You Are What You Build: Making Your Code More Human | GitHub’s Christina Entcheva

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1:09Welcome back to Dev Interrupted at Lead Dev New York. I'm very excited to be joined by Christina Encheva. She is the Director of Software Engineering at GitHub. And I want to start things off with a bit of a spicy question. What is the secret sauce at GitHub? Well, hello. I'm very happy to be here. Thank you for having me. yourself. I'm just like, let's go. Yeah, like you said, my name is Christina. I'm a director of engineering at GitHub. Very happy to be here. Love that spicy take. Let's just get right into it. There are many things that I think contribute to the unique situation at GitHub, but I really think our secret sauce is our culture.

1:47I know that that's like probably super cliche to say. I think in this case, it's true. I do think that GitHub culture is a little bit different than your kind of everyday company, we bias very heavily towards asynchronous communication. We bias very heavily towards working out in the open. So it's really important for leaders especially, but for everybody to kind of show their work, show it early. Sharing WIPs, whether that be documents or draft PRs as early as possible is something that like we really strive towards consistently. And, you know, both with PRs and documents and like any other artifacts of information, like having that written artifact is really important.

2:27And it allows for that like asynchronous communication. So people can absorb context at the time that's best for them. And it kind of like frees us from the stronghold of meetings as a conduit of information, which like it just doesn't scale. I think it's, you know, it's not incredibly unique, like other companies do this well, But doing it well is really hard. I think doing it well is hard. Doing it consistently and certainly like working with folks who might not be accustomed to that type of culture. It can be a transition for folks. But I think it just it pays dividends over and over and over again, like meetings as a conduit for information just does not scale.

3:10We're an asynchronous remote company. So we have a workhorse that's all over the world. It just like literally doesn't work. You need to create focus time, right? You have big problems to solve and meetings cut into that focus time. It's a tax on communication. And so if you can solve that another way, I love that approach. What attracted you and kind of like led you to end up at GitHub and in this like quite unique, but like special culture? Yeah, that's a question. So I guess, you know, before I joined GitHub, I've been at GitHub just under a year now, started in May of 2022. And prior to that, I was a director of engineering at ThoughtBot, which is a software consultancy in the Ruby on Rails space.

3:54and the culture at ThoughtBot is actually very similar, very biased towards public asynchronous communication. And that was actually one of the big factors. I had been at ThoughtBot, I guess, over five years by the time I left, but I had been in the director of engineering role for about 10 months. So, you know, I was happy there. Things were good. I just kind of, you know, I felt the pull of GitHub. Someone reached out to me and they kind of nerd sniped me. And, you know, one thing led to another. But one thing I was extremely motivated by is that same culture, right? Like, transparency is my top value as a leader.

4:30So I definitely saw that in GitHub in that kind of, like I said, showing your work early type of culture. And that was a big thing that pulled me over. And then also, like, solving problems at scale, right? GitHub is at a certain scale where certain challenges come up that you might not get in a smaller company. And that's just really motivating and exciting to work on. I want to zero in on that transparency piece. You said it's your crucial value as a leader or your top value as a leader. Can you explain for the audience why you think it's so important and how you put it into practice with your teams?

5:03So there are multiple facets to transparency, and it's hard not to think about the current macroeconomic climate that we're in right now. And during this time, I think there are certainly inflection points where there are opportunities for leaders to kind of be straightforward and honest and compassionate about what's going on and bring folks into the fold. And I think it's important to take those opportunities. another big area where like this comes into play i think as an edge leader all the time is in giving feedback to your teams uh you know like laterally down up all around like i'm just so passionate about like radical candor and i love to receive critical feedback or you know constructive feedback i think feedback is a gift and like i'm so thankful every time someone tells me something i could have done better um and i try to bring that to like my other interactions and be honest with folks.

