DEV Community: Feli (she/her)

Inclusive Language in Slack

Feli (she/her) — Wed, 29 Sep 2021 11:44:52 +0000

Since the start of the pandemic a lot of us moved their company communication to Slack (or similar tools). To help my colleagues and support them with how to use Slack I wrote a slack etiquette for SinnerSchrader. Lot of them were not used to Slack or asynchronous communication chat tools at all. After I talked to Stefan Judis about the slack etiquette and got a lot of input + sparring from him, we made the slack etiquette public.

What I experienced afterwards is that we came up with a lot of new issues especially regarding inclusive language. Of course you could argue that people should know how to do inclusive language anyways, but it’s more complicated than that, I would say. For a lot of people who are not native speakers and / or never had something to do with this topic the written language is more complicated. Additionally you can now re-read the written word at any time. So, mistakes are more likely to be seen and not to be forgotten.
That’s why I looked into a solution for Slack. It was very clear to me that we should use a slack bot. I looked into different solutions that may help us with inclusive language. Today I want to share those learnings and my recommendation with you.

Inclusive Language Support for Slack

There are two solutions when it comes to inclusive language at Slack. The global version and the private one.

Slackbot - The Global Version

Slackbot is a feature in slack that can automatically respond to messages that members of your workspace send in channels.

Global - for all channels (no exclusions)
Public slackbot responses, everyone in the slack channel will see them
High initial effort for first maintenance
- Depending on the languages you want to support
Easy maintenance

Side effect: Since everyone will see the slackbot response, it has a learning effect for everyone and promotes open exchange about it.

Consider

It's global and can't be switched on or off per channel
By default every member of the Slack workspace is allowed to maintain the slackbot responses. You may consider turning this functionality off.

Further

More information about Slackbot Responses
Two posts with more details about inclusive language:
- https://zapier.com/blog/inclusive-language-slackbot/
- https://betterallies.com/language/

Slackbot - The Private Version

You can also write bots yourself and use the Slack APIs to interact with messages.

Can be integrated into individual channels (is not global)
High initial effort due to development time
Maintenance could be mapped via json or similar
Can be configured to send the message only to the sender "Only visible to you".
As sender I can edit my message and apply what is suggested without anyone seeing it

Side note: Of course there are inclusive language slackbots you can add to your workspace, but I haven't found some who have the option to maintain the words/phrases

Consider

Could be turned off by the individual channels, e.g. because it is felt as annoying
Initial time expenditure is higher and can be settled in the case only by developers

Further

More information about how to write a bot for slack

Personal Recommendation

What both solutions have in common is that a bot is responding to non-inclusive language and no human need to do so. That is also the reason why the sender is more likely to not take it personally.

My personal recommendation is the global solution. This one can support you in dealing openly with the topic of inclusive language. In addition, it serves as a tool for education about inclusive language.

As a company, you are sending a clear signal that you make no distinction between internal and external communication (clients, freelancer, partners, …. If they are in your company's slack workspace as well).

If you consider this solution, you should plan preparation time for a good communication strategy. Just turning it on would cause some to feel they had been blindsided.

In addition, the public solution requires the creation of well-worded "response" messages to "non-inclusive words". This would help to ensure that no blaming character is created, but rather that the clear goal of clarification is pursued.

The Global Solution - Slackbot Responses: Promoting open interaction/exchange & Inclusive language education for everyone

What is your experience? Are you already using a slack bot for inclusive language in your company? Project? Community?

Photos by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

There Is No Pot Of Gold At The End Of The Rainbow

Feli (she/her) — Tue, 06 Jul 2021 17:26:00 +0000

Recently I watched a short video with Simon Sinek about finding the balance. He talked about how people looking for the perfect partner doesn’t exist, the perfect job doesn’t exist or the perfect company doesn’t exist. That you can't have impact and happiness every day, that it’s about finding the balance. There will always be some bad days or days where you don’t have the energy to give 100%. You have to have bad days to appreciate the good ones.

Simon added in the video that people are looking for the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow - but there is no pot at the end of a rainbow. There are a lot of books and speakers who are telling that there is - so people start to find it. However, it's not about finding the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, it's about the adventure and who we take with us on the journey. That is the best part.

The video reminded me of a situation where a colleague asked me "Which was the best company you ever worked at". And my answer was "There is no perfect company or job. Every company has issues and you need to find out what kind of issues you can live or work with."
So, I truly agree with Simon that there is no perfect job or company. And especially not for everyone, because we are humans and so we are different. Everyone of us needs something else.

Stop telling talent marketing lies

Which brings me to a topic I have been working on for a while now: Helping our Recruiting department to build trustworthy talent marketing for developers.

