ashleygoestogradschool

[ashleygoestogradschool]

Class 3, Week 1 - New adventures in work and school!

Alrighty, it’s been awhile. I’ll catch up on blogging about the O course at some point. But... things have been brewin for me. 1. I started a new job!!!  2. I started a new class - buckle up as you join me through Applied Data Analytics.

August 1 I started a new job as the Director of Developer Experience and Advocacy at tackle.io. I get to focus on making the best experience possible in engineering. Even better? So much of how I do that relies on what I am learning in my I/O psychology program. I get to be a scientist-practitioner! So, I took July off to rest up (I highly recommend taking at least a month between jobs - I honestly wish I had taken more to give myself more of a sabbatical). I started my new job and then... grad school started back up last week after taking the summer off lol.  Do I recommend starting a new job AND grad school? Absolutely not. But do I love what I’m learning? YES (in school AND my new role)! 

What is applied data analytics?��

Think about taking statistics and analytics, applied in the context of psychology in the workplace. I don’t have a background in stat. Or psychology. Nor do I know how to use SPSS. But, I love math. I love to learn. And this is going to seriously help me in my job. Honestly, everyone should probably learn this. Whether you are dealing with engineering/team data, bugs, employee satisfaction data - this is SO useful. Even if all you learn is mean, median, and mode, you are already ahead of what I typically see presented in meetings (just the mean, or average). 

Week 1 - Research methods, ethics in data collection, and descriptive statistics

This week was pretty great as far as first weeks of a new course go. We touched on some topics we already dove into in previous courses, reinforcing our learning, especially in research methods, participant rights, and ethics in data collection. 

This is SUPER critical in my role as head of DevX. I’ll constantly be thinking of ways to do research within our teams - semi-structured interviews? surveys / forms? observation? It might changed depending on what I am trying to learn (and on the teams I work with - what method is most likely to get me the information I need?). 

Since I approach what I do as research, the people I work with are my research participants! My promise to each person I talk with is that they have rights, too! They have the right to anonymity! And to opt out! And the right to know how I plan on using (and how I will not use!) the data I am collecting (also, what I found in that data!). By being super transparent, and focusing on psychological safety first - it is easier to come from a place of trust (though that takes time to build too!). 

I also must approach the data I collect from an ethical point of view - how could anything I do be used for harm? In a recent talk I gave at Agile Testing Days, I talked about instances where seemingly innocuous data was asked for something it was not intended for - team story points. This is a TEAM data point, yet was asked to break it down per person (red flag number one)... As we dug in, we learned this goal was to evaluate people (RUN AWAY!). Big, resounding “NOPE” on that one. 

Anyway, all that to say, week 1 went well. I shouldn’t have been scared of this class. I continue to hate writing discussion threads, SPSS is interface is like the 90s but definitely useful, and hey - I’m not so bad at describing things.

Definitely learn the basics and why we want something other than the average, or mean. Learn about variance and standard deviation, and why those are important. 

Stay tuned for week 2 - data visualization (histograms and boxplots and scatterplots oh my!)

[ashleygoestogradschool]

New course, new challenges

I had to take a brief hiatus from blogging. Turns out, when you get covid, and then develop pneumonia, and then go out on disability... it’s hard to juggle all the things - who knew?!  I’m slowly catching up and intend to write about my reflections from the course I just finished - Another 8 week module focused specifically on topics in the ‘O’ in I/O Psychology, like teamwork and leadership and stressors and motivation and more... The reflections were an eye opener for me in many ways, things I had dismissed or taken for granted, being able to articulate what was actually stressing me out (hint: role overload), and realize I am still suffering burnout...  I spent most of my time recovering from illness and furiously trying to catch up in school / not fall behind. I had the great fortune of having one of the most compassionate humans ever as a professor who supported me in every step of the way through my illness. So - stay tuned for a more in depth dive with each week’s topics. I hope to have some great discussions with you! 

