 I'm Kim Bannerman. I'm from Google and I'm moderating a panel here today and I wanted to let you all know that this kind of got formed from a talk that I started doing and kind of formed in the last minute literally on the show floor in Basil of People First Tech Second and it's kind of how I've been going about my career in tech for the last 13, 14 years because I feel like before you have to diagnose and understand what your folks that are inside of either your customer's team or inside your own team and help them continuously grow and so with that I think we get all the conscious bias and conscious bias and things like that but ethics is a huge topic lately and it's something that was very near and dear to my heart after working with my last cloud company and a lot of the current news that's happened obviously of late it's very timely. I also want to say that we are all here on our own personal opinions and what we feel as human beings and we are not speaking for our employers and with that I will let everyone else introduce themselves. My name is Daniel Jones. I'm the CTO of Engineer Beta. We're a cloud boundary consultancy based out of London. That's probably all you need to know. I'm Barb Darrow. I'm a senior communications director at Oracle. I am new to Oracle. I've been a reporter my whole career other than that at GigaOm Fortune InfoWorld the whole line yards. My name is Marisa Dale. I'm a product design manager at Pivotal Labs and I recently wrote a Hippocratic Oath after doing a lot of government work for the last two years. That's a great piece. That's the great thing about this community is we all get connected somehow right? Someone says hey I want you and Marisa to meet because you could have some interesting things to talk about and then it just blew up from there so that's how we ended up where we are today. So talk to us about the background and what inspired you to write the Hippocratic Oath for Technologists. Yeah sure so for the last two years I've been working on a lot of government projects that have had some big consequential outcomes for people in the world and life and death sort of outcomes. There's been immigrants applying for citizenship into the US and we create an app that ingests these applicants and tracks their process in a timeline sort of way and if our app doesn't know where it is in the timeline or the physical location of these files at all times there's a very high risk of them being lost or delayed in their application process. Another where asylum seekers are trying to get into the US and get asylum status and again if they can't apply and if their dependents, their children or their family can't get in with them and those riders aren't attached to the files properly in our system again you know there's some really very consequential outcomes for those people. We also built an app that ingested flight data from aeronautical data from all around the world and which ends up you know long story short getting put into the the cockpits of military airplanes and helicopters and if we don't ingest that data correctly and we don't display accurately for the analysts there is a very real consequence of pilots crashing or analysts going in having to testify in front of congress so the weight of all of that plus seeing my own small child you develop a relationship with technology and understanding the dark patterns of the hook cycles that lead him back in continuously he's very vulnerable to those things and watching his relationship with technology plus you know the news and probably one too many episodes of Black Mirror just led me to want to write for myself originally a Hippocratic oath for technologists and if you haven't read it I think of it in terms of maybe three different pillars I think of outcomes you know what are the outcomes of the thing that I'm building both from a macro standpoint from a global scale what is you know the larger outcome of you know maybe the business model that's at play here but then also the micro like what are the outcomes of the features the individual features that I'm putting into this there's also agency and the power of the individual who's involved this is not oh it's not my problem we're not part of a larger machine each one of us has a very specific role in building these applications all of us together whether we're designers whether we're project managers product managers engineers data type you know whoever we are we have an integral part of of building that thing and so we're not dissuading ownership we're taking agency over this and then the third part is really craft you know I'm I'm taking ownership over my part of this and I'm always trying to better myself as a technologist whatever part I am playing in this and then asking questions and being humble to my biases and learning all the way bar I think it's really important for what you're doing in software but also what we do in our everyday lives is that the unintended consequences of things we do if we're all kind of in our bubbles and lately it seems like we're more in our bubbles than ever and I think diversity plays a big deal in this whole discussion because if you want to know about the unintended consequences of something you're doing it helps to have a a diverse group working together on that and there's an example a local example actually it's a local example in San Francisco too there in boss several Boston communities have put an imposed attacks on plastic bags you know in stores do you bring your own bag you don't pay it and I was like this is great I'm a recycler yeah yeah and I was talking to a friend of mine who's an African-American man he said this is a terrible idea from our perspective and never even occurred to me and he said if you're an African-American man and you're