5:59And like, it's hard. It's uncomfortable to say, hey, you know, like you did that thing and it like didn't really land. And here's what I observed. And maybe it would be better if you did it this other way. It's extremely uncomfortable. But I do think ultimately it's kindness to, I do that for people I care about, right? The people I care about the most, I'm going to give them the constructive feedback because I want them to get better. And I want folks to do the same for me. So, you know, I think transparency plays into that. How do you approach it with team members who maybe have trouble hearing that critical feedback in an unvarnished fashion?

6:30Certainly when diving into that realm, it's important to be aware of your context and try to suss out like whether that person is open to that feedback in the first place. Right. So like before I give any constructive feedback, I would kind of set the playing field and be like, hey, like I have some feedback for you, feedback for you. Like what would be like the best venue for you to hear it? Or, you know, certainly if I know that about someone ahead of time, that's even better, right? Do they prefer to like hop on a Zoom call or do they prefer to hop on a call and, you know, hear it in real time?

7:05Do they prefer it written and need some time to process before we meet in person? So I try to make sure that the person is like in the space to receive the feedback, first of all. And how do I deal with someone who like doesn't take it on board. I think it depends on the situation, right? So if it's a peer of mine who I'm giving feedback because I think that it's something that they could benefit from, but they're not necessarily directly in my reporting chain, it's kind of like a take it or leave it situation. If you don't agree or, you know, you don't want to hear it, like that's totally fine.

7:36Like you do you. If it's someone, you know, is like in my reporting structure somehow and it's tied to like improving how we work as a company, like it is important for the person to hear it. And there are, you know, kind of different facets of how you might connect that type of feedback. I try to connect it to business impact. I try to connect it to like impact on a person insofar as that's relevant. Try to help the person like see it outside of their own self and like what the impact that it has outside of them. I think that helps. Sounds like you're kind of understanding their motivation too, where it's like, okay, some people are really motivated by personal improvement.

8:15Maybe they just want to hear that feedback. They're like, yeah, great. I want to accomplish and grow. Whereas others may take that harder sometimes. But if you frame it to your point in the context of, hey, it's challenging for other team members when we approach things this way. I saw you took that approach with XYZ Project. It's an easier frame for them to say, oh, I'm impacting the team. Let me approach this differently. And then let's you initiate that conversation. Is that kind of how I'm hearing? Absolutely. Yeah. Motivation completely plays into it. And I love what you said about like how it impacts the rest of the team, like myself.

8:48And I imagine lots of other folks like engineering is like a team sport, right? So we're like super cognizant of how our actions affect others. And I do think that that can resonate with folks. I'll say it's been a challenge I've had to learn as a leader myself, where as I manage teams, I'm like personally very motivated by feedback, right? Like I have that sense of, oh, I need to fix these things. Let me help solve it. And like, I care about how it's impacting the team, of course, but I have that intrinsic motivation around, give me the critical feedback. I need to know it. I need to know it.

9:18And it was an adjustment for me realizing that other people take that on differently. And it's also different across cultures, right? Like in the United States, as an example, people kind of default to tending to give more positives before a negative, to kind of shield feedback, which may be different in other cultures and is different in a lot of other cultures. And sometimes it implies another explicit. So I appreciate this approach you're taking with radical candor, but I could see it with GitHub's very distributed global workforce being challenging in certain countries to give feedback one way versus another.

9:54How do you make that change depending on where your team's sitting? Yeah, I think that's a great point about culture. There's this book, The Culture Map. I haven't actually read it. I'm in the process of reading it, actually. read that book. Kelly Vaughn recommended it to me on the show a while back. And so I've been reading. Yeah, I should read it. I think it has a ton of great insights, but you're absolutely right that like culturally there are many different approaches to this type of thing. And I do think even Americans have a little bit of a stereotype of being like a little in your face.

10:20Yeah. Whereas other cultures are like much more nuanced. I guess what I would say for me, regardless of someone's physical location, certainly culture is a factor, but like working to establish an environment of psychological safety is like step one. Absolutely. Right. Like if I don't trust someone, I'm not going to give them constructive feedback and I'm going to take their constructive feedback differently than if we had kind of established a foundation of trust. So, you know, I think regardless of location, it's important to start with that, which is obviously easier said than done. What's your approach to establishing that psychological safety and that trust?