[ashleygoestogradschool]

Week 8 - Leadership, Teams, Motivation and Well-being

Last week, best week! This week I learned it is INCREDIBLY difficult to travel and try to do school work. It is really hard to believe that we wrapped our first course already - time is flying (and yet the weeks feel incredibly long). The first week was so overwhelming, but here are some things that worked for me:

Moving to a four day work week (ten hour days are awful, but knowing I have Friday off? such a mental relief)

Plan, plan, plan, plan plan. Look at each article. How many pages is the reading? How long are the videos? What’s your day job workload like? Are you too overloaded? 

Small study groups will save you. We encourage each other, have the best discussions on the content, and really learn from each other. 

Tackle all required reading Sunday/Monday. Spread optional throughout the week and prioritize based on assignment/discussion topics. 

Take the reading quiz immediately after reading the chapter (obv situational, not all classes are the same, but those quizzes were based on the textbook reading). 

Outline discussion post on Wednesday, write and submit Thursday. 

Outline assignment Friday morning, write up as much as I can throughout the day, submit Friday evening to free up the weekend (or, better yet, actually proofread it Saturday morning and THEN submit)... 

Proofread. Like five times. Then proofread one more time.

Have little rewards. Finished that chapter? Read that article? Watched the video? Get an A? Whether it’s a piece of chocolate, a nap, a walk... something to reward yourself... 

Anyway, I MADE IT THROUGH MY FIRST COURSE! I’m still waiting on that last grade, but unless I get a negative score, I’ll walk out with a better grade than I imagined I’d get. So back to week 8... SO much amazing content... our assignments focused on leadership (bases of power and leadership style), and the socialization process for new team members. We also covered (briefly, but admittedly I deprioritized some of the optional reading for another date) motivation and well-being - two things I care DEEPLY about and will most definitely be circling back to beyond the textbook reading I did. Today I’ll talk about leadership reflections... but will absolutely circle back to the other topics as we are sure to do deeper dives in future classes. 

I did a LOT of reflecting as thinking about the 5 bases of power initially made me cringe, but if we influence in any way, we rely on some sort of power to do that. In no particular order, the 5 bases of power are:

Legitimate power - what position do I hold? Do people do things because I am a director? 

Reward power - if you do something, do I tend to reward you for carrying out that task or achieving that goal?

Expertise power - do I influence people through my expertise or deep knowledge in a particular area?

Referent power - do I build and inspire trust with the people I work with? do I rely on my interpersonal skills? 

Coercive power  - do I rely on threats and fear to get things done?

While none of these resonated with me, I reflected that my own leadership draws a lot on referent, expertise, and when I can, reward power. I also tend to respond best to those bases, particularly referent power. I’ve experienced legitimate and coercive power, and my general reaction is absolute resistance when I encounter people that rely on those. 

As far as my own personal style... I definitely look to person-focused leadership (as opposed to task-focused leadership). This leadership style exhibits four key behaviors:  

transformation leadership (what resonates most with me as it focuses on vision-driven change in people and context), 

consideration (maintaining close social relationships and group cohesion), 

empowerment (emphasizing follower self-leadership and self-management skills), and 

motivation (what keeps us going, especially in times of difficulty?). 

If I consider task-focused leadership, while not a natural inclination for me, there may be a time and place for it. This includes transactional behavior (praise/reward for meeting role expectations), initiating structure (accomplishing tasks through clear roles definition and minimizing ambiguity), and boundary spanning (networking, collaborating with others, scanning the environment, and negotiating resources for the team). 

So... what kind of leader are you? 

[ashleygoestogradschool]

Week 7 - Recruiting and Selection, Organizational Learning (Training), and Performance Management

What a week! We had a LOT of ground to cover... from how we recruit and make selection decisions, to how we train (and make it stick!), to performance management... which was timely given it's my own performance management time and I was writing reviews up for my own team this week. 

Recruiting and personnel selection...

