Humor w IT. Gość: Adam Korga - POIT 299

This is the 299th episode of "Prozmawajma.it" Today we're talking about half joke and half series about "Humorza.it" The notes, links and transcriptions, i.e. everything that should have a decent drying by hand will be on prozmawajma.it.pl, broken into 299. And if you're thinking about changing your job, or you just have enough to click on without a video, then look at "SolidJobs". That's where it's all about "Humorza.it", "Technology" and "Projects". My name is Krzysztof Kępiński, I create this podcast, I also write a book by my personal brand, "Branż.it". If you like my talk, I'll be very happy if you get more than this episode, or you leave a rating in your application. It really helps to get through the algorithm and reach new people from the brand. And now, let's start! Hi, my guest today is the author of the satirical book "IT Dictionary - Survival Guide for Dreamers Pretending There Is a Structure". I've been in IT for almost 2 decades, I started as a programmer, then I worked as a Scrum Master, Architect and Platform Engineer. I currently work in Berlin as an Engineering Manager in the field of Platform Engineering. I write under pseudonym, and in my free time I deal with long sales and collecting of the brand's absurds, which later changes jokes and stories. My guest is Adam Korga. Hi Adam, nice to meet you. Hi, nice to be here. Today, on the basis and on the canvas of Adam's book, which will probably be a bit today in our conversation, we will talk about the humor of IT, we will see what the function of IT is. What it is, how different films, different generations are coming to the humor. A bit of a topic on people, and a bit not. So, this unusual conversation today is not technical, but I think it is also an important aspect of IT. At the beginning, Adam, I would like to ask you if you are listening to podcasts, what interesting auditions are on your podcast list. To be honest, I don't listen, I listen to podcasts quite regularly. I often choose a little bit of electricity in the form of audiobooks during walks, because I am not an expert, and if something is to be done, I prefer to read it. Even some kind of transcription of podcasts happened to me, to recognize the stress and that the stress was left, but at the same time, or let's talk about IT, or "Adventures in DevOps", or something completely different from other programs, the most pleasant to listen to, then it happens. Okay, let's start with the function of the humor of IT, is it just such a joke, or is it such a joke, or maybe some kind of wind of security, how do you see it from your perspective? I think a little bit of everyone, because intelligent people generally tend to humor, let's believe that IT is very common, it is a British humor, which is very ironic, very absurd often. That's why we have spam, Python and many other content, and IT is such a kind of wind of security, even those books that I chose, because it allows you to criticize it without triggering the defense reaction, so it's always safer, and I know that it works. Of course, you have to be careful, sometimes you can overdo it, but generally humor helps. How do you think, from what do these people working in IT need to vent out in the form of humor, well, I think this work is so light, easy, distant. I will definitely not say that work is extremely difficult, with certainty, I don't know, the guards, the doctors are more difficult, I will not say it differently here, but our specialty is also full of different kinds of deadlines, stress, especially if you work in any platform, or generally on-call, in the middle of the night, so that someone can't order a new pendrive or something like that, we know it all. And I still have some kind of politics behind my back, so sometimes when you hear that jargon and believe it's just a body language, you just have to react, and this body language, the specifics, I would like to, maybe not so much to attack, but to show it in a wrong way, so it can cause some kind of thinking, but for sure, to give it a catharsis, so that people feel cautious. I write in English, your book is in English, you work in a very international environment, I'm curious how you see our Polish humor, otherwise the humor of people from Poland here in IT, how you could compare it with other nations, how we are here, at this point. I would say that Polish humor is definitely more cynical, but in a positive sense. In general, Polish culture is based on humor, we reacted very often with humor on difficult situations, the best comedy is "Bareja za Komuny" or "Lubaszenko" in the 90s, when it didn't overflow. Even during the war, an orange alternative, it was a humorous answer to what was happening on the streets, so you can see it in this way of reacting. In addition, there is one aspect that is specific for Poles or even Slavs, where we don't have such a typical respect for the authority. Other nations, not all, in the West of Europe, it doesn't work that way, but in Asia it is very strong, they have a tendency to take it blind, not just because someone said something higher in the hierarchy, but because when we hear a total absurd, we only turn off and start our own, so it can be seen in humor, for sure. But in addition, humor is probably intelligent, probably ironic, so there is more cultural difference than humor itself. You mentioned about this function in terms of