 Thank you. Thank you All right So yet again, like I said mental and physical health mentions and discrimination in the workplace if this is not the talk for you No shame at all at more power to you. Please take the moment to take a stretch break But that being said let's dive in So this is me and these is what I look like inside the communities that I'm part of It's visible that I work for MongoDB on our cloud web Team I exist and largely queer and queer inclusive spaces like LGBTQ and tech and out in tech I attend a lot of conferences. I prioritize those that include diversity and inclusion as a core topic I freelance with a pretty rad web collective called little weaver web where primarily right now I'm just doing a lot of work involving music theory and that I'm in training as a facilitator For a peer-run support group providing mental health resources for free In addition in all of these spaces I'm also get to be open about my life as a queer neurodivergent person And I'm super privileged to be able to be out about that in the workplace I get to be out that I prefer being called queer over gay I get to be out that I have a disability which is PTSD and I deal with anxiety daily And I get to be out using they and them along with he and him Because gender and dissociation and stuff is like really complicated, but we're not going to talk about that Because this instead is what I look like to recruiters and anyone outside of my community And I have to say that that ends in December and that's not December of this year And that's December of last year because I have no open-source contributions pretty much for the past 12 months Like I said, I'm effectively invisible to recruiters and hiring managers And this is still what I'm distilled down to in the eyes of people who don't value my community And the people I base my life around So that being said, why is community engagement defined as de facto open-source software contribution? If this is community engagement, then whose community is this really? Because it's not mine And if this is community engagement, then is this the only valid form of engagement? Because I do a lot of different things and I don't think that they're invalid necessarily And if this is community engagement, then who are we excluding right here right now at this conference? Who by defining value in open-source software contributions has just been erased? So to answer this question, I want to take a moment and first define a group of engineers whose work is largely invisible And then I want to talk about how these people are hired and how these people are impacted by modern hiring practices And also how our managers and colleagues can start to empower quiet developers And finally, if we do all of this, then we'll get around to the question of how can we actually redefine community engagement at its core? What does that mean? So let's get started. Who are quiet developers? Well before we get there, Scott Hanselman in 2012 wrote an article discussing what he called dark matter developers And this was the statement that most engineers do not work with the latest stacks, frameworks or libraries Like dark matter in astrophysics, he wrote that these engineers are practically invisible to the eye But their presence is felt and inescapable. Their work represents the majority of all engineering work But otherwise has very little visibility At a glance by a hiring manager or recruiter when looking in terms of open-source These people effectively don't exist or if they do they seem like they're diametrically opposed to emerging technology And yet they still are the majority of all engineers Similarly, I've seen executives and managers bifurcate their work between emerging technology and Legacy technology and decide that legacy technology is great to outsource to underpaid minorities in another country and Give the emerging technology to the few in-house people and that right there is also oppression So I wanted to take that and extend it a little bit further to what I call the quiet developer who are Invisible to because invisible developers actually sometimes really love working with the latest technologies or have a vested interest in learning So I use the phrase quiet developer specifically for anyone who's largely invisible in a greater public forum like open-source software Our work as quiet developers is important and worthwhile But might not be necessarily visible outside of our employers We may choose for any reasons not to engage with writing code outside of work because we may find the idea of marketing ourselves To be exhausting Unreasonable or for some people at times even dangerous So what factors might cause a quiet developer to avoid coding outside of work? Well, here's nine examples day-to-day discrimination and harassment as marginalized people Visible and invisible disabilities overly demanding and sometimes abusive workplaces The location of where you work versus home and the length of your commute Caring for children dependence or elders and keep in mind dependence don't necessarily need to be inside your own family They can be other people that you care for Language barriers and employers who don't respect English as a second third fourth fifth and so on language abusive open-source Experiences or abusive experience in other online communities and in real life communities as well observation of religious practices and financial insecurity Outstanding debt and additional jobs which gets compounded on top of underpaid salaries for minorities These issues often Disproportionately impact women queer people of all genders and people of color Because when you're already undervalued and underpaid and especially if you feel unsafe in or outside of your work environment All additional work outside your nine-to-five means paying a lot more unpaid emotional labor forward And of course, it's worth mentioning people can have literally interest in anything other than software development This is totally and completely valid Specifically people do not need an excuse to avoid additional work or not contribute to open source people don't need an excuse for why work isn't their top priority and Regardless of circumstance people are never obligated to structure their entire lives around their employers Yet in light of this everyone still deserves to be treated as competent and capable and this means not judging open source Contributions as a strict positive because if you are giving certain people a strict positive and other people no chance at that That's not a bonus. That's actually just the same shitty thing you were doing before