I think I will always struggle with recruiting and personnel decisions. OF COURSE we want to hire the best people... but I don’t necessarily see a world in which the tech industry says ‘yep ok I want to take cognitive ability tests’ (the best predictor of success according to my readings throughout this course). I DO believe I have some work to do on structured interviews - and I already work with my team on having consistent questions and what to look for... but I do believe we can do better on how we score/rate candidates based on those answers. I also struggle with work samples. I’m pretty against the ‘take home’ test or coding samples... but work samples are also proven to be effective, especially when combined with cognitive ability tests. So what is the happy medium? 

Organizational Learning and Training Transfer

Our assignment this week was focused on how we would improve training transfer in our workplace (meaning, how do our employees retain what they learn?). I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve taken a course or done some sort of training, but because I didn’t immediately start to apply it, pretty much didn’t retain any of it. As managers, how are we setting our teams up for success? How are we helping target what kind of training they need? How much is on the job, or mentorship/coaching, or actual formal coursework?  To me, it starts with goals. What is it we are trying to achieve? Then, evaluate what methods will help my team best... perhaps it is pairing with others around the organization to learn from them... or perhaps we need a course to take together. We also want to look at timeliness - as we look at training, are we positioned to start applying what we learn immediately? As their manager, am I also working learning into their performance goals? Am I crafting smaller goals with them to complete and apply the training? 

Interestingly, another topic that came up was the idea of social constructivism for effective learning. How are we creating social support during and after learning? I have found slack channels to reflect each day through a course super effective, or breakout discussions... but also continuing that sense of community post-course work as we apply it and learn. 

Performance Management

Whew. Look, I LOVE feedback. I hate ratings (unless it’s an A+ or a top score, then by all means give that to me :-)). If you work for me, your annual appraisal should never be a surprise. The performance review cycle should be constant. But there is so much to improve. Do we train managers on how to rate? How do we help people acknowledge their biases (whew especially halo or horns bias) so they can provide fair feedback? I’ll never forget gathering feedback on a former employee, and someone recalled something from YEARS ago that had since been corrected. (Needless to say, I did not include that obvious horns bias into the final review). Do we have consistent ways of rating employees with the same job/role? So much of this process leaves me infuriated every time we walk into the forced distribution methods when it comes time to finalize scores (which, is likely only effective for a few years, btw). 

We watched a SUPER interesting video on the future of performance and how it should be COMPLETELY SEPARATE from pay. YES PLEASE. Sign me up. There is a lot of unlearning that would have to take place (myself included). 

Again, to me, it comes down to clear goals, constantly reflecting on those goals, and adjusting as needed throughout the year. A goal I set today is likely not going to look the same come next year’s appraisal process. And that’s ok! If you don’t have clear goals, how do you know how (and what) you’re doing? Are you getting feedback or asking for it throughout the year? Or do you wait until your manager talks to you? I HIGHLY recommend asking if you aren’t getting live, actionable feedback. These are things I’ve had to ask for, and it’s only helped me improve, in a timely way. Anyway - this week kicked my butt - one of the heaviest work weeks we’ve had yet, but the key to grad school to me in learning is applying what I learn about, reflecting on how it’s manifested in my workplace, and thinking how I would make it better for the future... Now... ONE MORE WEEK (of my first course!). 

[ashleygoestogradschool]

Week 6 - Applied Data Analytics!

Well we reached the week I was dreading... our introduction to Applied Data Analytics (ADA)! I also wanted to wait until I got my grade as this would have been a very very different post. So I’m writing up weeks 6 and 7 during week 8 ;-)  Anyway - to be honest, I was really scared of this week since I had never had a stats course in my life. To get into the program I had to go through a few intro to stats courses... and I’m so glad I did - too bad it was at the height of the pandemic and I deferred, so it’s been a hot minute! To be honest what was supposed to be the the hardest week turned out to be my favorite, and dare I say... a strength? (The hardest week for me was hands down week 4 where we learned about inferences of construct validity... which I need to circle back to...). I hate how rusty I am with formulas (I did start my undergrad off as a math major before switching to information systems), but it started to click... I did also buy a book “Statistics for people who think they hate statistics...” One day I will remember all the terms like p and r and two tailed tests without having to look them up every two seconds, but for now I’ll take my A on those assignments and keep reading to learn.  This week was made possible by the work I do now with my own team. It was pretty cool to reflect on what we’ve done lately with internal teams research, data analysis, and more... There are a few things I would tweak, but otherwise, it just makes grad school so much easier when I can think about how it directly applies to my work now. I feel way more confident as I look ahead to ADA I & II (ADA I to start in... 8.5 weeks... eek!). Not so confident about needing to learn R... but I’ll tackle that bridge when I get there. Til then, heads down - and I can see the finish line for my first course!