security and it is definitely a necessary and important thing. You know, it can be something that is done, something that is going on after work, right, when we live there, on a Slavic coffee with colleagues, in this way we try to unload a type of tension. According to you, humor should also exist in work, right? I think here, for example, about the comments in PuliQuest, some information about Slac, some standards, retro, or there is also a place for humor here. Yes, but with observation. And here I will surprise, maybe it takes experience, I used to be more familiar with the use of humor where it will fall, but you have to remember that some channels of communication remain for a long time, I don't know, humor in PuliQuest or in a ticket to the Gizhe, it may be a problem, because even if it is now funny, in six months, when the context disappears, when someone else will read it without context, it can become passive or even not passive aggression and I would advise you to consider it. Speaking of this, this is one aspect, the second, if we talk about communication, whether it is on a hill or personally on some retro or even on a Slac, when the context is bright, the recipient is known, everyone knows what to expect, then humor helps me most, of course, you can't change the standards, however it may sound, but a bit of humor for relieving stress, tension helps the most. I also have experience, I know that even in the case of a night incident when the entire production base collapsed, we would rather not have been able to survive the whole night without a bit of humor that gave us more than coffee. I'm sure, I'm sure. Such a healthy, safe gift of humor helps the most here. OK, we talked a little bit about how Poles fall into the background of other cultures, other nations, and what it looks like if you take such a gap through generations, right? Right now we have two, maybe even three generations that work somewhere in IT, who have grown up in different times, have different approaches to work, to life, do you think the approach to humor will also differ, for example, if you take Millenial's boomers, the younger generation, do you see any difference? Yes, maybe not so much to the humor, but rather to the context. On the one hand, the senior will definitely notice the schematics from which he will start to laugh, when he will hear the quick fix for the tenth, fifteenth time, then you know what to expect and it will come out of it. A person with a shorter experience simply does not see these schematics yet, not because he cannot understand them, but simply does not know that this is a repeated scheme, this is one aspect. On the other hand, it is also a matter of the fact that younger generations have a generally smaller respect for hierarchy, so they are more willing to joke, to switch to "you" or another type. Especially you can see it in Germany, where, let's say, the 40th generation border is huge, where a person around the 45th, 50th year of life does not imagine a place to work without a job, while people around the age of 30, the same nation, the same Berlin, when you hear that he will wear a shirt, he will wear a Hawaiian shirt and he will start to laugh. Yes, this is also an element of a joke and humor. Yes, that's right, but it will probably get worn out, right? However, what should not be said, these generations will slowly leave work, new, younger, who will look at it in a different way, so I think this humor will be more than less, I have an impression. I hope so, I hope so, it does not interfere, it only helps. However, according to you, it depends on various types of organizations, right? Corporations of larger, smaller startups, where this culture of work is different. In IT, you can say that various types of organizations, these are places for a different type of humor, one has greater permission, the other does not, do you see such a difference? Of course, yes, at some point I also point out in the book that there are two totally different ends of the spectrum. Corporations, which I called "Corpoland" where there is a bureaucracy to the square, and "start-up" is literally presented as a failed state or a communist propaganda, none of these two. And these are totally opposite spectrums, where other jokes are allowed. Corporations, for sure, have a lot of stronger pressure on political correctness, because it is known that they would have to be careful for legal reasons, because the attempt to punish and to go on discrimination or other of this type is big and I have to be careful because there are just a lot of people and various cases occur. On the other hand, startups allow for more humor, but it is also different when it comes to who is going and sometimes usually the founder is just a member of the team and then everything is fine, but sometimes people become more agonized than the state of the portfolio and then problems begin, so it depends on the context, first of all. And how do you think it is related to organizational culture? Or can it be some kind of, I don't know, an example, or permission from management, higher than Cheble? Does it have a connection or not? Because I observe, I'll tell you, different examples, right? Once it can actually push such at least open humor in the team, if there is no permission from the organization, but on the other hand, what you mentioned here at the beginning, it can give birth to some kind