Hey everyone and welcome to Developer Tea. My name is Jonathan Cottrell and today I'm sharing an interview that I did with Pamela Vickers at Ancient City Ruby just a few weeks ago. Pamela heads up Rails Girls in Atlanta and she's a speaker. She's actually at RailsConf and I believe that the day this episode comes out I will be at RailsConf. If you're listening to this and you're at RailsConf, tweet at me at jcottrell or at developer tea and also tweet at Pamela. She's going to be at RailsConf as well. Her Twitter handle is pwnela and even she mentioned to me that she doesn't know how to pronounce. Make sure you reach out to Pamela and let her know that you enjoyed her interview on Developer Tea. And also while you're listening to this episode, why not leave a quick review? That is a huge help to me and it helps other developers just like you find the show. Now let's get to the interview with Pamela Vickers. So I'm here at Ancient City Ruby and I'm sitting with Pamela Vickers and she leads Rails Girls in Atlanta, right? Or is it just Atlanta Rails Girls? What is that? Rails Girls Atlanta. Okay, cool. That's what I thought it was. I wasn't sure. And she gave a talk this morning. She gave a talk this morning about culture and how culture has been kind of abused, especially in the trying to get people to come onto your team, that whole process, right? Can you just talk a little bit about what you think people have done to the word culture, first of all? Well, I think that is a big selling point for a lot of people coming into the technology industry is you see this vibrant culture. It's portraiting. It's portrayed on TV shows and occasional movies. I can think of some really bad examples, but it looks like this fun, whimsical, crazy place where everyone's just partying and going down slides and riding scooters. And so I think we realized that that was a selling point and we have tried to outdo each other a little bit here and there, especially in cities with a lot of tech companies. So that became something that you would see in jobless. And still do where they kind of rattle off things. You know how many televisions you might have, how many different beer taps you might have. So I think it's turned into a little bit of unnecessary contest that some companies were competing on their supposed culture. But it was really just competing on items that they happen to have in the office as opposed to, you know, what the coworkers are like. Right. And it comes down to more than just what the office is like. It's more than just do I get a standing desk or not. Right. Like I actually have a standing desk. I really appreciate it. In fact, we also have a ping pong table, which has become just a meme of this subject. I like to defend it because we came into this naturally. We had this board, like this table that we weren't using. Uh-huh. And one of our guys actually had. A net at home and then like a ping pong set. So we had this like really malformed and it had these little ridges so that the boards in it were raised up. So you engineered your ping pong table first. Yeah, exactly. It wasn't we, it was natural. Right, right. We grew into it. Yeah, no, but I totally agree with this. I actually did an episode on the show called, oh, geez, I think I called it Stereotypes and Stigmas basically. Okay, okay. I talked about the difference, first of all, between stereotype and stigma. Sometimes stereotype can be. Empowering and it's, it's negative when it be, when there's a stigma attached to it. Right. So like you can have a stereotype of, uh, like programmers being really strong creators and having like a lot of power in what they do. That, that is a stereotype. And, but it's also a positive thing for us in some ways. Uh, but then you have programmer stigma, right? So like, just because I'm a white male and I'm a programmer, people assume that. I, you know, go to hackathons and eat pizza and drink beer and that's just not, that's not who I am. So, and there's nothing. And what I said on that particular episode is there's nothing particularly, there's nothing wrong with a ping pong table, right? There's nothing. It just, because you have these things doesn't mean you're, you know, what is it? Disingenuous. I always forget this word, but it doesn't mean that your, your, uh, culture necessarily is fake or fraud. Right, right. But there's more to it than just having. Yeah. These things. Right. Right. And I would never say that a ping pong table is a red flag, or I would never even say that a ping pong table, um, or, or that mentioning a ping pong table and a job listing is a red flag. I would say that it's just neutral. And when it's presented as such a positive thing, I think that's where there's kind of, um, a lack of awareness of what maybe most people want out of a job or maybe what makes most people. At least when they may not want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may want to, they may have such great benefits. So I think it just shows a little bit of a lack of, it's just not expecting us to be mature. I think we are. We're not all just, you know, like you said, the programmer type where, you know, 20 something kids just trying to create a startup that gets funded so they can, you know, live in Hawaii. Like that's not really most of us. Yeah, I agree entirely. Uh, I think, I think these things serve as symbols, right? So it used to be that if you had a tap or if you had a ping pong table or whatever, that served as a symbol that shows what your personality is like, right? And that is what we've used to correlate all these things to culture, uh, like the deeper level culture of the company. If so, we have these kind of internalized messages that, oh, if they have a ping pong table, then they're probably not going to come down on me really hard when I don't deliver on time or whatever number of things that you could fill in the blank with. And first of all, that's not true, right? Like there are plenty of companies that have all these things, but also are like really harsh on their workers. Right. But then there's also this concept of maturity. Like I don't need a symbol of laid back in order to be comfortable in the workplace. Right. And to have the positive emotion. So tell me, tell us about the, the formula that you came up with in the talk. If you're come and if you want people to just watch the talk instead, that's fine. It's, uh, I can give the TLDR. Uh, sure. So it's based on a model for happiness from, um, I think it's like colleges named Martin Seligman and it's called PERMA P E R N A. And it's based on positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and achievement. So I kind of, I was exposed to it via Ernie Miller, my developer and another speaker here at ancient city Ruby. And it really, uh, just lodged in my brain as such a great description of what makes me happy in my professional life. Um, probably personal life as well, but I just haven't thought as much about that because happiness there is a little bit more, uh, you know, it's a by-product of so many things, including your professional life. So, um, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there are pieces of that PERMA, uh, model that fit really well for like projects and the more I, and then there's the good feelings you get from having a good project and having just kind of a good relationships with your coworkers. So let me see if I can just pull it out. Um, the, the formula I have very, very scientific is I think E plus M U. Yields A, which creates P. So basically engagement and meaning lead to achievement and achievement feels pretty good. So you get positive emotion. So that's my very scientific formula. That's great. Yeah. And there's quite a bit of other research around this that says, uh, that even influence is increased. So like as somebody who is leading a team, it's extremely important for me to remind my team regularly of how meaningful what they do is. And so I think that's a really good example of how we can, uh, connect them to that meaning, uh, especially for the work that we do. A lot of times it feels like all we're doing is changing pixels inside of our terminals. Right. But there's more to it. There's a real effect in the world. And so when we can connect that work to that real effect, we get that sense of meaning and that allows us to, uh, I mean just to work better first of all, but also, uh, to have positive emotions. Right. Like knowing that we are making a meaningful difference that is, that is first of all, objectively studied to make a difference in how we work, but also just subjectively, I feel awesome knowing that I'm making a difference in the world. You know? Right. Yeah. Thank you so much for listening to my interview with Pamela. The second part of the interview will be in the next episode of Developer Tea. If you have not subscribed yet, and you don't want to miss that part, the best way to make sure you don't miss out on any future episodes of Developer Tea is to subscribe in iTunes or in whatever podcast application you use. And you can also get the show notes in most podcasting applications as well. Now, if you don't use a podcasting application, the RSS feed is on developertea.com. Just look for the RSS feed there. If you think somebody might be interested in what Pamela and I had to say in this interview, you can send them this episode in a tweet or an email. And until next time, enjoy your tea.