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Job Skills For The Future – Culture Knowledge

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com  Steve’s Tumblr)

As noted last week, I decided it’s time to put on my Geek Job Guru Hat again and discuss the job skills people are going to need in the future. This is, of course, based on my own experience (a manager in IT) so not all of it will apply. But It should give you a good idea of what to think of in the next five-ten years.

Last time I discussed the need for Vendor Management. If anything, that seems even more apparent as I run into all kinds of outsourced functions at companies.

However, next up let’s talk something that seems a bit more touchy-feely: Culture knowledge.

Let me avoid my usual subtlety and be blunt: the world is getting drawn closer together all the time and demographics are changing in many areas, so knowing about other cultures will be paramount for job success.

It’s pretty important now, but is well on it’s way to being indispensable in many areas. I’m in freaking Silicon Valley and find I have to correct people on cultural assumptions.  That’s now.

In the future you’re going to have to get along with people from different subcultures in your own country due to changes in business and demographics. The years to come will mean you’ll be exposed to cultures in other countries as the world gets smaller.. Your jobs to come may even require you to understand subcultures in other cultures not your own.

It’s a smaller world, and you can be pretty sure you’re not so much aware of other cultures, but merely less ignorant than most. Trust me, that’s how I view it sometime.

So what kind of culture knowledge will you want? I’m glad you ask. Here’s what’s helped me.

  • Holidays. No really, be aware of major holidays as you’ll better understand time off, commentary, and socializing in other cultures. It can also help when you’re sensitive about things.
  • Communications. People, obviously, communicate differently in different cultures. Sure it seems obvious you need to get other cultures to communicate properly, but that requires making an actual effort, notj ust relying on your probably limited knowledge. I dealt with this when I discovered regional differences among different Indian regions that completely threw me – and explained a team’s bad dynamics.
  • Manners. Something we Americans could be better at. you’re going to want to understand manners as you deal with people in different cultures so you don’t A) piss them off, and B) misunderstand them. Take it from a man who’s not exactly subtle, what seems to be a gregarious American Dude can come off as anything from annoyingly arrogant to charmingly eccentric depending on other culture.
  • Values. What is valued in a different culture is important to understanding motivations, communications, and negotiations. Once when dealing with a foreign company I found they were mistrusting of my team – only to later realize that I had to build a relationship with them, so we worked to their rythm and requirements.
  • Humility. Understanding other cultures – and how they view you – is an excellent ego-deflater.

The world is not going to stop connecting, and you can be sure your job isn’t. So get ready to understand other cultures in your career – it’s going to be a distinct advantage.

As for how to do it, my recommendations are to find ways to get informed – books, etc. – but mostly talk to people with the knowledge. Several times I built better relationships with people in Japan due to friends that had lived and worked there. Early experiences in IT with people from India helped me understand cultural issues better – and I had people with the patience to explain things to a young, unsubtle, know-it-all programmer.

Whe would this fit in your job search?  If you have this skill how would you describe it?

COVER LETTER: Only call out cultural knowledge if the job posting asks about it, and its a major part of the job. Otherwise it can seem like bragging (and most people who brag about cultural knowledge don’t have it).

RESUME: Only put cultural knowledge on your resume if it’s very vital to the job, otherwise it can also sound like bragging. A more subtle approach such as “work with international teams” is a good way to do it.

INTERVIEW: Culture knowledge often comes up in interviews, so be sure you have some stories to relate from your past.  This is where you can cut loose as you answer specific questions.

Hope this helps you out in the future! The future is coming faster than you may think . . .

– Steve

Changing Tech Culture’s Attitude Towards Women

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com  Steve’s Tumblr)

Management consultant Erwin Van Der Koogh wrote an essay on tech and how women are treated, “This industry and living life on the lowest difficulty setting,”  Go read the entire thing, but he pretty much sums it up by noting that at a tech conference his worst fear is making a mistake, but a female colleague’s worst fear is sexual assault and harassment.

It pretty much sums up issues of women in tech in that they face inordinate issues men don’t face, and these issues are pretty horrific.  When people say white male is the lowest difficulty setting in, say, tech, that’s because we’re not facing the same challenges.  We’re playing a game with infinite lives; women are playing Dark Souls III.

His experiences and those of the woman he writes about are not alone.  I’ve talked about bias in tech to a room nodding sadly.  Everyone in tech who listens can hear stories about sexism.  Just watch the news in tech, and stories of bias pop up repeatedly.

It’s wrong.

It’s wrong on any number of ethical levels, moral levels, societal levels, and civic levels.  Bigotry of any kind is corrosive, acid on the soul, eating away decent things.

It’s wrong in tech, an industry that should put ideas and work and creativity first – but too often doesn’t.  When someone’s gender matters more than their work, then that’s anathema to what we’re supposedly about.

And as a white guy – and if you’re one of me in tech – as Erwin points out, we need to make an effort to solve it.  I’ll put it simply – we’re having a comparatively easy time, we have the (at times unwarranted) attention, so we have the ability to make a difference, and we should.  Else we’re letting our industry be something it shouldn’t be, as well as letting our fellow techs drag themselves down with their own bias.