[ashleygoestogradschool]

Week 5 - Finding balance, and ethics

What an interesting week! And for two reasons: my new experiment to find balance and the topic of the week (ethics and diversity, equity and inclusion - or DEI). 

Finding balance

This week was pretty pivotal in my ability to balance as I tried a new experiment: the 4 day work week. Of course I wish this entailed 32 hours instead of the 40 I’m squeezing in (but I realized I was doing this anyway as I started tracking my time before trying this out). However, having that Friday off to concentrate on school was game changing for me in terms of getting things done and my overall energy levels. I was even able to start adding my strength training back in at way too early in the morning after my first week of changing up my schedule - something I felt completely overwhelmed to even consider earlier. Sure, I had struggles and some long days, but overall... I was much happier to have my weekend to focus on my family and not stress about submitting assignments by 11:55pm on Sunday. 

Ethics in research

This week we explored the American Psychological Association (APA) Ethical Code of Conduct as well as several case studies in ethics. As my team turns to internal research, there is so much that relates here. This week I’ll focus on the research participant ‘bill of rights’... something I think that is often overlooked (and unless you are taking a course in organizational psychology, you might not have come across this). Fortunately, my team has called out many of these areas every time we partner with a group. However, it should be on all of us to think about if we being ethical in our research and the data we collect. Anyway, I just wanted to highlight the rights here for consideration, especially as much of our work as tech leaders revolves around research/questions we are trying to answer. 

Right to informed consent - Participants have the right to fully understand the purpose of the research. What question are we trying to answer? What is the approach and how do we plan to use the information? What are the risks? They also have the right to withdraw at any time without negative consequences. Honestly, I feel like this is the most often violated right. I know we aren’t psychologists running experiments in tech, but we are doing research frequently. Maybe it’s pulling data to understand effectiveness or productivity. How do we build trust and come from a place of learning vs. a place of judgment? How do we use this to help avoid feeling like we are being monitored for fear of our job?

Right to privacy - Participants have the right to limit the information they reveal about themselves. Researchers must also protect that information (and be clear about how they are taking security measures to do so).  The consequences of inadvertently revealing such sensitive information could result in social stigma or economic impacts. Basically, how do we preserve the dignity of the research participant? Researchers are responsible for preserving this. 

Right to confidentiality - Participants have the right to decide to whom they will reveal personal information. Basically, will my responses be anonymous? Researchers may find more forthcoming responses if they are clear how the information will be handled and how anonymity will be preserved. Researchers should also be mindful in how they design their research or debrief to reduce the ability to identify someone based on an answer (not just remove their name). How might we see this in tech? Whew - even in the few research projects I’ve done, my stakeholders have wanted to respond “can you just reveal who said that so we can talk to them?” No, no I cannot (I couldn’t even if I felt it were ethical as my responses alone are collected anonymously when I do surveys). 

Right to protection from deception - Researchers must not intentionally mislead participants as to the purpose of research. I do worry that many people going after data change the purpose or intent of research without notifying participants (or without consideration to if the research design or data collected is still applicable to the change in direction). 

Right to debriefing - once a study is completed, participants have the right to be debriefed and have an opportunity to ask questions, remove any harmful effects from the study, and leave participants with a sense of dignity. How many times have you undergone employee surveys without a debriefing? Or perhaps only a certain level of leadership was debriefed, without being given instruction on how to (or if they should) discuss with their teams. 