So let's talk about hiring on that note The list of possible reasons why quiet developers might not engage in coding sounds awfully familiar to some people who are involved in hiring And that's because it is it's really similar to the list of subjects that are illegal to discuss during hiring And so get yourself ready for a giant wall of tech slide I want to list all of these out explicitly because it's incredibly important that marginalized people interviewing in every field know about this And I sincerely wish that I knew this five six seven years ago So employers under us law cannot ask about age primary or spoken or written language Religious practices or observation membership in social organizations or clubs marriage status or parental status or other family relationships gender identity and sexual orientation tobacco alcohol or any legal drug usage including your current usage previous drug usage or recovery disability status both in terms of physical and mental illness prescription drug usage history or upcoming medical procedures commute length or where you live home your home location or your distance from work same thing and then student or other outstanding debt or really any financial details about your life and So as we can see open-source software contributions to often serve as a proxy to these questions By relying on work curated outside of our free time or during our free time rather hiring managers and recruiters use community Engagement the same way they use cultural fit, which is to say no to screening employees that legally they should be unable to dismiss This is the bottom line for recruiters and hiring managers filtering out prospective employers by OSS virtually guarantees Homogenous candidate pool and none of us should want that if we begin with homogene There's no way we can effectively hire and ultimately empower oppressed people a caveat it is never the responsibility though of quiet developers themselves to fix hiring just as it's not the representative Responsibility of oppressed minorities to eliminate structural violence by marginalized people simply existing and fighting to survive day to day We tacitly resist these structures and in doing so preserve our own health safety and well-being and One more caveat, which is one of my favorites bootstrap rhetoric is toxic Some people through a combination of effort luck and in most cases privileges wind up in positions of power and stability and Accredit this strictly to their own efforts in doing so they assume that everyone around them can achieve the same result Given the same effort and this is patently false by doing this We give into the structures that are actually oppressing us Never tell someone to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps in hiring or in general So now that we've talked about hiring quiet developers, let's talk about how we can empower them Turns out there are a lot of tips we can use for managers and colleagues And these are also as a bonus really good tips for junior devs if you've got junior devs on your team But first one last caveat because I really love caveats I'm kind of wishy-washy but to engage and empower quiet developers or any marginalized group for that matter participation in a specific community Should never be a goal nor a requirement Why? Because by requiring engagement in this way we ignore if an employee actually feels safe Instead of labeling an employee at fault We should ask why are these platforms and venues making our employees feel unsafe and by doing this we work to validate the Experiences that are shared with us rather than questioning and invalidating these experiences and also in doing this That we then can begin to change these spaces for the better or if we determine that they're a trash fire We can also create these spaces ourselves So let's talk about conferences because conferences for me personally have been a big issue First off employers love conferences as a way to expand perspectives and contribute to building a career But conferences aren't necessarily a good venue for everyone first off We should never require conference attendance these spaces can be overwhelming and in some cases dangerous for some employees And they typically occur outside of regular work hours, and we already saw what might keep people from engaging outside of work Instead and this is thankfully since the last time I gave this talk is way less controversial We should demand that every conference We or our colleagues attend have a comprehensive code of conduct The code of conduct should be read by everyone Mandatorily and protect people regardless of race gender age Sexuality disability or literally any other concerns that your team raised to you And I want to offer up as a world-class example to check out the code of conduct That's been used by altar comp for the past few years Ash Dryden has put in an enormous amount of work And it is really a world-class code of conduct that protects and empowers minorities in attendance And but also streamlines the conference and just overall makes it a better experience for everyone in attendance RIP altar comp. I know the last one's coming up in San Francisco. So as a plug you should go see that too Site anyway site this code of conduct to your employers and conferences that don't include one We can demand change and like I said at this point. This is not a difficult ask This is a requirement pretty much of every conference But two more things that are especially useful for large conferences ask early and often about safe spaces for oppressed minorities For example this year my colleague Danielle James helped work hard for manga DB world to include a safe space for cis women and Trans people of all genders this space will let people decompress feel safe Just chat express concerns and even share special papers in a safer environment and another example AA Organizing a daily AA meeting or providing local information about groups tells me as a sober person That the relationship between the event and alcohol has been carefully thought out because really alcohol stands diametrically opposed to diversity inclusion initiatives And so I really want to see that people are treating this really carefully Large conferences can also do a second thing Which is if you don't know what spaces you should be supporting ask employees and other attendees What resources would best help them and try to cater to that but keep in mind? This is a sensitive subject So this is probably something that you should be asking anonymously that way. No one is pressured to disclose personal information Now