Random love

[afuna]

I really love, about #dw, that I am not made to feel socially awkward when I bring up technical stuff. Even via text, the feeling of blankfaced uncomprehending silence comes across very clearly, and it's very uncomfortable.

I also love that others bringing up issues in a non-technical manner is also welcome. (Though I sometimes worry that when someone says something in a non-technical fashion, I reply too-technically, using terms that are unfamiliar with the other person. )

It's hard, sometimes, to gauge where someone else is, technically, but for the most part, it seems to me that things have worked out both ways. I've had to worry before about potential mistranslations from geek-to-normal and normal-to-geek, and potential alienation on either side, and it feels so good to not have to worry about it here.

Comments

[catechism]

I want to say something about this, but I don't know what! Also, I don't hang out on #dw.

Argh! But it's something about how I go the other way, I think, and almost never, ever launch into tech-talk, even when I'm at work in a room full of devs who would really like me to stop speaking abstractly and just tell them exactly what I'm trying to say. I think it hurts me a little, because there is a sense that I don't know what I'm talking about, and I wonder how much of that is my being the only woman in the room and how much is my reluctance to speak the language. And I don't even know where that comes from -- maybe it's from feeling awkward about it in the past? -- but I think that the way I speak about technology and my role at my job sort of go hand-in-hand. Because I'm a test engineer who's been at my company a really long time, my job is to break things and rein in the devs, which I do by forcing them to stop talking to me about their exciting plan to overload their shiny new metaclass and instead make them tell me about the actual problem they are trying to solve and how I'm going to test it. They catch on, eventually (both to the fact that I understand them just fine and to my plan to rein them in), and then they stop looking at me like I'm an idiot, but still.

... so, yeah, I don't know what about this post hit THAT particular button of mine, but there you go! I am getting a huge sense of warm fuzzies about the dw dev culture, though, and I'm so glad that it's made of so much awesome.

[afuna]

I think we're talking about similar things, coming from a different angle, but possible to meet in the middle. That is, one thing I love about #dw is that you can talk in abstractions and people will grok, but you can also slip into slightly more technical detail without making people uncomfortable.

I feel... welcome there, and not as if I'm imposing or being socially awkward when I say something geeky. It feels as though, if my tech-talk happens to be over the heads of the people I'm talking with, which doesn't happen often, but could! the conversation can be deflected to more common language, without someone either suddenly going silent, or else saying something passive aggressive about how they just can't understand/will never be technical where I'm coming from.

(I'm trying to figure out why that last bothers me so much; I think because it feels like I'm talking to a wall. I'm all for using less technical language, but I am also aware that I sometimes go into things more technically than others would; having someone say "well, the language you use is foreign to me, we'll never be able to understand each other, ever, so I'm not going to even try to comunicate," prematurely shuts down the conversation. And it feels very alienating, as well.)

I'm used to feeling socially inept because I have a hard time explaining more abstract stuff; I tend to mix in my idea of the big picture directly with the implementation details, when it's something I need to do the code for, and then I'm hit by the horrid sinking realization that people are looking at me with blank politeness and some impatience (whooo social anxiety!).

But being looked at as an idiot, for any reason, happens much much less in #dw than it has in other places.

ETA:

Oh, oh, also forgot to say that I'm coming at this primarily from the point of view of someone who's been made to feel awkward about using more technical language (as if that weren't obvious *grin*), but that both technical and non-technical are welcome. Comfortable?

It's kinda neat.