of, I don't know, some kind of bunt or its kind, you can say such an approach, when the lower part of the humor exists, maybe it doesn't pop up higher and so on, but the safety valve function is somewhere there, so organizational culture develops or limits the existence of humor in IT companies. A difficult question, I would say that it is quite strongly related to a couple of other aspects, i.e. just the openness of communication. If people feel that they cannot say something, because it doesn't fall out, because, I don't know, blameless or something like that, it will probably be with humor, they will start censoring, but it is also a vice-versa. If you ask someone to censor, if it's about the kind of humor, then in a moment they will start to consider who can criticize, or where they can show a potential risk in the projects. Generally, there is some kind of tension there, but it is definitely very strongly related to the culture of improving, finding the best solutions, calling problems by name, and simply by humor. Usually, if someone cannot use humor, then he will also consider who can, where he can say, hey, it doesn't make sense. I would like to know if from your observations, that the existence of humor in IT is rather the same as the units that come up with it, what is the team, what are the advantages in this team, what is the approach to humor that particular people have, or maybe the influence of the organization as such, the organizational culture, what the manager allows and what not, is the main factor that decides that the company will be, let's say, more relaxed or will give such permission for humor, which is more important to you. However, the units, the people who often, if they are the creator of this humor in IT, can also be the organizational culture, the organization itself, which either gives such permission and amplifies it somewhere, or limits it. I would like to say yes, because if the units come up with something again, then everything turns out to be mutual, because the organizational culture does not disappear, but again our influence on the organization's culture changes in the size of this organization. Maybe if we talk about the corporation, the units will not have such an influence on how the situation looks like in the whole company, maybe it will influence the team, but there will be a problem, I don't know, Tribe Alliance, whatever it is, we don't know. In the startup, of course, if there are ten people, then this influence on the organization and everyone knows each other, they talk to each other, this influence is much greater. But again, the organizational culture still forms people who are in this organization. Some have a greater influence, some have a smaller influence, depending on the size of the organization, it also has an influence, but you cannot say that one is connected to the other. Of course. How would you approach the humor in the reputation, in the sense of participating? On both sides, maybe we will talk about this topic, participating as a candidate in the reputation process, would you allow yourself to make a little joke, maybe a little humor, or maybe you would rather put an aspect of technicality, expertise in the topic, and on the other hand, as a hiring manager, as a person who participates in such a reputation, would you allow yourself to make a joke, maybe some kind of elation of the atmosphere, or would you rather stop? If you would tell me, I wouldn't use the appropriate terms, because I allow myself to do so. But again, you have to be careful and adapt to the situation, because you can allow yourself to make jokes with people you already know. I don't know, I often like to say that there are people who work and people who are tired. Such a joke can be said to colleagues who know what they should expect, know what they represent. I wouldn't use this joke for recruitment under any circumstances, but it doesn't mean that I can't joke about anything else, especially the car of irony. When it comes to candidates, if there is no certainty, I would rather avoid them. As a hiring manager, I often use humor, but also more car of irony, some criticism against myself or the situation, especially when I see that the candidate is stressed out. Really, a lot of humor, small jokes can work here, when it comes to unblocking and actually reaching what someone knows. We don't expect it to be a stressful situation, especially for the candidate, when he is stressed out, depending on the person, sometimes a few percent, sometimes 99 percent. So, if we can unblock it, it's better. At the same time, there is no chance to show your full potential. Okay, Adam, let's move on to your book. Why did you decide to write it? Why exactly such a subject, such a structure? It's an interesting story, because it all started with a joke for a girl I was talking about, who worked in Ligalu, and I wanted to write it in a big IT company, which you probably heard about, but I won't tell you. And I just wanted to suggest that I give her small words, when people from IT, or they say that the user is an idiot, or they even think they know what's going on, and when they want to unblock it, even though they don't know, they have no idea. And that's how it all started. It took place a dozen pages, then we interrupted it, and I continued, I started to write down what else we could comment on. And I quickly realized that there is