Greater Than Code

The Human Side of Technology

About the show

For a long time, tech culture has focused too narrowly on technical skills; this has resulted in a tech community that too often puts companies and code over people. Greater Than Code is a podcast that invites the voices of people who are not heard from enough in tech: women, people of color, trans and/or queer folks, to talk about the human side of software development and technology. Greater Than Code is providing a vital platform for these conversations, and developing new ideas of what it means to be a technologist beyond just the code.

Featuring an ongoing panel of racially and gender diverse tech panelists, the majority of podcast guests so far have been women in tech! We’ve covered topics including imposter syndrome, mental illness, sexuality, unconscious bias and social justice. We also have a major focus on skill sets that tech too often devalues, like team-building, hiring, community organizing, mentorship and empathy. Each episode also includes a transcript.

We have an active Slack community that members can join by pledging as little as $1 per month via Patreon.

Greater Than Code on social media

Episodes

  • 138: Job Satisfaction

    July 10th, 2019  |  1 hr 3 mins

    This conversation came from a discussion in the Greater Than Code Slack community. We spend a lot of hours of our lives doing our jobs. Do you look forward to those hours? Do you dread those hours? Are they enhancing your life? Are they ruining your life? How does your job affect your whole self as a person? The panel discusses.

  • 137: Pairing & Sharing with Llewellyn Falco and Clare Macrae

    July 3rd, 2019  |  1 hr 8 mins

    Llewellyn Falco and Clare Macrae talk about the special bond and kinship they have formed via pair programming, as well as the sharing and writing of documentation from the perspective of what the human reading it is trying to accomplish.

  • 136: Addressing Technical Friction

    June 26th, 2019  |  55 mins 5 secs

    In this episode, the panelists talk about a Tweet of Sam’s that had recently gotten some attention re: responsible refactoring and technical friction. They discuss reacting to other people’s code with kindness and empathy, requesting code walkthroughs, being explicit and clearly stating the problems you are trying to solve within your codebases before refactoring, and what to do if you experience resistance.

  • 135: Intentional Learning with Saron Yitbarek

    June 19th, 2019  |  1 hr 4 mins

    Saron Yitbarek talks about what it means to be an expert in “Newbie-ism”, explores the idea that coding is a reflection of people, and shares why lexicon and creating a shared language amongst a community matters.

  • 134: Building Profiles with Halleemah Nash

    June 12th, 2019  |  54 mins 51 secs

    Halleemah Nash talks about the ideas of “cultural fluency" and “urban authenticity”: operating authentically and being who you are in any space you are in. Other concepts discussed are existing in Other spaces, active listening, and building bridges to change the complexion of the workforce by shortening the distance for Generation Z.

  • 133: Dark Horses with Chanté Thurmond

    June 5th, 2019  |  1 hr 6 mins

    Chanté Thurmond talks about spotting talent (dark horses), perceiving talent/potential, confronting biases and societal categorization, identity as a feedback loop, and using metrics to improve organizational D&I.

  • 132: Distilling the Hailstorm with Claire Lew

    May 29th, 2019  |  43 mins 2 secs

    Claire Lew of Know Your Team, joins the panel to talk about bad bosses: panelist experiences, symptoms of poor leadership and management, and asks the question, “how do we know that we, ourselves are not bad bosses?”

  • 131: Poo-Covered Rocks with Cat Swetel

    May 22nd, 2019  |  52 mins 59 secs

    Cat Swetel joins the show to talk about managing a platform with ancient value, exploring systems, Wardley mapping, and looking for poo-covered rocks: the importance of observation and reflection.

  • 130: Acceptance is the First Step with Britni Alexander

    May 15th, 2019  |  52 mins 52 secs

    In the first half of the show, Britni Alexander talks about resilience: seeing failure as an opportunity, not wallowing in failure, and the ultimate acceptance of failure.

    Then she shares a bunch of lies that developers tell themselves and others including: who is or isn’t a programmer, what it’s actually like to be a programmer, how to measure success as a programmer, and more.

  • 129: Bringing The Fun with Lori Olson

    May 8th, 2019  |  57 mins 26 secs

    Lori Olson talks about bringing the fun to the jobs we do ourselves, as well as cultural differences between programming language communities, thoughts on platformification, mentoring novices and beginners, and creating gaming tutorials to get people (and kids especially) excited about programming.

  • 128: Finding and Cultivating Community Leaders with Ben Pollard

    May 1st, 2019  |  58 mins 40 secs

    In this episode, Ben Pollard talks about starting Local Welcome, a charity in the UK that makes it fun and easy to cook and eat with refugees in folks' local community. Humanization, cognitive biases, and heuristics are discussed, as well as the ideas of humans thriving together and measuring success.

  • 127: Hope and Suffering with Amy Newell

    April 24th, 2019  |  1 hr 6 mins

    Amy Newell talks about suffering and sustaining hope and faith in the face of what feels like no hope and no faith, living a valuable life vs a happy life, bringing your “whole self” into the workplace, changing culture in organizations, and bipolar disorder.

  • 126: Asking Powerful Questions with Suzan Bond

    April 17th, 2019  |  52 mins 45 secs

    Suzan Bond, Coraline, and John discuss blending technology with coaching and humans, managing and working on distributed teams, autonomy, listening to yourself and your intuition, and developing solid leadership skills.

  • 125: Everything is Communication with Sam Aaron

    April 10th, 2019  |  1 hr 8 mins

    Sam Aaron chats with the panel about creating Sonic Pi, the importance of patience and delayed gratification, logging, and fixed tempo, clocks, and time.

  • 124: Navigating Neurodiversity with Helen Needham

    April 3rd, 2019  |  52 mins 28 secs

    Helen Needham, an autistic person and an advocate of promoting the value of neurodivergent thinking, talks about decoding people, the intersection of empathy and neurodiversity, being deliberate as a survival skill, and paying attention to EQ: emotional intelligence.

  • 123: BOOK CLUB! Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

    March 27th, 2019  |  1 hr 43 secs

    This show is a group discussion about the insights inside Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Persig. The panelists consider how the book can help us to understand the culture war that is going on in the world right now and what we can do as individuals, communities, companies, and as an industry of software engineers, to build bridges that can help bring humans back together again at all scales.