Anyway, these participant rights left me with a lot of food for thought in how I approach my own thinking around research and data. We must be sensitive to ethical issues in order to behave ethically.    

[ashleygoestogradschool]

Week 4 - predictors, criteria, validity and reliability… my brain is melting

This week was the hardest yet. And clearly I’m still recovering from it as I’m so late in posting this.

Ultimately this was a tough week for me on many fronts where I officially bit off more than I could chew (oh hey guess what? I’m now also the co-captain of the field hockey team heading to regional qualifiers for the national club championship).

I’m also writing this as my youngest is asleep on me. I feel like I’ve barely seen my family in two weeks. :-(

Where was I? Oh yeah. School. This was a tough one as we talked about selection methods and predictors of success. And the things most scientifically proven to predict success make me cringe thinking about trying to implement (much less do myself), and the reactions from people in my industry. Like cognitive ability tests (it’s in the lead by a mile). When paired with other selection methods (again, work samples make me weary when I think of how much I hate coding exercises that take candidates a significant amount of time and energy), or structured interviews (sigh… I really love a good conversation)… I have to think there must be a better way for tech.

How deeply do we think about the job criteria, and how to measure in a consistent and fair way? How valid are they? How do they relate to other criteria we are looking for? What bias can be introduced in our criteria measures? How might our criteria be deficient and contaminated? (Think about GPA… a deficient and contaminated criteria that doesn’t actually tell you a complete picture of a student… What does a performance review actually tell us?)

We must explore these questions for selection and performance purposes. And now that I’m recruiting more team members I am examining our interview practices ;-) bonus, while we do lean on unstructured interviews, I do structure it enough and ask consistent questions across all candidates (and I even send them to the candidates in advance).

Is there a happy medium that puts the science into practice, without the tech world revolting? :-)

Side note: when I first started at my company I had to take the computer programmer aptitude and battery (CPAB) test. I did awful.

[ashleygoestogradschool]

Week 3 - Research Methods

Another week down! This week was research methods, and while a lot of us in our cohort dreaded it for the sheer amount of reading and work, I actually really enjoyed it.  This post won’t be long because work, grad school, kids tracked out, etc, but... long story short - if you haven’t studied research methods, and you are in tech - and if you are ever asked for metrics (and we ALL are)... this week is for you. 

What was super important to me was really understanding the process of research (whew, I’m not TOO far off)...  1. Statement of the problem - what’s our hypothesis? What is it we are trying to learn more about? Our assignment this week was to start a research design around HR management issues we were encountering. (OMG where do I start? let me count the ways... attrition, fatigue and stress, onboarding, the list goes on)...  2. Design of the research study (what methods do you need? Most people take a very singular metric approach (hello, # of bugs?) - but we probably need to look at a combination of quantitative and qualitative. I also really love the SPACE framework  introduced by Dr. Nicole Forsgren, et. al. Really look at your variables or measurements - this week we are talking about criteria and how it can be deficient and contaminated, understanding bias and accounting for that (I’m really looking forward to it!). 

3. Measurement of the variables... time to go get some data! If you are working with participants (and... in my case, we almost always are...) Remember they have their own rights! 

4. Analysis of the data - are there any correlations? How weak or strong are those correlations? What insights can we glean? There is a difference between data and information and knowledge. 

5. Conclusions from research... If we started with a theory, did we prove it? Did a theory emerge from our research? This may end in more questions! and identifying where we should have added another variable, mediator, or moderator in! 

Another favorite reading from the week was Adam Grant’s article on Task Significance. Grant discusses the causal effect of task significance (am i making an impact in people’s lives? is my work valued?) on job performance, as well as mediators and moderators of that effect. My takeaway personally is to make sure, no matter what I do, that I can understand the significance of my work. (FYI it’s also one of my core needs in the BICEPS model).  Easy in education technology. We also read about an experiment on job titles (hence my latest tweet - I would really love to figure what I do lol). 