some greater content there, and the book's structure was created practically at the end. It's clear, when I started writing down topics that you need to talk about core IT, and then about Agile, which is everywhere, corporations, startups, or AI, because everyone has to talk about AI, so what do they talk about? Of course, in my opinion. I just realized that there is a deeper story there, and, for example, the introduction to every section, where every part, all the parts that we change are part of the book, changes tons of the core IT, the survival manual, that is, it works as a military controller. Agile goes to cargo cults, or cult cargo, i.e. the execution of rituals without understanding what's going on behind them, so we go into religion and mysticism. Corpoland is a formalization of law and so on, so all the steps are done by law enforcement. Startup, as I already mentioned, Startupistan, i.e. fail state, propaganda, and revolution, first of all, so we go, especially at the border of agitprop from the ZSRR. And Enyokit on the block, AI, it's already a ride, it really personifies AI as a exchange student, who is very charismatic, everyone wants to be friends with him, even though no one understands him at all. So I noticed these motives at the end, but I found it very nice to present bigger pictures, let's say. Okay, we have different styles here, I see that they are strongly inspired by their history, it's definitely an interesting thing. By writing this book, did you have an image of a recipient, such a person to whom this book addresses, was it a girl, or were there people from IT, who is this recipient of your book? It has changed a lot, because I started from this girl from IT, i.e. for a person, i.e. I aimed for a person who does not necessarily know internal IT jokes, but later, when I started continuing, some parts changed in the direction of translation, what I work with from IT, we hear from HR department, HR, from the C-level managers, so on and so forth. In fact, I did not have any specific person on my mind, I wanted it to be able to, first of all, establish my stethoscope for people from IT, but keeping a sufficient level of accessibility so that a person who does not know this joke would be able to learn it, but at least understand that when someone says that the problem is layer 8, this has a specific meaning. I see. Why in English, in the sense, I think it changes a little the approach to humor, different culture, glossary, a different type of humor than, for example, as you explained at the beginning, in these Slavic regions, why this choice and whether, in connection with this, the sound of this book is different than, for example, if you decided to write in Polish. There are two reasons. The first is pragmatic, let's be honest, English is the language of France and IT, and the market of consumers is larger, so let's not worry about it, but the IT in English is also known to everyone, and the removal of the English language would remove a lot of humor, really. On the other hand, on my part, there is a small article, a small essay, an article about why the book is not in Polish, where I will give you the attempts to translate all of the English language into Polish. Part of this explanation is thought out, most of these are real historical examples, like, I don't know, an interface as a flight, or my favorite computer mouse, in the 1980s, the manipulator with a circular table was proposed. Congratulations, congratulations. Young people may not know why it's circular, but you know. Yes, yes, yes. Or, I don't know, an example, also an authentic one, when Microsoft tried to translate everything into Polish, and in PowerShell 5.6, about 2000, everything was really translated. And when you got the wrong idea, there was a problem in the numbering layer in the domain name system, or something like that. The problem with the certificates itself was difficult, and before understanding the communication of the error, I decided to avoid it. In any case, I said, that looking at the fact that one main target is people from IT and some jokes are still a bit insider, you can risk saying that if you don't understand English enough to understand this joke, it wouldn't be a joke even if it was translated into Polish. Maybe it's a bit sharp, but something like that is. For sure, for sure. And why pseudonym? Is it because of the domain that you often talk about, you often laugh at? What were the reasons for the use of pseudonym? And here are two reasons again. One is the matter of, let's say, the safety of the factory. I have no problem with the name, all my friends from work know that I wrote it, even my boss in the press, in the book, I also liked it. But on the other hand, if someone doesn't know me, let's get back to the context. If someone was looking for my name as a candidate for a new position and he met this type of humor, it would be so sharp, it could be different, so I simply didn't want to limit myself to how English would say "pull my punches". I could afford more and focus on the content. That's one thing. The second thing is the language of Polish and its name. There are a lot of historical examples where people emigrating decided to simplify themselves. A simple example of Idek Trzmiel. I don't know if you know who it was. I haven't said anything yet. I'll just name it "Dzek Trzmiel" or "Josef Konrad". "Josef Teodor Konrad