In marketing it's normal to window dress products or stories. That's why a lot of companies use stories people want to hear instead of what their values actually are. How their culture is. They tell the story of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow instead of telling the talents:
hey wanna join me for an adventure? I heard there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I'm not sure if we're gonna find it, but let’s go. It’s not important if you find the pot of gold or not, it’s about the relationship, the journeys, the experience you make with each other while you are looking for it.

For Employer Branding and Talent Marketing this would mean for example: Instead of saying "We are a diverse and inclusive company" say "We are committed to become a diverse and inclusive workplace and therefore we are looking for people who are helping us to bring this vision to life".

If a company tells shiny stories which are not the truth to attract talents, those talents may join the company because they tell them what they want to hear. But those talents that join will recognize sooner or later that it all was just window dressing. And in the best case they quit. In the worst case scenario, they stay at the company without believing in the company, without passion and happiness. Which leads to employees who don’t bring their best to the table. Don’t sell candidates a dummy and have them quit months later. Find candidates who are willing to join your adventure. Who wants to go with you on the journey to find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, no matter if you find the pot of gold or not.

Photo by Austin Chan on Unsplash

Why we need creativity in software development

Feli (she/her) — Fri, 04 Jun 2021 10:48:54 +0000

More inclusive algorithms and unbiased data may be complex problems, but developers can solve them with creativity.

These are wild days. The pandemic is still with us. Yes, there is good news regarding more vaccines, but the vaccination and case numbers coming out of poor countries are just shocking.

How can you stay creative these days? Is it ok to be less creative than usual? How much impact does the current world situation have on finding creative problem-solving approaches? These are some of the many questions that are trolling my head and the numbers keep growing.

Today I want to dig into one of this question in particular:

How do you solve complex problems through creativity?

First, let’s see what creativity means. The Cambridge dictionary defines it as:

…the ability to produce original and unusual ideas, or to make something new or imaginative

Creativity in software development is crucial.

In this field, you need to solve complex problems and therefore you need to be creative. If you didn’t, you could automate the process of creating software (although building the automation would be a form of creativity in itself). And, of course, there are a lot of fields in software development that are already automated or which developers automate as soon as they can. But still, the process of getting there is a creative process.

Those problems which are solved in software development could be as diverse as our world itself, because they are designed to address real-world issues. For example, it could be finding a way to bring a product to its users in the same manner on all devices. It could also mean creating a new programming language, development framework or library.

What problems need solving?

But there are bigger problems to solve than creating the next cutting-edge framework or product website.

And this is why one quote of Dara Dotz made me think:

We aren’t going to be able to throw tech at every problem as efficiently or effectively as we would like – as time moves on, there are more disasters, more people and less resources. Instead of focusing on the next blockchain or AI, perhaps the things we really need to focus on are the things that make us human.

This is true. Our society puts a lot of effort and money into technologies like blockchain and AI – effort and money which could also solve a lot of other problems. Problems that, if solved, enhance our humanity: clean water for every human being, enough food for everyone or school education for every child in the world.
The dangers of encoding bias

But, what I ask myself is:

In which ways can technology support us that makes us human?
And how can AI help us to create a better world?

We know that AI can be discriminatory. Sometimes that’s because we feed it with biased data. Data doesn’t always reflect the diversity of our society. By training machine learning with data that excludes minorities, it learns to discriminate against them. The AI will copy our biases, even our unconscious ones. For sure, there are areas where people need to be excluded: for example, products or content which is not suitable for under-18s. But there are a lot of examples where people are discriminated against only because they are not white, not male, not hetero.

We need to put ethics in our process of creating software.

What does that have to do with creativity?

We need to establish processes that avoid perpetuating the unfair situations minorities face. We need to ask ourselves who will be excluded by this – and why. We need to produce inventive and unusual processes to create more inclusive algorithms. We need to find new ways of collecting the data we use to train machine learning, so that it includes minorities. We need to include it in the software in a way that doesn’t lead to its rejection. And to do so we need creativity in software development. We need to be creative.

We shouldn’t just accept the facts that data is showing us at face value. Instead, we should challenge our own assumptions – and find creative ways to do better.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

What profession would you change to?

Feli (she/her) — Tue, 11 May 2021 08:22:37 +0000

It's one of those days...

My motivation is low and I'm thinking of changing my profession. I tent to make that joke: "this internet thingy will not succeed and than I'll become a carpenter".

But realistically I would become a Technical Recruting Consultant. The reason is simple. I gained a lot of knowledge in that area. Also I believe I can do something good with it. Fighting for diversity & inclusion. Instead of being a rolemodel. Advise companies on: how best to hire a hetrogenic mass of developers. And ensure that more equal opportunities are being created.

Do you know those days? What profession would you change to and why?