Tech should be what we think it is.

 

Erwin proposes solutions where we work on ourselves, which is vital.  Start with yourself – I can thank my lucky stars I had several female managers and co-workers that helped me see sexism and deal with it.

I’d say we also need to call out sexism in tech when possible, be it in person or on Twitter or whatever.  Just get into the habit of it.

However a big thing we should do is change the culture of tech.  To do that, there’s plenty of places to get involved in REALLY changing the culture – the organizations.  If you want to make a difference promote these or help out.  We change the culture by getting involved and supporting women getting into tech – and staying there.

  • Girl Develop IT – A nonprofit that provides accessible programs for women who want to learn coding.
  • Girls Learning Code – A Canadian non-profit that focuses on helping young women learn technical skills in a supportive atmosphere.
  • Girls Teaching Girls To Code – A Bay Area program where women in CS teach Bay Area high school girls to code.
  • Grace Hopper Celebration – Produced by the Anita Borg institute, this is a celebration of women in computing.
  • Ladies Learning Code – A Canadian non-profit that focuses on helping people learn beginner technical skills in a comfortable, social way.
  • Made With Code – Promotes women in coding with projects, events, and mentoring. Has several alliances and supporters.
  • Mothercoders – An organization focused on helping mothers get tech-savvy and up-to-date for this economy
  • National Center For Women And Information Technology – Focuses on correcting gender imbalance in technology, and bringing the balance of diversity to the industry.
  • Rails Girls – A worldwide group that works to empower women with technology.
  • The Ada Initiative – An organization that supports women in technology, with a heavy emphasis on codes of conduct, training, and an embrace of open source.
  • Tech Girls Canada – Provides national leadership for the various industry groups in Canada encouraging women in tech careers.
  • Girls Make Games – A series of international summer camps encouraging girls to explore the world of video games.

The resources are there.

– Steve

No Man’s Sky: The Need For Procedural History

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, www.SeventhSanctum.com, and Steve’s Tumblr)

I’m hyped for No Man’s Sky, the space exploration game that uses math to give us a procedural universe – since it’s all constructed from equations, the game has quintillions of possible world to explore.  On the rare time two people find the same world, it would be the same for both due to – math.

But as I’ve read and watched the news on NMS, there’s also talk of the lore of the game.  The story, the meaning.  The developer Hello Games has been very cagey on it, for obvious reasons – they don’t want to spoil the “story” in the game.

This lore, however, is already designed as far as we know.  That brings up something I think it a potential disadvantage in NMS – and in many procedural/random games.  A lot of the “story” is disconnected from the way the setting is made.  The lore is set, and at best sets the stage for the generation of the world – or at worst isn’t just connected anyway.

This means in many cases the randomness of the world is sort of meaningless even if there’s some meaning in the components.  There’s no history, just algorithms.  Why is the dungeon built the way it is?  Why are these artifacts on this world?  I see little to no attention paid to not just generating a setting but the meaning behind it – the history – in many a game.

Like it or not, a lot of these procedural games are about making something that seems “right” but doesn’t have much real history.  Now I love procedural games, I can get into them, but I admit this flaw, and I think the art is limited by this disconnection.  There’s no “real history,” just a shadow play of numbers.

But this also gives us an insight into what future procedural games could be.

What if large chunks of their history, their backstory, are generated?  What if, in turn this history affects the generated environments.  What if this history is part of the lore characters find, from the names of places to the powers of procedurally generated items?  Perhaps the characters themselves are connected to some procedurally generated lore.

Some examples.

  • Imagine an NMS-like-game where the basic expansion patterns/conflicts of various species are procedurally generated – and in turn the effects on certain worlds and areas is created.  Places between two peaceful species have great trade.  Worlds right at areas of conflicts may have graveyards of crashed spaceships.  Bits of history can be worked in, again procedural – you don’t just salvage equipment from a downed ship, but find out when and why it fell.
  • A procedural dungeon crawler could have history generated depending on what the origin is.  If there’s a gate from the netherworld burrowing up from underground, later levels would be older and more hellish.  Perhaps earlier heroes went in to battle and fell, so each treasure has meaning.
  • A game of global domination (or galactic domination) could start not just with the usual empty planet/galaxy trope but one filled with existing politics and peoples – with histories (and relations).  The games become not just standard 4X experiences, but ones of discovering – and manipulating, a rich history.
  • Such games would be not just fun like any good random/procedural game, but also far more compelling.  Rich, unique lore exists -perhaps even if only until roguelike permadeath means you start a new dungeon.  That lore in turn is meaningful because it explains and tells you something about the world.  The tale comes to life because the history has a living quality, not one made static or one bolted onto a randomizer.

Procedural history is procedural meaning, and that brings the game further to life.

Maybe NMS will inspire enough people to do even more procedural work, some will look at procedural history for their games.

– Steve