walking out of Best Buy with something in your hand and you do not have it in a bag there could be unpleasantness it never occurred to me so it's not just technology it's everything we do legislation whatever all right how about the european perspective cough so I was turning my mic on and off so I don't deafen you all coughing um I think we've well we've had a fair amount in the news what with Cambridge Analytica and Brexit voter manipulation and all those sorts of things I think it's interesting that the the technology and the implications of the technology that you were describing earlier it's about distance it's about not being able to see cause and effect and Natham Talib's new book Skin in the Game talks a lot about this and he defines a bureaucracy as a system where people are divorced from the consequences of their actions and the very nature of technology and platforms are that we're going to be distant from the people that we impact we can't see those those reactions there are not the human factor so further example of immigration in the UK the immigration system is incredibly manual I happen to know someone that worked in the home office which has got his own current scandal about destroying documents and deporting people that have every right to be in the country but it's very manual so at least there are people in the border force sat there who are dealing with human beings and can see them now they can switch that off and be sociopaths you know I'm sure some of them probably do and maybe you have to if it's a difficult job but at least there are humans involved and there is some sort of like there is a person crying there is a small child who is being separated from their from their parents so there's a feedback mechanism but as we get more and more distant I think keeping perspective of the fact that we're dealing with humans becomes more and more important because that feedback mechanism doesn't exist there is no natural kind of humanistic way to go oh I'm doing a really bad thing oh this is having an impact on people yeah yeah I think that's that's a really important point and it's not just our assumption of what those outcomes are it's actual outcomes right not the ones that we had you know strived for originally but we're checking it continuously and making sure that the outcomes that we wanted are is what's actually how it's being used and and what their truly are right and I think that has a really big part in diversity too like as our teams are diverse and we bring diverse groups into building these things the outcomes are more true to what we're going for right there's a really interesting story of the Zatari refugee camp in Jordan where there was latrines they were they brought in toilets for this huge refugee camp technically the fourth largest city in Jordan now but there's latrines that were brought in and designed by people outside of with no knowledge of the refugees and and the the the way the things were going on there and essentially there was lights in these refugee in the latrines and so at night people would congregate typically men and that meant for women they didn't feel safe going to the latrines and they would openly defecate which obviously like spreads disease right and so that's a real very real outcome for something that was you know had the best intention you know it was probably built by people who didn't who just assumed that lights they needed lights in the in the toilets and they didn't understand the real implication of the thing that they put in there and so that needed to be rethought and rebuilt right and I can draw parallels from the way that we used to develop software years ago and the waterfall wherever you want to call it approach where we build it and this thing we go off and we're gone for six months a year or two years to build something and in the process there's no feedback loop there's no active you know talking to users necessarily the business analyst at the time was often ignored as they're gathering requirements let's be honest I started out as a BA so and now we've gone to this consensus driven type of world and I know I live in a bubble working for Google we are very consensus driven we are not hierarchical from a top down I rarely talk to folks that are my managers only because you know we talk all the time because it's a consistent feedback loop but I'm mostly talking to folks outside of our team so I feel like when we're talking about unconscious bias and bias and we're talking about the ethics and technology are you talking to people that don't look like you in your personal life are you collaborating on a project or a program inside of your company or for your customer with people that do not look like you I think that's number one for me look around the room right and with that I think there's a lot of good points in here I also want to say this is up on GitHub and we'll tweet it out later so that you can do a poll request you can add to it it's very collaborative it's amazing I will prevent the exploitation of users whenever I can for prevention is preferable to extrication yes if you want to talk about that one for a second sure yeah I mean it's essentially like the titanic right we're we're on the titanic and instead of trying to patch you know holes in a leaky boat let's prevent ourselves from strike in iceberg in the first place yeah it's like a preventing it's like you know solving for what is the disease instead of the symptoms right yeah exactly yeah I think that's where we start I think you start so high level when we're talking about these things but you really have to get to the core of where it goes I wonder whether in our part of the not our part of the ecosystem cloud foundry particular but the silicon valley startup mentality move fast break