Girls in a Tech World: Endless Possibilities of Computer Science

1. Myth: You have to hire “ninjas”.

The myth of the hero hacker is one of the most pervasive pathologies to be found in Silicon Valley start-ups: the idea that a lone programmer, fueled by pizza and caffeine, swaddled in headphones, works all hours of the night to build a complex system, all by himself. Time out. Software development, it turns out, is a team sport. All start-ups grow, if they experience any meaningful success. What works for a lone programmer will not work in a company of 10. And what’s worse, encouraging the hero mentality leads to corrosive dysfunction in software teams. Invariably the developers who do a yeoman’s 9-to-5, week after week, cranking out solid features that the business is built on, lose out to the grasping egomaniacs who stay up all night (usually just one night) looking to garner lavish praise. Rather than reward the hero, it’s better to cultivate a true esprit de corps.

There are 6 more myths in this article. I recognise at least 4 of them, and agree with most. As with all Tim Ferriss' stuff, it is a bit more black and white than most situations allow, or call, for, but it's a good reminder to sense-check some of your working practices.

I've been using Glympse on the iPhone for a few weeks now, and although it sounds a little creepy, I've found it very helpful.

What it does
Sending a Glympse to someone allows them to track your location on a map for however long you give them access.
I used it when I was driving for a few hours to meet up with someone, and I wasn't sure how long the journey would take. I sent them a Glympse, and at every stage of the journey they could see my progress and could judge when to expect me.
I've also used it when I was heading home from the shops and wanted help unloading the car when I got there!
Glympe will make your location available for up to 4 hours, then stops, so you don't have to remember to stop sharing your location with someone once they don't need to know it again.

Price
Free on iPhone.

The screenshot above is Google Profiles' Relationship field drop-down of possible responses. For me, relationship status is a minefield of potential misunderstanding, because if I select "married," people often assume I'm heterosexually married. If I could answer this question in an open text field, I'd fill in "gay-married." That's how I want to characterize and specify my relationship status, not the overly cutesy and vague "it's complicated," or the doesn't-give-us-enough-credit-for-all-the-crap-we-went-through-to-get-legally-married "In a relationship."

One of the most interesting things about this post is the comments! It's amazing how many people think they can tell someone else what they *should* use for their relationship status.

I am in a civil partnership, and choose that as my relationship status when the option is there. When it's not there, I complain, and then choose married. I'm not married though - the UK government made it clear when they wrote the law. So for me it's a political act to keep highlighting the differences, but if that option is not there then I'll use "Married" to highlight the similarities.

Google did a series of these very short videos, telling stories through search. I like them as nuggets of narrative, and as product demos.

This is intended to be advice for startups, but a lot of the comments about product development and measuring success seemed relevant to me for (web-focussed) product development in general.

Nobody needs to convince you that it’s important to test your website’s design and interaction with the people who will use it, right? But if that’s all you do, you’re missing out on feedback about the most important part of your site: the content.

Whether the purpose of your site is to convince people to do something, to buy something, or simply to inform, testing only whether they can find information or complete transactions is a missed opportunity: Is the content appropriate for the audience? Can they read and understand what you’ve written?

From A List Apart:Testing Content

Ever wondered what it's like to be an engineer inside Facebook? We got an exclusive interview with Mike Schroepfer, vice president of engineering at the company, who has previously been named one of the 50 most important people on the web, to ask him how he gets things done in an organisation that's not only growing fast - but also setting the pace when it comes to a lot of web implementations.

Schroepfer is in charge of a team of 500-odd developers who do everything on the site

Ah, he makes it sound so simple - I'd love to know more about what infrastructure supports this development arrangement, and what their investment in automated testing has been. It's a bit of an obsession for me at the moment.

From a presentation at the Blackbaud Conference by Chad Norman and Melanie Mathos. Nonprofits and social media folks can add their favorite social media tactic by using the hashtag #50smt and it will be aggregated here, powered by RowFeeder.

Coming Out in the Sciences: Part I—After 50 Years in the Lab, a Reproduction Expert Leaves the Closet

Maggie Koerth-Baker at 9:00 AM Monday, Oct 11, 2010

Story and interview by Steve Silberman

Neena Schwartz is a legend in reproductive biology. A trailblazing endocrinologist, she helped map the pathways of communication between the brain and the reproductive organs, uncovering the crucial role of a hormone called inhibin in regulating ovulation. She has also been one of the most outspoken advocates for women at the lab bench, co-founding the Association of Women in Science in 1971, fighting for equality in the face of pervasive old boys' networks, and mentoring generations of scientists at Northwestern University.

Throughout this distinguished career, however, Schwartz has borne the burden of a secret—she's gay. [...] Now retired, Schwartz explains in the book that she is coming out with the hope that her story will "provide young gay scientists or other professionals with a lesson of possibilities for success and happiness without such splits in their lives."

An interesting story of feminism in the world of science in the 1970s.

Some of the best feedback we receive are the real-world stories of how people have used Google to make an impact in their lives or the lives of others. We’re constantly amazed at what people can do and have done with our technology—from making a life-saving diagnosis to reuniting with a long lost love.

When i talk about using storytelling as a means of knowledge transfer, people often ask for examples of where this has been used, so I was pleased to find this examples from Google.