Notices by Insecurity Princess 🌈💖🔥 (saraislet@infosec.exchange)

I would like to walk into a forest, curl up under a tree, and become part of the mossy forest floor forever

Coming up with the world's worst "Would you rather" questions to ask your team

"Would you rather have psychological safety forever but only with one person, or psychological safety only one time with each person?"

"Would you rather do one 360-degree feedback or 360 one-degree feedbacks?"

[updating page to degree as @irvingreid suggested]

"Would you rather fight one bear-sized Keeper Test, or 100 Keeper-Test-sized bears?"

"Would you rather run into a bear or the Keeper Test alone in the woods?"

"Would you rather interview one developer or develop one interviewer?"

"Would you rather wrestle code in Python, or wrestle a python in code?"

"Would you rather have the superpower to know exactly the right choice but no one will believe you, or have the superpower that everyone always believes you but you always make the wrong choice?"

"Would you rather hear only inaccurate criticism but believe your colleagues secretly support you, or only inaccurate compliments but believe your colleagues secretly hate you?"

If one of these sets of colleagues always lies and your beliefs are fallible, what one question could you ask that would leave you with crippling self-doubt for the rest of your life?

"Would you rather manage one team with 20 reports, or report to 20 teams with one manager?"

If I led an organization, I would mandate that we can only wear skirts

Because then we'd have no breeches

"[E]nvironments hold so much power, the cause for so much of this, yet we situate solutions on the individual"

As a manager, I found that the Burnout book has a healthy balance of showing what a path towards individual recovery may look like — while pointing out that "the game is rigged" and some of the systemic elements (beyond job-specific work environment, but as Cat Hicks points out, "individuals are often sampling the environment" and similarly I'd suggest that each job environment is a sample of the wider systemic influences)

But often what's missing is addressing the environment itself, which is the responsibility of people managers at every level.

I swear to the seven salty bovine goddesses that if one more person suggests "time off" as a solution to burnout without suggesting ANY changes to the environment causing said burnout, I will … continue screaming empty salty interjections into the void, and possibly sabotage my own career because hell why not everyone else is doing that

I missed this terrific piece on burnout from @grimalkina
"It's alarming to write something really simple like, people deserve to have environments that don't destroy them and have it resonate with a lot of people."

This resonates hard. I say similar things every week to my reports, to colleagues, and to folks across the tech industry — and it's routinely far more unusual and impactful than it should be.

Every manager should say things like this (and, more importantly, *back it up with actions*). It should be an indictment of the industry that not only does this not happen, but rather burnout remains a perennial issue that continues to get worse, chasing women and Black folks out of the industry.
https://www.drcathicks.com/post/burnout-us

@skinnylatte I didn't know you were non-monogamous
(kidding)

Any particular instrument?

@ryanc @drsbaitso I FOUND THE STRUCTURE PURIST INGREDIENT REBEL

JUST NEED THE STRUCTURE REBEL INGREDIENT PURIST AND WE CAN MAKE A WILD PIZZA SANDWICH WITH VEGAN CHEESE

WHICH RYAN WOULD PROBABLY EAT

IT DOESN'T COUNT AS A TWO PIZZA TEAM OF IT'S TWO TEAMS EATING TWO PIZZAS AND HALF OF THEM DON'T EAT PIZZA

@sophieschmieg finally agreeing with me: "sometimes the extra delta-V is worthwhile to launch someone into the sun"

(because it costs square root of two less delta-v to reach escape velocity from the solar system than to launch someone into the sun — but sometimes, it's worth it)

@catsalad @sophieschmieg if we only take their heads we could fit a few dozen in there and launch them all until the sun!

Yeet the rich!