things whether we're actually more susceptible to doing the wrong thing because of a certain kind of mission driven mentality you know you're you've got a tech startup you're going to change the world this is our mission we're not here to make money we're here to change things with Facebook famously we're here to connect people and that memo that got leaked recently about as long as we're connecting people what we're doing is okay I wonder how many people get swept up in that kind of groupthink mentality but maybe wasn't so much a thing 20 years ago maybe in old waterfall development where people like we're writing business software to make money um maybe uh folks were less susceptible to that particular type of being subverted and swept into doing things without questioning what they were doing yeah I mean I certainly did you move fast and break things cool that sounds like fun and then you fast forward 20 years and you're like well what is things it's people it's political processes it's democracy it's security you know we didn't question I didn't question and now here we are that's why I appreciated the t-shirt on day one of keynotes where it's the move press move fast and don't break things right I think that's why it resonated so much with Abby and all of us you know in the audience who have gone at this breakneck speed for such a long time breaking things failing is okay as long as you're learning something from it yeah right I think I I see us as being you know in the technology industry at this sort of inflection point right now where you know previously we were always you know can we build it can are we able to do that yeah it's a big challenge like let's just try and get it out there the ability to be able to do that and build whatever we want is there now and I think that we need to start shifting into should we should we build this absolutely that's why it's people first text like that yeah you can build it doesn't mean you should right just because how many custom applications have we all built in our time in tech or have seen or had to use that are wow can I ask I would love to ask you guys because I'm not part of the Silicon Valley ecosystem really well I guess I am now but anyway given that venture capitalist I can't remember they what was the manifesto that read Hoffman did it was it was about hiring diverse people and and I'm wondering if you guys have seen any change since that it's been it's been about six or eight months and also in the hiring practice do you see anything that's the equivalent of the Rooney rule in football which was a which was a mandate that if a team was hiring a head coach they had to interview someone non-white for the job I'm just wondering if you've seen anything like that or if you've seen any impact from the read so I think with the VC pledge of diversity was mostly just to put it in writing and make people have it in their mind and be mindful of it has it changed I'm not sure I just moved to San Francisco a month ago I'll let you know so yeah I don't know I don't think in the UK there is anything like that I think it was suggested for the football association like soccer and there was an outcry about it because people start conflating we have very strong legislation about equal opportunity and I think there was a conflation of issues of if you make sure that you have at least one candidate who's from an underrepresented background are you then not taking someone like is that additional to the people you would have interviewed anyway yeah or are you then pushing someone else out and I think that's probably an area where folks get where a lot of controversy arises but no that this I'm not aware of anything and I think it's something that people are fairly sensitive about talking about as well because of that reason of like are we going to get sued if we do this wrong with we find it fantastically difficult to find resumes of people from underrepresented groups we work with traditional recruiters engineer better as a small company there's only 12 of us at the moment and whenever we talk to recruiters we always make a point saying we're happy you know we welcome people from underrepresented groups and the number of resumes we get through from from women in particular I can think of two maybe that we've received out of let's say 50 so it's very small percentage we have one recruiter in particular who sends a mail shot every time they have a female engineer there's a woman there's a woman with technical skills see her now and that suggests to me that there's probably something not right so it's very hard to to find people and it would be better if there were if there was clearer guidance and if there was something like the the Rooney rule that maybe was mandated by government then it would give people clarity of like this is an okay thing to do you're not going to get sued for you know equal opportunity by doing this and then it would allow recruiters and other folks to to work with us better I think the way that I look at it and it's something that's very passionate for me I worked in the recruiting industry during the recession when I was in consulting before that because there was no consulting work let's be honest and I think you have to create the environment to make underrepresented groups feel comfortable enough to apply and I think a lot of it is with the small companies or some of the other you know they're just not aware right and so you know it's the work hours it's a bunch of other different things as well and a startup founder actually said will you come consult for me because I'm totally missing this right now and you know he's an engineer and has always been an engineer and he said he admittedly you know I'm trying to hire diverse candidates and I hired this person and