10:55The big thing for me, honestly, is modeling behavior consistently. You know, like I talk about transparency. I talk about working out in the open, asynchronous communication, caring for people. Obviously, you know, I am a people manager, so caring for them in small and big ways, celebrating them, showing up and giving them opportunities, setting them up for new opportunities. Just try to model that behavior consistently. And over time, I think people take that in. Yeah, exactly. Do you actively elicit feedback from your team members saying, hey, you know, I love the feedback, but I need it as well?

11:30And if so, how do you approach that? I try to. Yeah, every single one on one, but fairly regularly, I leave space for like, what could I be doing better, which is like more of a generic version of that question. It's hard, you know, to actually get a real answer to that in real time. I don't know if other people have asked you, hey, what can I be doing better? people ask me and I'm like I mean they're like well I don't really know or if I do know I might not want to say in that moment right a tricky one often ask folks like more specific questions like you know I will I don't know run a meeting or run a project and I'll be like hey like how do you think that went what could I have done better you know after the fact which is more of a retro approach a little bit of a retro approach yeah and with all of these things even you know earlier when I was talking about giving other folks constructive feedback.

12:21Like, I don't want to say it's not personal, but it's not personal. Like, there are many reasons why folks maybe do things that we might not see as optimal, right? Some things that might be outside of people's control or anything like that. So I don't think of any of it when folks give me feedback or I give them feedback as personal blame. It's more, hey, like, let me bring this into your focus, into your context that you might not be aware of. And that might help you, like, look at the situation differently. And it's a good way to understand where that approach is coming from for them. And maybe it's a learned behavior from a previous role where they were trying to protect themselves.

12:55Or maybe they're going through something or distracted by another project and they just weren't putting their full attention to it. Or it could be that they misunderstood the requirements or direction that was given to them and they just needed more context. So there's a lot of reasons and, you know, 15 more I haven't mentioned here. So I think that's a really apt way to think about it. I'd love to kind of zero in on this thread that I see within your work, because I know you also work as a mentor trying to enable people to grow. And I can see that kind of idea of wanting to grow new leaders, grow new engineers is really important to you.

13:31Can you tell me a bit about your mentorship work? Sure. Yeah. So I came to software engineering from a non-traditional path. I went to a boot camp, Flatiron School, and then I transitioned to an apprenticeship at Thoughtbot where I stayed for five years. So, you know, I am passionate about getting all sorts of folks into software engineering. It doesn't have to be non-traditional path, even the traditional path. So for a couple of years now, I have been working with a group called Emergent Works, and they are a nonprofit organization that teaches coding and digital literacy skills to formerly incarcerated folks and folks that are justice involved.

14:08And it's been an incredible experience. Like, I feel really passionate about, like, changing the face of tech and building an on-ramp for folks that, you know, look different than us. And we also just need to, right? We need more engineers. We need so many more, you know, devs across the board. So we're not going to find that just through college pathways. And we're certainly not going to find the diversity of thought that really can enhance what's happening. So I think that's a fantastic initiative. What have you learned from that process of being involved with these, you know, former justice involved individuals and kind of helping mentor and encourage them?

14:45Yeah. So again, Emergent Works is just an incredible organization. the important thing there again i think it's just a start from a space of psychological safety like you're bringing in people who are like very very different in in lots of ways certainly you know for for justice involved folks like marginalized in a lot of ways um so it's it's important to kind of like build those bonds what i have learned through working with those folks is that they are like very apt at learning coding. They are great product thinkers. The program that I did that wrapped up in like February 2020 to give you an idea of how close we came up against COVID.