While I’m scared to actually go design a proper I/O research study in an upcoming course that dives WAYYYYYY deeper into this topic (not for a few courses - I’m really looking forward to this. But, one week at a time. If I think too far ahead of myself, I get overwhelmed and want to curl into a ball. 

Week 4 is a doozy, but also something everyone needs (criteria, predictors, and more). 

[ashleygoestogradschool]

Week 2 - Finding my groove, open systems, multi-level theory, and more

Welp, week 2 is behind me! I'm 25% of the way through my first course! AAAAAAND, I'm happy to report I got an A on my first discussion post and quiz :-) Now just waiting to hear how I did on my other week 1 assignment. This week I felt much better. I used Asana to get organized and listed out every last task that needed to get done (one task per textbook chapter, article, video, slide deck, assignment, quiz, etc), and then looked at the view of how it was split up each day (were there days I was more overloaded?). This helped me really balance my week a LOT better.

Then I could switch to my beloved Kanban view and move things from "To Do" to "In Progress" to "Done" accordingly.

Seeing my week laid out like this, with the goal to finish everything by Friday (instead of Sunday at 11:55pm when assignments were due) allowed me to have a much more relaxing weekend and even get a day off. I also set up little rewards for myself every time something moved to done (i also love Asana's little confetti unicorn when this happens) - like a piece of chocolate, or go watch a tv show, or go for a walk. I still have some things to tweak heading into week 3, but overall much better feeling, I didn't cry every day, and I actually felt... I dunno... confidence? It was much easier when we could discuss a topic and apply to what we see in our day to day.

So what did I learn? This week we went over several topics (covering two chapters worth of work). We focused on levels of analysis, teams, open systems, multi-level theory, and worker affect, attitudes, behaviors, and cognition. When thinking about levels of analysis, we are talking about individuals, teams, and organizations. This was important for me as we got into multi-level modeling (and the impacts it can have on your statistical analysis to not look up or down a level), the impacts one level may have on another, and efficacy-performance spirals.

Also interesting was to learn more about shared mental models (Problem/Situation > Team Interaction > Team > Equipment > Task) and types of shared knowledge (common, overlapping or distributed)... especially in terms of teams that I have worked with or on, the forms of mental models we use whether onboarding processes or retrospectives or setting team norms and understanding our roles.

One aspect of the reading that I had not really thought about before was the Broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. Negative emotions narrow our actions to lead to a specific outcome (think fight or flight response), whereas positive emotions expand our views and awareness, prompting us to think and act in more diverse ways.

I have to say - the last two years were hard to think of a lot of positive emotions in work and life. Mostly stress, a lot of fight and flight (or freeze) responses. But when I've been in a place of joy and happiness? Wow my problem solving is so creative. It's a lot of personal work, but how can I spark joy and radiate positivity in my work? To me, it's in my relationship with my team (peers and those that work for me), it's the ability to experiment and see results, and even if they fail, that ability to learn something...

There is so much to cover from last week, but for those of us that had been feeling despair, frustration, or sadness... how did that impact your work? How do you bring yourself back to center so that we may spiral upward instead of downward? So much to think about and reflect on... I do think my favorite article was on the efficacy performance spiral, which I'll be thinking about with my own teams to see how we can either disrupt or halt some spirals we see happening... That said... next week? Research methods. This I think will be HUGE in my team's approach to our socio-technical research, and I can't wait to learn more!

[ashleygoestogradschool]

Week 1 - I’m a grad student!

This week was one of the hardest I’ve ever experienced. The learning curve to being a full-time working parent and grad student is STEEP. All the planning in the world couldn’t have prepared me for this. A few reflections (and wins!) from this week:

Reading textbooks and academic research is WAY different than my current guilty pleasure - Diana Gabaldon’s “Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone”. My eyes can’t seem to keep the words straight and jump around the electronic page. I long for a physical textbook (it’s on back order). That said, I do love the searchability (but I am an old and can also use an index :-)).