Korzenowski". These are simple examples of not dealing with them or putting them together. But simple names make it easier to reach. Americans who see Polish names would rather have a problem to remember them. There's still half the time when it's already known. But if you want to reach a bigger market, it helps. That's the connection between the two. One is pragmatic, the other is professional. The other is just language. Polish language is not simple. I see. We have two quite common reasons. But I wouldn't suspect any other person working in IT as long as they're pragmatic. Good, Adam. Tell us what were the first reactions of your book, what kind of feedback did you get? I'd be happy to say that it sounded great, but it was very positive. I can't say it so gently. I didn't meet any negative opinions from the people who read it. I met a few people from outside of IT who said they didn't understand humor. Which is understandable. But if someone worked with people from IT and even supported IT, it all turned out to be very positive. I gave the book to a review in the recognized services in the US. Not only was it positively rated, but Independent Book Review gave it to Star Trek, which only acknowledges a few percent of the books that are being reviewed. Kirkus, who is the absolute top when it comes to indie publishing in the US, gave the definition of "getty". He even chose one of the 30 books to publish in their printed magazine in the list of pages. I expected it to be better than expected. I hope it will reach as many people as possible. I hope it will give a sense of relief or a sense of understanding that others have gone through it, as it has been described so precisely. A few people said that by reading it, they were crying first from laughter, then they understood no longer the laughter when they recognized their experience, and then they looked at it and said they didn't need to describe their work. Congratulations! I think that this also indicates that this type of book was just necessary. To be honest, I don't know many related to the humor of books about the IT industry. At the beginning, however, this function is significant, it is important, so you probably got the right idea for a suitable ground, but also with something that is just good, something that is nice, something that can be accepted. Is this book just a joke, or is it just a mistake showing a parody of satire, or are there other types of humor as well? This book is a pure satire, but I would encourage you to look deeper. At some point, I thought that I was a bit not aware of it, I was inspired by two comedies, two titles from 1999, which were older than one of the listeners of this podcast. First, "Office Space", second, "Sexual Ground". Both were very sharp satires on a certain aspect of life. "Office Space" is a work of art, "Sexual Ground", the title suggests what? It is made as a document told by the public about ordinary human beings, human beings. These were very strong satires, but they both kept a deep impact on reality. And in a certain way, they were complaining about the fact that what is smiling does not contain a certain pathology, or innate nature. Maybe these are strong words, but at the moment, they are not the so-called IT dictionary. On the first set, it is a pure satire, on the second set, it is a meta-commentary for the industry, but it is still a satire. You can compare it to a standard, where it is very sharp, sometimes vulgar, I do not avoid vulgarisms, although they are not super common. If there is a fubar, the word "F-bomb" is explained, let's say, but I do not want to go in the direction of singing alone, so I am already working on another one, which keeps, let's say, my specific humor, but it will show something deeper, a little bit of editement. Specifically, it will be about various events, or a disaster, not necessarily from IT, from errors in the code, from errors in the construction, from corporate business cases, but also, still keeping this humor, but no longer bringing any deeper educational layer, at least I hope so. I'll keep my fingers crossed. I think the most difficult thing is to laugh at yourself, and here in IT, it is not an exception to find what we did wrong, although there is often a "git blame" that shows that we were without any problem, different unfunny things that happened in the project. There is a different approach to the so-called "post-multi-culture", i.e. that we put ourselves in what happened and we try to analyze what happened, what conclusions we can take from it. It is a very serious thing, that there is no place for humor. How do you approach this post-multi-culture? Is it something obvious to you or companies in which you work, do you use it? Do they threaten you? Is there a place for humor? Here we are already talking about the second following book, because post-mortem is the root of the book itself, and since we analyze the catastrophe, we really do mini post-mortem. The post-mortem culture is very close to me, especially by the pressure that it must be Blameless. And I'm not saying Blameless to make it look nice in the Google Calendar, but in order to really focus on the system problem and not on the fact that somebody was not asleep. If someone was not asleep, then why? If someone wrote a letter, then why did the system allow that the post-mortem culture to fall out sometimes more than one system? So it is important. Speaking