let's talk about small conferences They may not be able to organize nearly as much due to the smaller number of attendees But there are some strategies that work better for small conferences rather than large ones And so for example I'm an introvert and I enjoyed talking to people when I do have the energy But I regularly overspent myself trying to talk to everyone that I get to see and then when I'm worn out I need to be left alone and I get kind of tired of trying to find really polite ways to excuse myself When I spoke at AlterConf New York this year The organizers used this awesome three-card system to verbally indicate if people were welcomed in conversation I don't have my lanyard on me But they were given out three cards a green yellow and red card that would go behind your name in your lanyard and your badge Green meant that you were great with anyone coming up and talking to you Socialization was awesome yellow meant that they would prefer to speak only to people that they already knew and red meant I need some time alone. Please come back to me at a later time and with all three provided with your lanyard up front People were able to express their needs quickly and quietly without having to give excuses and without potentially insulting other people Similarly when at several other smaller conferences this year there were escape rooms that allowed me to find a quiet space immediately if I needed to decompress and I want to say like good job North Bay Python because this already got addressed at the beginning of the conference on Saturday and Sunday there is a room across the street for people and I totally didn't even check in about that So it's just great that this lines up This lets us as attendees prioritize our own needs and feel safe knowing that we are empowered to do what we need to do It also ensures that attendees of all religions and spiritual practices know they have a place to pray or observe in safety So given that I wanted to make clear I am not anti-open source at all. In fact, I'm pretty a pro open source even though I don't contribute much So here are some ways that we can maybe increase the public footprint of quiet developers while still empowering them Open source is still terrifying because your contributions can be evaluated and criticized by individuals who you have no Relationship with who may use it to shame or threaten you as a result You should never require or an expect an employee to participate in open source software You're basically requiring them to work with individuals that have no connection to your team and may behave in vastly different ways than your company Instead create your own internal open source repos from within your organization by abstracting out tools and common patterns that you tend to use and accept voluntary Contributions from quiet developers on your team work with these repos involves pull requests given to the same colleagues as daily work But allows for a safer place to create a public footprint and code and the code review processes are a lot less scary Knowing that the same person who just did your quick PR that you begged everyone on slack for is going to be the same person Who's going to check off your work for open source and Codes of conduct aren't just for conferences either It's becoming more and more common to see them in major open source repositories and your organization and personal work should be no exception explicitly state the treatment and behaviors that are appropriate and unwelcome from contributors those opening bugs and from yourself and your fellow owners as well this code of conduct is meant to Keep people safe, especially as your repository and community adjacent to your repository starts to grow in size a Code of conduct however is useless without enforcement we are all exhausted from brilliant asshole stories this year and beyond and the best way to avoid fallout from potential visible contributors is to Ignoring a code of conduct is to explicitly state. How are we going to enforce it? Warnings bands and every other reaction that needs to be made clear Don't give people who violate your code of conduct a second chance make it clear that this enforcement Extends to creators as well We as core contributors and owners should be willing to live by the same roles that we expect others to uphold With a code of conduct we've established the baseline minimum requirements for making a repo inclusive to all contributors However, being inclusive also means empowering those of us who are under represented Label and preserve the work that your repository needs that can be addressed by new contributors and junior developers When it's really difficult to jump into a code base You don't know it gets even more difficult if you're jumping into a code base You don't know and then you have to find a problem and diagnose the problem Fix it yourself go through all of the things trying to write unit tests to pass get everyone to go there just to find out That your work is not valid So as a quiet developer let alone a quiet developer who's new to your repo in junior and experience We stand a little chance at engaging with you voluntarily So also a guide for new contributors can help break down that barrier and make that first commit even more likely and Finally, let's all vow to not fall into the close won't fix attitude as much as possible If you have to close out an issue a pool request or anything else Avoid the temptation to chastise a user who's voluntarily taken time out of their day to interact with you Explain in complete Sentences the circumstances surrounding the comment if someone does something wrong site and explain real code link to your code You it's up there and get hub and explain what's going on that way the contributor can understand their mistake Help them to understand how the repository works better And they'll be much more likely to respond graciously and contribute later Thank people for their contributions even if they're duplicates even if they're erroneous because no one owes your Repository anything but you as a repository owner. Oh all of your contributors respect So a few other things that don't fall into open source and don't fall into our conferences Certain developers get a lot of recognition internally especially when leading large publicly visible projects Visibility alone is a form of validation Which means quiet developers are less likely to have their day-to-day work validated and this is a big problem One of the best questions that I've ever received from a manager during a one-on-one was just the simple question How do you prefer to