15:25So we were in person and it was lovely, but that group of folks has great product ideas. Like, you know, we learned like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Git. They learned all of it. They like made websites that were like legitimately awesome product ideas. And I was like, wow, like some of this product thinking is like better than you know what i see around the boardroom so uh not that it's necessarily surprising but it was just refreshing to see like see it come to real life yeah and like this it's not like charity by any means like these people have so much to offer it's just like we we need to um they need a chance to i'll get in the industry and do that exactly give folks a chance just like everybody else gets so yeah it's been really rewarding.

16:08That's really cool. And I also just want to ask you about something I saw as we were doing research for this episode. You were involved with something called the School for Poetic Computation, I believe. Yeah, School for Poetic Computation. It's a school in New York. So I enrolled in one of their kind of intensives pretty much at the same time where I did the Emergent Works mentorship. So again, 2020 got the opportunity to be in person, which was lovely. And School for Poetic Computation is pretty much what it sounds like. It's kind of like an experimental computer and art school. I love it. And for me personally, like I'm also an artist, you know, like I've had an art practice like my whole life pretty much.

16:47And like the intersection of art and technology is just so fun and exciting to me. The motto for School for Poetic Computation is less demo, more poetry, which I love. And, you know, there's like many facets to like what they do. There's lots of like really creative technical projects. The cohort that I was part of was called code societies. And it was really like looking at technology through a social and political lens. So I think it was a really nice accompaniment to the Emergent Works mentorship. And I just learned so much in that relatively short amount of time that just like continues to be relevant every day.

17:26So I have to ask you, as someone who's gone through this program, you are an artist yourself, what are your thoughts on generative AI are and how that's changing society? And I can see my producers shaking their heads when I ask this question. Yeah, yeah. I'm so glad you went there. That's actually exactly where I was going to take it. Fantastic. All right. We're on the same page. Yeah, I mean, a lot of the learning from that cohort, which was like a straight up like academic cohort. It was a lot of reading, a lot of dense reading. Like I said, a lot of it continues to be relevant today. generative AI imagery, it's a spicy, it's a spicy topic, right?

18:05So here's what I would say, like, more largely about AI. The AI wave is here. I think we all know it. It's going to be a revolution. And, you know, tools like stable diffusion and large language models are available to consumers at a greater rate than ever before. or chat GPT is like, you know, gaining a stronghold in people's lives very quickly. It is very exciting. I think that there's a lot to be excited about. So, you know, for example, as an artist, am I saying, hey, like, don't use stable diffusion? I'm not, you know. At the same time, I think that there are things to be wary about and there are like potential problems and challenges.

18:48So I encourage software engineers, but everybody really to just like get educated about the space, like from an engineering perspective, get educated about like how AI works in the grand scheme of things. It's not actually like that complicated. I think it sounds more complicated than it actually is. Get a little bit of education about how it works and then get like the historical foundation of like what have been like some of the problems with this type of stuff in the past. How models are trained. Exactly. What are some of the problems that currently exist? What are like current applications that might be a little bit problematic, right?

19:24So in code societies, as school for poetic computation, we read like Ruha Benjamin, Sophia Noble, Simone Brown. These are like amazing, like academic thinkers who've done a ton of original research in this space. And I can talk about this for hours. I won't get into the details. But it's important to like understand historically and currently some of the challenges, some of the problems and understand that like we impart our values into the system like whether we mean to or not we impart our values into a system and often with our best intentions with intentions to be benevolent we actually end up doing the opposite so knowing that like keep that in mind and like make sure to build these types of products with like the most diverse group of people you can find.

20:14You know, I don't think it's realistic to say, like, don't do AI. But if you are going to do AI, know the history, know how it works and like pursue it with a diverse group of people. And I think you're going to have a better product at the end of it. How would you kind of start a primer around the history of AI and what it means for folks who maybe are just starting to get into the subject? Yeah, I mean, like I said, those three writers are were very influential to me. Sophia Noble writes about like Google as a search engine. Right. So now we're really getting into the spicy takes. I'm excited.