of this, at the moment of analysis, clear, humor is needed, but a certain rigor, let's say scientific, to reach these problems must be preserved. So if somebody cannot keep balance between humor and a thing with analysis, then we should choose analysis. If there is a scientific balance, humor will definitely not be damaged. You mentioned at the beginning that here in Słowianie they have such a small approach to authorities that they do not recognize them rather that they do not move than if they do not move. I would like to close our conversation with a topic related to authority, namely with the so-called holy cows with certain actions that we may accept, according to which we act, some people who we believe in. Is humorite also such a approach when we try to embrace these authorities, when we try, of course, with full culture and with such an intelligent approach, as we established, in order to embrace certain myths in order to improve the lives of all of us around us. Here, I would like to address the topic of humor more in the direction of standards or in a neglected way, in the range of actions. And here I would strongly encourage to question the authority. Not because it is an authority, but to ask whether what he is saying is correct and it does not matter whether he is an authority, a person, a dealer or a methodology. That is why Agile criticizes as a cult of cargo when unthinkably repeated schematics because someone said that the industry knew it was good but there is a lot of it in IT. Depending on which decade or epoch we live in, I have been working for 20 years I have already done two or three total revolutions from systems, from servers by the database by data centers, cloud computing, of course there had to be Kubernetes, then there were also microservices in the meantime, those revolutions that were coming in a while. In times before me, there were servers, there were systems shared, mainframes shared time and so on and so on. And depending on the epoch, different standards are indicated as let's say the right way but this does not lead to anything if we take it for sure. A good example is a couple of years ago, it was already a failure, but a couple of years ago it was very loud in the direction we fly to serverless, it will solve all the problems and the whole database almost was cut when Amazon Prime published an article on its own blog in which it was stated that they were coming from serverless on the subject of monolith that is, the company Amazon, promoting serverless admitted that in this particular application it slowed down increased the cost and so on. Again, it does not mean that serverless is bad, it works on a small project that after an hour is full of serverless. It's just more of a matter of understanding that there is no such thing as a silver bullet. Not every problem can be solved with a hammer, not every problem can be solved with a screwdriver. You have to choose a tool for a specific problem, and not a problem for tools that we want to use. Programming, methodology, organizational culture and so on. Everything has its place, you just have to find a balance and I would encourage you to do that. Whether we use this questioning of the failed standards we will do it with a hammer or not, it is already a matter of second-hand although one of the stories that I like to share and I show you the failed standards it is and here I can give a little surprise at the end how the size of a piece of paper on the size of the NASA booster. And it can be justified that the size of a piece of paper on the size of a piece of paper on the size of a piece of paper on the size of a piece of paper on the size of a piece of paper on the size of a piece of paper on the size of a piece of paper using NASA booster in the 20th century. And we encourage you to read it. Well, that's what we were talking about today. We encouraged the humors to at least stick to the humors in various aspects of our everyday life. That it is nothing bad but such an intelligent approach to humor only helps us in everyday work. Adam, thank you very much for this dedicated time, for this conversation. Please, where can we find you on the Internet? Where can we also buy your book? When it comes to finding me on the Internet, please visit www.adamkorga.com There are links to all the others. I try to be active mostly on LinkedIn. At least twice a week I try to publish something there. In the meantime, I'm doing it. And the book is available at all the markets where Amazon offers to sell books. Although I plan to expand it to the bookshelves distribution to the bookshelves. Of course, it will not depend on the smaller bookshelves, but I hope so. Not least, at the moment Amazon.pl is the simplest direction. It is possible that if you want to see a book sample, I recommend visiting www.amazon.com or www.de. Then there is a book prize of several dozen selected pages and the possibility of ordering which is not available in Poland. But it will not depend on me. Of course, all the links will be added to the episode. Adam, thanks for the time. That's all for today. If you want more such talks, the archive is waiting for you. There are also interesting things going on there. You have questions, thoughts, write to [email protected] or call me in social media. My name is Krzysztof Kempieński and this was the episode and now it's time to listen to the next episode. Bye!