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.
Greater Than Code on social media
Episodes
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153: Your Favorite Philosopher Is You with Mannah Kallon
October 23rd, 2019 | 40 mins 46 secs
Mannah Kallon talks about assessing identity and evaluating sense of self in a new culture, using offensive terms, moments of self-doubt when someone doesn’t believe you, empathy, retaliation, and recognizing privilege.
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152: Embracing Mathematics with Philip Wadler
October 16th, 2019 | 49 mins 32 secs
Philip Wadler talks about Programming Language Foundations in Agda, using a proof assistant, specifications, and how to translate abstract concepts so practitioners can use them.
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Special Edition: Becoming an Elder & the "Stage Two" of Life
October 15th, 2019 | 4 mins 55 secs
This audio clip is a conversation between Claire Lew & Arty Starr about the journey of becoming an Elder, and why Arty decided to change her name.
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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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150: Cultural Transformation with Brian Lonsdorf
October 2nd, 2019 | 1 hr 5 mins
Brian Lonsdorf talks about the role of empathy in teaching and learning, learning and teaching functional programming, compositional programming in JavaScript, and machine learning and AI.
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149: Creating Effective Culture with Jesse James
September 25th, 2019 | 1 hr 11 mins
Jesse James talks with the panelists about all things culture: culture fit, creating, building, and forcing culture, affecting culture, culture as a descriptor, culture as an ongoing process, and the fact that culture evolves so rapidly that it can be hard to keep up with.
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148: Floober and Cognitive Outsourcing with Jacob Stoebel
September 18th, 2019 | 58 mins 43 secs
Jacob Stoebel joins GTC as an official panelist and talks about neurodiversity in workplaces, driving desire to learn things, personal automation, and storycrafting and succession planning.
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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!
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146: Self.conference with Amber Conville
September 4th, 2019 | 37 mins 1 sec
Amber Conville gives the 411 on all things Self.-related like the evolution and background, the transparency of conference metrics, partnering with organizations, navigating the conference organization world, and past conference highlights.
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145: Balancing Hierarchies and Equity in Organizations with Brandy Foster
August 28th, 2019 | 1 hr 3 mins
Brandy Foster talks about code of ethics, the role of diversity and inclusion in solving problems, balancing hierarchies and equity in organizations, and unlearning racism and other harmful behaviors.
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144: Being Greater Than Code with Jamison Dance
August 21st, 2019 | 50 mins 46 secs
Jamison Dance joins the show to talk about life as an engineering manager: context switching, career advancement, and providing team members with opportunities for growth. He also talks about his podcast that he co-hosts: Soft Skills Engineering, the evolution of tech culture, and organizing the React Rally conference.
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143: Indigenous Data Sovereignty with Keoni Mahelona
August 14th, 2019 | 1 hr 8 mins
Keoni Mahelona talks about the importance of having respect for indiginous cultures, communities, and people. He talks about indigenous data sovereignty: creating a license to protect it, sharing data responsibly, and the importance of doing the right thing.
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142: Modeling Constraints in Human Systems with Will Larson
August 7th, 2019 | 1 hr 10 mins
Will Larson talks about systems thinking and theory. How do you know when to stop modeling? How do you figure out what your team’s rate of change is? How can we share ideas and contribute together as a community? The panel discusses.
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141: Navigating Blame
July 31st, 2019 | 48 mins 16 secs
The panelists talk about blame: perspectives on blame, blamelessness, postmortems/incident reviews, the fact that systems are benign, survival rules, and gaining EQ and inward exploration.
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140: Bounded Perfection with Amitai Schleier
July 24th, 2019 | 58 mins 12 secs
Amitai Schleier talks about talks about running mail servers, orientation in problem spaces, refactoring, and the concept of “bounded perfection”.
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139: Conferencing
July 18th, 2019 | 59 mins 19 secs
As veteran conference speakers, the panelists decided to have a conversation around conferences: what newbies can expect, how to make the most out of them, and advice for if you’re thinking about speaking.