenter.
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174: Resilience
March 18th, 2020 | 41 mins 18 secs
The panelists discuss the importance of resilience; not only in the tech industry but in life itself. They apply resilience to leadership, discuss the difference between resilience and sustainability, relate it to leadership and diversity and inclusion, and discuss the price we pay for not prioritizing resilience.
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173: The Ethical Open Source Movement
March 11th, 2020 | 46 mins 19 secs
The panelists take over in a riveting discussion of the Ethical Open Source Movement. Coraline talks about her work in the movement, and the panelists also discuss the Open Source License, OSI, litigation thoughts, peaceful revolutions and reform, advantages of adopting the license, evolutions of open source, and the concept of community.
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169: Career Elbows
February 12th, 2020 | 1 hr 1 min
The panelists discuss career transitions and share information about job searching, interviewing, and resilience.
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167: Clarity of Thought with Ted M. Young
January 29th, 2020 | 1 hr 1 min
Ted M. Young talks about coding on a live stream, research as a ‘drug,’ connecting the academic idea of expertise to everyday context, code reviews, recording yourself coding, live streaming as an introvert, the difference between training and live coding, applying research to the TDD teaching technique, and human learning.
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162: Glue Work with Denise Yu
December 25th, 2019 | 1 hr 1 min
Denise Yu talks about the concept of "Glue Work", what she has done to improve the glue work situation, how to address changing the structure of glue work, offboarding yourself, release engineering, being a product manager, and being back in a development role.
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The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
December 10th, 2019 | 12 mins 10 secs
On this day in Paris in 1948, the United Nations issued the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a milestone document that sets out the fundamental rights and privileges of all people and all nations. In honor of the anniversary of this document, the panelists of Greater Than Code have come together to share their reading of the document with all of you.
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159: Bias in AI with Lauren Maffeo
December 4th, 2019 | 59 mins 3 secs
Lauren Maffeo talks about bias in AI, how the media affects people’s perception of AI, concerns of small to midsize businesses pertaining to AI, how to mitigate bias in AI, ethics in AI, fairness vs. accuracy in algorithms, preventing bias in AI, working remotely, and diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
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158: Exploring Company Values with Ariel Caplan
November 27th, 2019 | 1 hr 2 mins
Ariel Caplan talks about extreme irritability, accessibility needs, rabbinical school, and developing company values.
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156: Authenticity in Interviewing with James Edward Gray II
November 13th, 2019 | 1 hr 2 mins
James Edward Gray II talks about why “Just Be Yourself” is terrible advice, being authentic in an interview, turning your interviewer into your advocate, intrinsic motivation, technical interviews, storytelling in the interview, and management techniques.
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154: Filtering Your Brain with Ambreen Hasan
October 30th, 2019 | 44 mins 46 secs
Ambreen Hasan talks about fixed mindset vs growth mindset, her hobbies outside of software, thinking about things in a molecular way, her journey into software engineering, self-advocating for new work experience, and empathy in engineering.
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151: Off Meta with Amir Rajan
October 9th, 2019 | 1 hr 10 mins
Amir Rajan talks about having sensitivity to development pain, developer productivity, optimizing local maxima, and game development.
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147: Organizing Organizations with Jennifer Tu
September 11th, 2019 | 52 mins 8 secs
Jennifer Tu talks about coaching clients to reorganize their organizations due to growth, dealing with being emotional over your code, avoiding non-consensual teaching, and the fact that learning sucks!