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

  • 122: Surfing with Michael "GeePaw" Hill

    March 20th, 2019  |  1 hr 5 mins

    Michael “GeePaw” Hill talks about autopoiesis (say what??), the cost of certainty, doubt vs narrowing, thin and thick culture, and occupational game playing.

  • 121: Emergency Communication with Thai Wood

    March 13th, 2019  |  54 mins 30 secs

    Thai Wood is a developer turned EMT turned developer again. He talks about resilience engineering and closed-loop communication, his experience as an EMT and the lessons he’s brought from there to his work as a developer, incident response, the normalization of deviation, and asking questions to get helpful answers.

  • 120: Expect The Unexpected with Andy Hunt

    March 6th, 2019  |  1 hr 7 mins

    Andy Hunt talks about iterative development and continuous learning and how we should become comfortable with uncertainty. He also talks about his personal mantra of feedback, context, and learning, as well as adaptability and making groups more effective. Andy also talks about his personal software development journey and his dalliances in writing science fiction.

  • 119: Cultural Brokerage with Bianca Escalante

    February 27th, 2019  |  1 hr 6 mins

    In this episode, Bianca Escalante joins the show to talk about code switching, normalizing conversations, speaking about race openly, and the concept of distance traveled. Reconciling failure, repressing feelings, and the importance of human connection are also among topics discussed, as well as a conversation around who is ultimately responsible for diversity and inclusion work.

  • 118: A Piece of Luck with Jessica Kerr

    February 20th, 2019  |  1 hr 5 mins

    Panelist, Jessica Kerr, talks about her superpower being a property of a situation. She also ponders the interpretation of luck, physics, conference speaking, TDD, and continuous learning.

  • 117: Wholeness and Separation

    February 13th, 2019  |  42 mins 4 secs

    What does it take to create safe conversations in our organizations, and in our global world? What does “safe” even mean? In this episode, the panelists get into a philosophical discussion about the dynamics of human relationships, differences in paradigm, and how to improve our ability to see one another.

  • 116: Healing Organizational Trauma with Matt Stratton

    February 7th, 2019  |  42 mins 4 secs

    In this episode, Matt Stratton discusses incident response communication, leading by example, the way we should be handling postmortems, and telling the hero’s story vs the story of the people.

  • 115: Tension Between Opposites with Sam Joseph

    January 30th, 2019  |  59 mins 42 secs

    In this episode, Sam Joseph talks about making spaces to have safe and nonviolent conversations, collaborative communication and learning, delivering working solutions that meet end-user needs, and the value of doing things the way you’re used to vs a ...

  • 114: Theory of Mind with Jean-Francois Cloutier

    January 23rd, 2019  |  1 hr 16 mins

    In this episode, Jean-Francois Cloutier talks about theory of mind: his Elixir-powered robots, predictive processing, object-oriented programming, intuition and emergent properties, and the ineffability of Smalltalk.

  • 113: Privilege as Legacy Code with Amr

    January 16th, 2019  |  46 mins 11 secs

    In this episode, Amr talks about the fact that it’s not just code: people need to own their privilege and use it for good by calling out others, being good allies, and avoiding biases.

  • 112: Dancing About Vulnerability with Marcel Byrd

    January 9th, 2019  |  48 mins 22 secs

    In this episode, Marcel Byrd talks about the intersection of public health and art, authenticity and vulnerability, reading a room and determining safety, and the beauty of dance.

  • 111: Thermodynamics of Emotion with Thomas Perry

    January 2nd, 2019  |  1 hr 10 mins

    In this episode, Thomas Perry talks about thermodynamics of emotion. Observing animal and human behavior is also discussed, as well as organizational restructuring, Flow and how it moves through systems, and alignment in appetite and emotion.

  • 110: Human Incident Response with Courtney Eckhardt

    December 19th, 2018  |  1 hr 22 secs

    In this episode, Courtney Eckhardt talks about incident response: how we talk and interact with people who are affected by crappy things. She also talks about disabilities in the workplace and professional spaces, the tension between accessibility and security, and incident retrospectives and defensiveness as a natural instinct to feedback.

  • 109: Tech Fashion Part 2 with Jaya Iyer of Svaha

    December 12th, 2018  |  53 mins 9 secs

    In this episode, Jaya Iyer of Svaha, a company known for their STEAM prints and dresses with pockets, talks about the lack of science and tech-themed clothing (especially for children), how personal of a choice clothing is, and the importance of expressing yourself and shattering stereotypes and social norms.

  • 108: Tech Fashion Part 1 with Kayte Malik of Dress Code

    December 5th, 2018  |  45 mins 40 secs

    In this episode, Kayte Malik, of Dress Code, shares the mission of her company: to empower more girls and women to get involved in coding through creation and innovation. Kayte and the panelists discuss confidence, owning your accomplishments, and debunking the myth that code, tech, and STEM are for boys only.

  • Special Edition: Ruby Together – LIVE! from RubyConf 2018

    December 3rd, 2018  |  40 mins 28 secs

    This special episode of Greater Than Code was recorded in-person during RubyConf in Los Angeles on November 15th. Ruby Together's Executive Director, André Arko, was joined by board members, Jonan Scheffler, Valerie Woolard Srinivasan, and Adarsh Pandit. They discussed recent changes to the organization, including André's decision to step down from the board into the executive director position, the RubyMe mentorship program, and a preview of awesome new things to come.