be recognized for your work? I in five years of doing work in technology had never been asked this question And it was actually kind of terrifying to have to answer on the fly I kind of stumbled and finally said one-on-one with my team and like I'll do a demo or two if that's cool But more importantly by asking me I actually can know that the form of validation I'm most comfortable and welcome with will be provided and that Validation is provided regardless of how visible my work is or how visible I am and in doing this We assert a space for quiet developers rather than allowing that space to collapse in to provide more for louder more visible and often more senior employees On my team at Mongo we have a few monthly meetings that allow us to share Technologies that we're curious about watch talks. We don't normally have time for practice skills We don't have in brainstorm ideas for new projects But inevitably the content of these talks and luncheons tends to be led by the most senior or vocal engineers And I think that quiet and developers like myself often find ourselves in situations where we need to assert our needs Over the needs of much more experienced and visible colleagues So I would say Though we don't do this you should consider democratizing the subject of talks and demos in your educational contexts anonymously ask people to submit things that are interesting to them and rank how important these are if That's not the most glamorous new specker library Then create space for covering these topics later either in a voluntary synchronous space or an asynchronous training Material available to the whole team or maybe even as an open-source repo that your team can contribute to bringing it back This seems like it might alienate louder and more senior engineers who might know the material But I'd see this as a perfect opportunity to tell that senior engineer This is a chance for you to create and organize material and take on a leadership responsibility in team Education plus we can record these sessions and make them available to even shy quiet developers like me So I can review them at my own pace rather than the pace that went along with the luncheon So we've talked about why someone might be a quiet developer We talked about identifying risks they face during hiring how management and colleagues can create a positive learning focused environment And that's a lot, but I want to dream bigger I want to extend this into a larger conversation outside the scope of just this talk How can we change the way we think about community and software development entirely and to start with that a Strong opinion there is no such thing as a global open-source community the set of all github Contributions for example are in no way accessible equally to all individuals Language barriers prevent this as do dogmatic owners of repository and bias inherent in reviewing and merging pool requests Or even just reviewing issues How many of us have opened an issue on github before just to have it rejected in a personal or hostile way I Have okay like three of us that's great I'm glad for all of the rest of you But I have over and over and over again and I have a tremendous amount of privilege in these spaces So I can't imagine what it's like for other people I've had people flag my issues as bad ideas I once had the owner of a repo get on to Twitter and flame me for two days calling me names Telling the world that I was inferior that Mongo had made a joke of me You know and the change that I was advocating was literally just to take a room a really offensive joke out of their docks That was misogynist, so This is why I don't contribute that much anymore There are instead many fractured open-source communities not all of which are related to one another and Are not easily found in my mind They're equally if not more important than repos that have the most stars when we pick a de facto metric like stars Submitted pull requests visible or notable contributors etc. We inherently erase the presence of others a presence that up to now We've discussed might tremendously or face tremendous hostility and be Time and energy consuming so let's look at some behaviors that contribute to the marginalization of communities and Afterwards we'll look at some behaviors that empower those people instead, but time out for these examples I want to make it clear that I'm explicitly talking about actions taken by someone in a position of power Marginalized people's actions, especially actions of resistance cannot oppress Heteropatriarch or powers. I bet you didn't think you were gonna hear the heteropatriarchy in a talk today But we're there we're there So too long different read or didn't read reverse racism reverse sexism etc. Are not real and have no space in this talk Judging and some judging someone based off disability within a dominant community Marginalizes those individuals it Others them labeling them as outsiders and immediately assumes that as outsiders They're expected to learn about us and approach the dominant community at the expense of their own identity So instead of judging individuals based off their relationship to your own community Consider individuals relationships with their own community view yourself as the outsider instead Ask how you can actively learn from others by allowing individuals to label themselves and treating them as experts in their own lives We empower them in their autonomy validating their experiences rather than validating their experience against our own And finally if someone doesn't engage with us, it's time to ask some simple questions Does our community make others feel unsafe and how can we make new contributors or voices feel safe and empowered and actually I lied These are hard and really vital questions And it's not okay to put the onus on quiet developers or anyone marginalized to answer these instead of answering them for ourselves But again, just as marginalized people are not responsible for dismantling structures that oppress them this is a Weird tension where we want to ask these things, but we're in no means Required to and I'm starting to step up to this myself Just for a bit because these are important questions that can't just be answered once but they have to be asked Consistently and constantly because truly our work is never ending. So thank you so much. I'm Sean Hansen again You can follow me on Twitter Sean and Hansen medium I've got a website things like that and if you have any other questions feel free to bring them up to me after the talks Thank you Thank you Sean for an insightful and thought-provoking talk You