Readme's - more than only tech instructions

Feli (she/her) — Tue, 06 Apr 2021 11:09:54 +0000

For most developers, the Readme file is the first resource they are accessing. It contains information on how to set up the project, instructions and a lot more information. E.g. if the version of the software is beta or stable, which git workflow the project team uses, under which license it's running and so on.

But besides all the technology things you should consider putting in some more information.

How To Start Your Readme

Start with something positive, with something like a project-, company- or team- claim. Something that shows the team that you are one team and that you are working together.

We are one team - with no alpha leaders and no beta teams

Contact List

It's important to know who is the contact person or responsible for which topic. Who is the Project Lead? Do you have a Lead Developer? Do you need contact with other teams, 3rd parties, other disciplines, ...? Put them into the Readme or at least link to the platform where they are documented.

## Team - Contact Persons
You can find a full list of the team at 
[confluence](https://linktoteamcontactpage)

Be Human - Always

How do you want to work as a team? What is important for you? At my recent project I set up a readme file and it was important for me to give a clear picture of what we should focus on as a team. We didn't have a lot of time for the applications we needed to build. In an ideal world, I would define those together with the team.

## Be Human - User. First. Always.
* We work for the best overall result and 
  act in the interests of the whole.
* We trust each other and are open 
  to new input / opportunities.
* We treat each other with respect, 
  empathy and believe that everyone is acting as their best.
* We make each other successful and give a hand if needed.
* We keep it simple.

Put your "how do we want to work" statement not at the end of the document. It's important and should be in the upper part.

How To End The Readme

Close the readme with a something claim / message. I chose to use something from the beginning in another term.

> Together we can make a change. Together we can do it. 
  As one team with no alpha leaders - no beta teams 💖 🤓 ❤️ 💻

We have built applications that help to fight COVID19. It was very clear that we need to do a lot of over-hours to make it in time and to react to the ongoing pandemic. So, the following part of the Readme was the most important one for me. I wanted to make very clear that NO project is more important than the health or (the family) of every team member. What made me happy was, that the team often quotes that part of the Readme and looked after each other. It helps that it was clear, 'your tech lead put this into place at the beginning, don't be afraid of calling in sick or taking a break'. And it worked, I'm very glad of that fact and proud of the team.

## !important 🚨

Please remember that your (mental) health 
(and of your family) comes first. 
If you are facing a health problem, 
no matter at which point of the project, 
please inform at least one person 
of the team and take a break!

That's why I recommend putting some personality into Readme files, especially if you are the tech lead/ lead developer. Lead by Example.

What are you putting into your project Readme file on the root level?

Nevertheless, Feli Coded - ChooseToChallenge Yourself

Feli (she/her) — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 08:08:51 +0000

My journey to become an Executive Principal Engineer working in Developer Relations (fancy buzzwords title) was not easy. Here is my story and why I believe we need to challenge ourselves.

A journey with obstacles...

In 2005, I finished my apprenticeship. Since then I have worked as a Developer. Most of the time as a Frontend Developer - or what I love to call it, UI Developer. But this specialization was not my first choice. In my apprenticeship, I loved Database Development and wanted to get a job in this area. It was 2005 you know, I was 19, blond, and couldn’t land a job - even though I had an excellent certificate.

Back then, companies told me that they can’t hire a 19-year-old woman for a team of twenty men with an average age of 30. In Germany, I could have sued them for it, at that time I didn’t have the courage to do so. Nowadays I would do it, trust me.

Days went by and I was very frustrated but also didn’t want to accept that I can’t land a job in tech as a developer, only because I’m a woman and too young. So I applied for every Developer job I was able to find… nothing. All my fellow students already had a job - all men. So I did the last thing left to me - looking for an unpaid traineeship (wouldn’t recommend it to anyone - you should get paid for what you are doing). Of course, I found something where I worked as a developer without getting paid for it. It was in a company that did web development (sadly no database stuff).
The traineeship ended after 6 months and they hired me for the minimum amount of wage. I didn’t care, I was just happy to have my first paid job - finally.

Even if I wanted to, I never gave up...

What should I say? I proved every Database company, every other company that didn’t hire me because I’m a woman wrong.

At 21 I was self-employed. At 23 I moved to a big city (Hamburg) for a job, which by the way was one of my best decisions ever. At 26 I started to work as a Freelance Developer - where I had to reject most of the projects I got offered because I had too much to do. With 29 the company I'm still working at hired me as a so-called Free Radical. With 30 I became part of CSSconfEU & JSConfEU. With 31 I built Developer Relations for a non-product company. With 34 I got promoted to Executive Principal Engineer and I'm the Tech Lead of a project which is fighting Covid 19.

Yes, the journey was not easy, but if I made it, you can make it, too!

Nevertheless...