I completely over thought my first discussion post and assignment, but I got them in earlier than the deadlines. AND I did get a 100 on my first quiz! Now I anxiously await the discussion and assignment grades

Community is EVERYTHING! Just like my Women in Testing community, this cohort is amazingly welcoming and helpful as we learn together. We quickly found smaller study groups to share tips and check our thinking and help each other through the week

Office hours are important. Ignore the “optional”. I can’t make it to both for personal/family reasons, but my community has my back (and I have theirs). We share notes and talk about important things, like HOW TO READ A RESEARCH ARTICLE (start to finish? Oh no. Abstract first. Then conclusions. Then the stuff in the middle).

I’m also now not the same reader as I was in my youth. I need assistive technology. Bigger font. Better contrast. Read aloud options. Reading online triggered three migraines. Ugh. Keyboard navigation. As someone that’s been in Ed tech for 17 years some of the solutions I used this week PAIN me after having tested for accessibility.

BioSig? Lockdown browser? Security theater I say. I’m too old and worked too hard to even be tempted to cheat for what I want out of this degree. I’m actually offended it’s a thing. (Psst. It’s also ableist).

But enough about my experiences. What did we go over? This week was an intro to I-O psych

What exactly IS industrial and organizational psychology? A form of applied psychology, I-O psychology is the science of human behavior as it pertains to work. Industrial psychology aspects cover topics such as employee selection, performance management, procedures and processes, etc. Organizational psychology tends to look at areas like leadership, teamwork, and more. It’s rare to study one over the other, given the impact each has on “the other side”. My preference though right now is organizational ;-)

It was fascinating to see the impact of I-o psych throughout historical events. From selection methods in the army in World War I through more classification methods in World War II, an impact on civil rights and Americans with Disabilities acts. I’d never thought of it from that perspective before. And if you’ve never heard of Lillian Gilbreth go look her up. Too tired to write more about her right now :-)

One area that gives me pause, and I kind of dread the course, is employee selection methods. If science tells us that selection tests work, wtf happened to me? On paper I did not make sense. I had to take the Computer Programmer Aptitude and Battery test to get my job. I am pretty sure someone told me I did awful (omg I hate tests!). We have also since done away with that required part of the interview process. How do we ensure we consider the context of the individual? How do we check our biases and explore what biases may be introduced in these tests? Well, at least I have a few questions to go after when it’s time.

Another interesting thing we discussed was the scientist-practitioner gap. It’s almost like this field needs its own form of DevRel to make sure the science is making its way to the practitioners.

Anyway, a hard, but good week teeing up topics for the future - glad to see I’m at least still interested in (even if skeptical… hello performance management! It’s totally review season here and I still haven’t written mine up).

That’s all for now. Week 2 will be interesting as I’m slammed in work and life, but I have a tiny bit more confidence having made it through week 1. 1 down, 79-ish to go!).

Thanks to everyone that has reached out and supported me so far - especially on the days I wanted to quit (yes, already at least three of those). But especially to my husband, best friend and partner, Scott, who has been a tremendous help and encouraged me to stick with it as I cried myself to sleep on more than one occasion.

[ashleygoestogradschool]

Happy New Year!

It’s the last day of 2021. Amidst the pandemic, one thing I actually achieved (beyond reaching the end of the internet) was getting into grad school. With a 20+ year in tech, I’ll be attending George Mason University for a masters (wait, is there a better name for this?!) degree in Applied Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Why? I really feel like this is a missing link in tech (at least in my experience). We build software for people, by people. My guiding light has always been “People First, Software Second.” But what are the things that actually help us create the spaces and environments to truly put people first? How do we unlock motivation? How do we view leadership? How do we approach problem-solving? Our organizational culture is nothing without its people. And I want to learn more. Join me as I use this blog to reflect on what I’m learning, my experiences in tech and the workplace, and likely some bigger questions as I learn. I won’t have the answers, but I hope my thoughts help us all make tech just a little better.