we're doing these you know crazy you know push schedules and you know it's a startup they should have assumed that you know and I'm kind of wondering why this person's throwing home at five o'clock in the afternoon I'm like well a have you had a conversation with them at all about it no did you talk about this in the hiring process no okay well there you go there you go and he had this big white bulb aha moment he was like will you come consult for me I'm like nope I like what I do but I'm you know that's what you can do now plan ahead right I think asking questions as technologists right for what we do in developer relations I actually pitched this to Grace Hopper a few years ago with a lot of different DevRel folks from inside big companies as well like eBay and inside of you know I was at IBM at the time I think developer relations as a concept and a practice because it's centered around empathy and all these different words we use and we throw around a lot but I don't think a lot of people really understand how to measure that I think if every company approached a project or a team with that in mind to have a continuous feedback loop don't build anything in silos be transparent we would get a lot further a lot faster with a lot less stumbling along the way and I think everyone can buy into that because it's a growth mindset you're always learning and you're around people that aren't necessarily that look like you and we and you know I'm not speaking for Google but we have you know our own processes that we're building internally and that's a big piece of what I do is to create that loop from our end users and customers and things like that and it's huge and we're starting to do those outside at our customers now too as well to get the product teams and the engineering teams talking with each other you know it's just getting a room get off a slack you know it goes back to what Hannah was talking about we're so distracted by so many platforms I'm like pick a platform I'm on all of them you know we all are how many slacks do you have too many oh way too many I have six that I'm actively signed into yeah I don't even know how many I'm not 11 nothing right that's not yeah so we can talk about the you know the the fatigue of that as well um and that makes us slower it makes us you know a bottleneck when we're trying to get things out the door because we're too busy with the notifications right um but we're also not talking to each other face to face you know we use a lot of gbc at google even if we're not physically in the same space because we are very distributed my team especially um and that that helps because you get a sense of that's a real person right there you know we may hate video conferences I get it you don't want to put makeup on if you're working from home you don't have to everyone's there so so what other pieces of the Hippocratic oath like really spoke to you Dan I was did not answer your question but like I'm just just listening to speak it's kind of a thought was going off in my head about feedback loops and the fact that so many of these issues can be solved with feedback it's the absence of feedback and the maybe I'm just I think I'm probably like slow it's been a long conference and it was late night last night but the um the world there is a diverse range of people you can get things to market and then find out from that those people that you didn't foresee your consequences but having a diverse range in your team like that gives you the fast feedback because those people are already there and then so you're more likely to see the the effects of your actions and the world is complex and you're not going to be able to see the you can't like so we end up dealing a lot with complexity theory um and complex adaptive systems and looking at how organizations you can't say are we going to change this organization in this way we'll do this and it'll have that effect because the long complicated reasons things are fundamentally unpredictable um so if we know that we can't predict the uh outcomes of our actions then it's important that we get empirical evidence of of what those uh consequences are as soon as possible and that's uh sorry that's just that kind of light bulb how do all these things connect um we're building such complex systems now and very global systems right and our solutions end up being too simple i think that we can raise the bar and make our solutions more complex and understand that complexity of you know the system at large the people within it you know and all the players involved um because when you start talking about education like facebook for example totes 20 billion users if you don't count the russian pots um one percent of that is still 20 million people those are real people living breathing people with lives and to think about one percent which is a typical edge case in any most products right like there's no edge cases i think that we can raise the bar and in saying like you know when you when you talk about edge cases you talk about where you're drawing the line and what you care about and i think that we we can do better than that i think we can involve a more complex system and a more complex understanding of the people and the players involved i agree i think your piece is really a great thing to point to if you're in a hiring process i mean you know as a reporter i used to think of a lot of these things as though this is pr but you know the thing is you have to have the conversation and it's nice to be able to point to something and it would also i'm curious if you guys as hiring people ever there's been a lot of talk about rock star programmers and the people who have the best you know language skills and this and then the best dev ops skills but are there questions in the