20:51You know, Google is like the world's source of information. But like Google is not a search engine. Google is like an advertising company. Yeah. And, you know, people forget that. And people forget like maybe some of the incentives that go into showing you what's on page one and page two. and the types of results that people get differ depending on your own history and differ based on the types of searches that you do. So like, again, the Sifian Noble, like I think that's a good place to start. And so much of these biases are just like in the very foundation of like seeking information. And you can see how like you might find yourself in a bubble, myself included.

21:31I live in my own bubble. We all do. We're literally in a bubble. I think that's an interesting way to phrase it because inherently we don't think about pulling back that carpet, right? Of saying, oh, like I use Google, it's a tool I use, it's helpful. But as I'm Googling something, am I thinking about what drove me to the search result? What's Google's incentives behind? That's not really like, am I aware that the SEO industry exists? Of course. Like I know optimizing those results is something I think about, but I think it's a great point because there's so many of these systems that help run our day-to-day lives that are massive databases for machine learning, frankly, the basis behind a lot of these AI tools and are learning about us constantly and creating algorithms that show different pieces of content to us depending on who we are.

22:20And we talk a lot about it in general, like, oh, the algorithm showed me this or this popped up. But actually peeling back why that happened is something that I don't think is being discussed enough even now as this conversation continues to generate off. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And, you know, this was a while back, but people were talking about like the different Facebook feeds that, you know, someone on the left versus someone on the right might have. And I just, you know, like the reality is that like the results that we get and the information we consume like underpins like our understanding of the world and our reality.

22:54And one thing that like keeps me up at night is like, is my understanding of the world flawed and incomplete? Do am I wrong? Right. If I'm wrong, I don't want to be wrong. I want to change my mind. that are happening, right? Like there's so many studies that are showing that the way we have shaped the internet is creating these massive information silos that people start falling into and it's hard to get out of. And you're exposed to different information that to your point shapes your view of the world and reality. And I think you're seeing it in the way there's this massive drift between viewpoints and you're seeing the polls kind of increase as far as, oh, I'm all the way to the North Pole, the South Pole, depending on the different topic.

23:31So it's a fascinating area for, I think, a lot of study and exploration and I think needs a lot of innovation to try to improve the problem. Yeah. And I mean, us like as software engineers, as software leaders, like we are positioned to impact this. Right. Like this is a big reason why I got into tech. Like there's this book, Program or Be Programmed by Douglas Rushkoff that I read like decades ago. And essentially it says like tech has an agenda. Right. So like learn to program if you want to have a say, if you want to have a seat at the table. So I want to have a seat at the table and like we're in a position to like impact this either way, right, for good or for bad.

24:09So like at a baseline, like being aware that like tech is not neutral, I think that's a good place to start. What are other systemic risks or challenges you see within the industry today? It's a really good question. Systemic risks or challenges in the industry. Well, I mean, how far I'm trying to like unwind us from where we're at today. I don't know how far I can unwind. Like another one that honestly comes to mind is just like what tech workers look like, what our tech course looks like. Lack of diversity in the workforce. Lack of diversity. Forming those models and forming decision making.

24:45And I mean, again, like this isn't charity, right? The lens is not charity. Like there are multiple studies that show like diverse groups of people create more successful products. So like for those who like the business case resonates, there's like a clear business case for having diverse teams, having different experiences and backgrounds, like risk proofs your business in a way that like being in an echo chamber doesn't. I think we've all been in that room where it's just an echo chamber and it's like, you're great. No, you're great. Having a diverse group of ideas and experiences helps you like identify.

25:22You need to be pushed. You need that critical feedback. You need to understand the edge cases that maybe are harder for you to understand based on your personal experience. I think that's a really resonant point that we maybe don't talk about enough as far as why this matters and why we need to future-proof our industry by diversifying the thought processes that are being improved. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and I mean, like, the population, you know, like, certainly in the U.S., but around the world, like, it's starting to look different. So even as we talk about, like, who's in the minority, who's in the majority, like, those things are changing.