60 Seconds with WITS Keynote — Andrea Goulet
Andrea Goulet is the CEO of Corgibytes. She is keynoting both WITS MidAtlantic and WITS Northeast. Her session is title Empathy is a Technical Skill.
Why is speaking at WITS important to you?
The very first technical conference I ever went to, there were 400 people and I was one of only two women in the room. Over the course of my career, it has been critical for me to see women as technology leaders and to be able to connect with them about the specific challenges of being a woman in tech. I love the content from past WITS events I’ve attended and I love that the proceeds go to support TechGirlz, an organization that inspires and empowers middle school girls to explore the possibilities of careers in technology.
What inspires you?
I’m a dot connector. I love collecting information from a wide variety of places and seeing how they relate to each other. In particular, I always make time to watch documentaries and lectures from The Great Courses, particularly about history and science. There are so many things to learn by studying what has happened in the past and where we’re going in the future.
Most useful article you’ve read in the last month?
The #1 bug predictor is not technical, it’s organizational complexity
by August Lilleaas
https://augustl.com/blog/2019/best_bug_predictor_is_organizational_complexity/
A couple of months ago, August Lilleaas wrote a nice summary of a paper that Microsoft published about the link between organizational structure and post-launch defects (bugs). Microsoft’s research determined that “organizational metrics…were statistically significant predictors of failure-proneness.” These organizational metrics consisted of things like the number of engineers on a project, the percentage of the organization that contributes to a project’s development, how many people can make decisions or have positional authority, etc. As part of the research, Microsoft built a model that measured how organizational structure compared to established predictive models (such as churn, code complexity, dependency analysis, etc.) for post-launch failures. The results? Organizational structure emerged as the most accurate predictor and these findings have been replicated by other research teams.
A big part of my work is connecting how different organizational pressures, interpersonal relationships, and team dynamics impact how easy a codebase is to work with. It’s not often that you find research that focuses on these relationships and I really value the empirical data that August brought to my attention in his article.
When you were a kid what was your dream job?
My parents always used to laugh because I had a different answer for this question every week. One week I would want to be a dentist and the next week I’d want to be a diplomat. One of the things I love in my current role is how much I get to learn and grow. Technology is a field where you will never get bored.
Tell us something about your session
Empathy is a skill that is critical for building quality software. My goal is to take empathy from a squishy “soft skill” and teach software developers how to build tactical empathy that they can use throughout their work day. The impacts of this skill-building are huge. Not only do you get healthier teams and more psychological safety, but you also get more rationale and higher quality code that helps stave off technical debt and makes software systems easier to work with.
What other session/speaker are you excited to see?
Christina Garza, Tech Careers as a Tool of Economic Development
I’m passionate about the intersection between technology and social justice and I’m excited to learn how Christina is using internship programs to make a broader impact in her communities. I sit on the board of the Richmond Technology Council and I’m hoping to take some of those learnings back to my community.
Register her to see Andrea keynote WITS MidAtlantic in Washington, D.C. on April 14 and 15.
Register her to see Andrea keynote WITS Northeast in Philadelphia on April 23 and 24.
