Tag: Conference

The DockerCon Proposal

We had a Senior Software Developer join us a few years back and he seemed obsessed with “networking” and also using “new technology“. By “new technology”, I mean if we weren’t already using it, he wanted to use it, so was pushing to use Docker. And by “networking”, I mean going to nerd conferences and events.

“Is anyone thinking of going to DockerCon? Seems like the kind of thing we should get some skin in the game?”

Senior Developer

I’ve never heard of that phrase “skin in the game” before, but my biggest question is “how long can people talk about Docker for?” People from all around the world, going to Barcelona to talk about what things they have docked.

I don’t often see a benefit of these conferences anyway. People do mention “networking”, but what do you really do? Talk to random people, boast about how good you are, and hope that if you apply to the company they work for, that they are the ones looking at your application, and also remember your name and who you were? If not, it probably isn’t increasing your future job prospects.

You must think it is very beneficial if you are travelling from England to Spain just for a conference, but this developer was well up for it. I suppose if he could convince the company to send him, then it’s a free holiday, so maybe you don’t know how sincere he is.

In my previous job, we were in the gambling industry. There was some event down in London, something like the “International Gaming Exhibition”. It was for companies in the gambling industry to show off their new products. There were loads of slot machines, fancy roulette wheels, all kinds of automated machines (card shufflers, automated roulette wheels).

I had no idea what our objective was really, so I just walked from stall to stall, taking all the free stuff. I got a couple of tote bags; stationery items such as pens and post-it notes; and playing cards. Our company was essentially rivals to some of these companies so we weren’t there to buy, and we didn’t have our own stall so we weren’t there to sell.

Some of the stalls were very elaborate and like those ones they used to have at E3 before that sort of approach was deemed sexist. So some stalls were occupied by bikini-clad “booth babes”. You could say those companies are getting some “skin in the game”! I thought they must hire them from some modelling agency or something, but it was interesting hearing them answer fairly technical questions about the products – so they must have done their homework. One company was spraying their woman in full body paint. I got there when she was about 90% painted, but one of my colleagues was boasting about how he got there earlier. This was probably around 2011 so I would imagine those “booth babes” might be cancelled, like the ones at E3.

Women In Tech

Recently, there seems to be more of a push to encourage women to apply for tech roles through means of tech conferences. I was thinking though, that surely the types of people that know about tech conferences – are the people that are already in the industry.

It probably makes sense to target the promotion directly at schools. Back in my day, if you knew programming, it was because you taught yourself, or went onto further education to study it. I have heard that these days, it is taught more at schools, so over time, I think the new generation will naturally enter the industry. It’s at that age you really need to get people interested. Otherwise, they will go and get a degree in some other field and the tech industry probably has a lower chance of getting someone to switch.

I think my employer has a lot of females in the managerial side of the department, but are severely lacking in terms of female developers. There’s a better representation of testers though, although still male dominated. I firmly believe this is purely a case of the representation of applicants, rather than any gender bias of offering roles. If anything, females have a better chance of landing jobs (LinkedIn even state this here https://business.linkedin.com/talent-solutions/blog/diversity/2019/how-women-find-jobs-gender-report).

Recently at one of these “Women In Tech” events, one female manager, Jackie goes to it. She surely has been in the industry for 30+ years, she joined the company in a high managerial position within the department, and has had promotions since. Surely her experiences of being a woman in tech hasn’t been negative. Therefore, I think she isn’t really the sort of person that could benefit from the event. Maybe a good candidate for actually doing a talk though.

If the talks involve how to tailor job advertisements to encourage female applications, then it’s probably a great event for HR to attend. It’s also ideal for women not currently in the industry, but they need to know the event is on, and be encouraged to go to it. This poses a question of where to advertise, and how to advertise.

So on to the actual criticism. Jackie comes back and reports on the event. One of the “facts” caught my attention. It said:

“Women apply to jobs when they meet 100% of the job listing. Men apply when they meet 60%.”

Now, I’m always sceptical of “facts” and severely doubted this one. Surely you can easily disprove it by simply assuming it is true. Sounds odd, but bear with me. A female reads this “fact”, then applies for a job when she meets 60% of the criteria. Fact disproved. Any fact that claims it applies to all people surely cannot be accurate.

As it turns out, with a bit of Googling, I found a more accurate quote, although I couldn’t find the actual source.

“Women working at HP applied for a promotion only when they believed they met 100 percent of the qualifications listed for the job. Men were happy to apply when they thought they could meet 60 percent of the job requirements.”

So the quote was from Hewlett-Packard, observing their staff applying for promotions. So it’s a very small sample size to base the statement on, and it is for internal staff rather than external applicants. So women and men already in the tech industry. Interestingly enough, the LinkedIn study I mentioned early verified that women did apply to roles differently to men.

I was thinking about job advertisements and thought there is no way I’d ever would have had a job if I only applied to jobs when I met 100% of the criteria. Most of them do contain irrelevant technologies just to sound more exciting (maybe they use C# but they will say C#/Java/C++). They often ask for degrees, or experience as a “Full-Stack” developer when it’s not actually required. Maybe they specify things you use rather than things you need to know the inner workings of (virtual machines). Maybe they even ramble on about generic stuff like “enthusiasm for technology”, “passion for quality”. The more things you list, and the more jargon you list – the more chance people are put off because they don’t feel qualified.