interview process to weed out like bad actors you know like kevin spacey is a tremendous actor i don't think we're ever gonna see him again because nobody wants to work with them right um is there a part of the hiring process where you have like a let's don't hire asshole i mean we call it being googly that yeah you know and if you're not googly you're not going to get through the process you know it's just plain and simple it's not googly is not being evil or being a good person and it's also um you know helping your fellow co-workers and it's you know having integrity um having a little bit of irreverence you know not being afraid to to push you know push the envelope as they say or whatever analogy you want to use um you know it's a i think it's a core of it for me though i think everyone describes it differently for me the the core of it is kindness um and i have it on my facebook banner it says be kind it's gangster because it is you know like how anyone can be negative anyone can pick through things like it's it's harder to be kind especially in the face of of something that you're dealing with it's like really tough if it's personal or for you know professionally and i will say this like i genuinely believe that all of my co-workers that i work with in my my cool little utopia of google are there for the right reasons so with the i'm sorry um with the hiring um we've had examples of this but we we put our values our company values and the the values that we founded the company with the common ground between dan and i um on the website and so when we have interview candidates it's like uh so which of our values resonated with you which ones did you feel particularly strongly about and if people go uh uh well i did see that page then we know that maybe that you know either they're they're just the technology which is fine you know um but it's also a bit of a a smell that maybe we should dig deeper into the interview process but when we're hiring uh we do a pair programming interview so we don't set people up with trick trick questions personally yeah because you do too yeah you sit down and work with them for an hour and you get to find out how they they respond to being told they're wrong for example yeah that's not right or wrong it's more about how does your brain work you know yeah are you questioning our assumptions you know can you push back on us uh can you take redirecting you know we gave you some feedback on something can you stand there with humility and be like oh maybe that wasn't the right idea to throw out maybe we should approach this and think about it a little bit differently and iterate in the moment um we have exercises that kind of poke at that and then we pair as well um we don't have everything perfect but um i really like you know buzzwords aside we really do look for empathy and humility uh and that um you know that questioning nature in people and i think we are doing those things right i mean i have always said i look for those things and i can teach the other things you know like the actual skill in my case design skills if they're lacking those things i'll sit with them and i'll teach them but i want somebody who's humble and who's empathetic and curious and curious and ask lots of wise you know why are we doing that can i answer any final thoughts we're at time so oh blimey have them quickly for five minutes over time actually um i was i found an answer for your question yes the bit of the Hippocratic oath uh that you wrote that i think was most important was the word respect and actually um it's respect for users it's respect for the humans at the end of things it's something that actually there's there's precedent for in the industry with the socio-technical approach like before rad was a thing before xp was a thing um respecting users respecting their time respecting their impacts for them and it's so you've got the user centeredness um that it's easier to be respectful and you consider the implications or actions when you've got a user interface or you know that humans are going to be doing something if you're a machine learning person in the middle of facebook you're working on cogs inside this machine and at that point i think it's important for people to to be prompted by things like the Hippocratic oath to take a step back and go do i want to make cogs for you know military aircraft do i want to we've turned down work because um it had defensive applications because we weren't comfortable with that so if people can zoom out a little bit and be prompted to zoom out by by these kind of discussions and go is this something i'm happy doing without kind of getting in a rabbit hole of like i just like doing machine learning stuff i'm going to forget what the application of this is yeah and i think that that is one of the ultimate goals of why i wrote that i mean i've said no to projects too that i wasn't comfortable with and i'm trying to work on frameworks for the rest of my team right now to help them think about what it is that we're actually building not just their part of it you know like oh this uh this integration is going to be really cool yeah but what is the ultimate outcome of the thing that you're integrating right now um get people to internalize us a little bit more and it's really a great area it's never black and white right it's epic so we need to take the individual on this upon ourselves to make those decisions okay thank you for writing it and uh i think we could probably talk all day about it so how many views have you had we'll tweet it out um the Hippocratic oath is up on github she has a great blog post about it um thank you all for coming and what's next is a diversity lunch i invite you all to uh go take a look at the chasing grace project it's pretty cool thanks y'all