Coming Soon!

Notes

• promotion

• invigorate the team

• impact the team

  • your boss
  • your lead
  • your teammates

• impact the org

  • show other teams this is possible

• empower yourself and your team

• actualize democracy

• create a space where intense debate is totally fine and doesn’t need to turn into resentment

• deepen team knowledge and skillset

• stay relevant

• hypothetical

• if you have the security: do it

• not paying attention to trends

• your boss may not even realize what is going on because they’re not engineers

• power may be concentrated

• your allies may not back you

• many people may not even speak

• freestyle, but if not:

• write down your idea

• site evidence or research

• anticipate questions and answer them

• rehearse with someone who will mimic hostility or omission

• get a feel of where allies are at beforehand

• be respectful, but be firm

• really try and not lose your shit

• what will you do if nothing changes

• a lot of people tend not to share, especially if there are outspoken people on the team

• power may be concerted amongst older members of the team or privileged members of the team like between a white manager and white team members

• all of this results in unhealthy bias or underrepresentation of engineering insight

• many engineers may not have the time, the interest or the skillset to keep up with short and long term industry trends or to liaise with other teams, therein keeping up with internal short and long term trends

• your boss may not be aware of any of this which is a problem itself; this may make your teammates feel like dissent is futile

• if you have evidence-based engineering direction for the team that you feel others are not aware, or are in denial, of, and have job safety1

• obviously one of the main keys to verbalizing your dissent is to know what you are going to say; if you feel it in your heart and can articulate that without rehearsal: awesome! That’s what I do; many cannot and the key here is to rehearse exactly what you are going to say

• rehearse what you are going to say in an office or on a call, pretending like your team is there

• develop a list of anticipated questions, formulate answers to them and rehearse answering them

• do this all in a context of stress; contrary to what you might expect I recommend that you do so in a bit of a stressful mind; do not try and create conditions to rehearse in that lend themselves to your disposition because that’s not the conditions under which dissent takes place; people will likely become hostile because change is likely scary for most of us; they may be passive aggressive or aggressive; there voices may go up; really it’s best to practice with someone who can fulfill these roles

• be prepared to cite evidence; none of this matters if everything is completely anecdotal or hypothetical; if it is theoretical insights that extrapolate from related research

• be prepared to take action if nothing happens: do you try again? do you speak with your boss’s boss? do you try and switch teams? do you find another job?

• be respectful, but be firm; never lose your shit

• ask any team allies if they agree with you or not; they may be unwilling to back you publicly or to take on management