My biggest achievement is that I accepted that it is hard as a woman in Tech BUT I’m still privileged. I'm white, I had a proper education, I earn enough money and I'm in a cis relationship. The moment I realized that, I started to fight for inclusion. I still call out every sexism case I witness. I don’t get tired of saying that we still have a huge way to go in the tech community, at my job, at my friend's. But if you are a white cis woman, ask yourself:
If it is hard for me, how is it for non-gender people? women of color? for LGBTQ+ people?

The theme of International Women's Day 2021 is #ChooseToChallenge. So, I call every white cis woman in tech - choose to challenge yourself.
Get aware of your privilege, read and learn about it and your unconscious bias. Think about how you can be an ally for non-white-cis-women. Call out every discrimination.
Take actions on every day's business - example: Often people ask me “Feli, how do we get more diverse, how do we get more women into tech”. My answer? “Let’s talk about how we get more people from under-represented groups into tech. Diversity is not only about women in tech”.

Be the change! Choose to Challenge!

SheCoded 2021 ?

Feli (she/her) — Mon, 01 Mar 2021 13:48:32 +0000

Hey lovely DevTeam

will there be shecoded 2021?
I loved it the past years and it would be great to have it again ❤️

#shecoded Follow

Stories from women who code.

#theycoded Follow

#shecodedally Follow

Stories from allies who support gender equality.

01:18

Join us for #SheCoded 2020!

Jess Lee for The DEV Team ・ Mar 6 '20

#wecoded #theycoded #eachforequal

Lead By Example

Feli (she/her) — Sat, 27 Feb 2021 18:03:26 +0000

In a leadership position you have different responsibilities. For me the most important is Lead By Example. It’s not only important for leadership positions, everyone should do it. Trainees, Juniors, Intermediates, Seniors, any fancy title or a Managing Directors.

A few days ago I talked to a former colleague. I told her that I'm looking for a leadership coach. For a few months I’m in an official leadership role, which sometimes can feel weird and overwhelming. A few days after the conversation she said to me "I thought about what you have said and in the first place I was surprised, because you have been leading people since years. It's not new to you, but I can understand that the official role changes things. But you know what you are really good at? What are you really living? Leading by example".
I really appreciate the feedback, because I truly believe in it. That's why I want to share my top 8 thoughts with you about lead by example.

1. Do What You Expect Others To Do

Why should people who you lead, who are in your team do what you expect them to do, if you don’t do it as well? For example, you are a Tech Manager and you want your colleagues to attend conferences or other tech events. Why should they do it if you don’t attend such events? Do it as a team or tell them what you learned at an event or who you met. Or if you want your colleagues to be nice to each other, you should be nice to them as well...

2. Talk About Your Failures

We are all humans and we do make mistakes! That’s normal and also fine, because we learn from mistakes we make. But to learn from the situations we need to be open about it. Of course it’s not easy to speak about mistakes, doesn't matter which level you have. But it helps to accept that it’s normal.

3. Leaders Are No Superheroes, Sorry

Show your colleagues that you may be a role model for them, but you are not a superhero. Talk about your learning path and that you worked for where you are today. It’s not magic, it’s not a superpower you are born with. Show your colleagues that you are making mistakes, that you still need to learn, that you have emotions and need brakes same as every other person. Show them that you don’t know everything, that you can be proved wrong and that you are asking for and need help.

4. Take Your F***ing Break

If you are sick, take days off. Shut down the computer, smartphone, and every other communication. Humans who are sick (doesn’t matter if physical or mental) need a break to heal. People who see that their leads work while they are ill, are more likely to feel the pressure to do it as well. Same goes for vacation. Take your days off to relax, to get your energy back, to do whatever you love to do - without working. You may already have it in mind: don’t do over hours on a regular basis. Nobody should do it, doesn’t matter in which position. Sure, over hours may happen depending on the area you are working, but they shouldn't take place on a regular basis.

5. Be Honest And Trustworthy

Colleagues will trust you, if you are honest to them. They will see you as trustworthy and be honest to you as well. It will help them to also speak open to you if they have a problem with a situation, job or other colleagues.
Be transparent. Sure there might be situations where you are not allowed to talk about something or a colleague talks to you in private and that’s fine. But tell your colleagues why a decision was made. Let them know why the company chose a specific way, a tool or anything else. What can possibly go wrong? Trust your colleagues so they can trust you.

6. Respect

Treat yourself and others with respect and they will respect you. That means, watch your language, your voice, your body language. Listen to ideas others have regardless of levels and respect that they may have other opinions than you have.
Very important: don’t claim ideas of others as your own ones.

7. Feedback - Appreciation And Criticism

Give feedback on a regular basis. Not only once a year. Think about what feedback type the person you are talking to is. Not everyone likes the [sandwich method]. Give them positive feedback, things you appreciate them for. But give them also something where they can prove themself and offer them help if needed. Ask your team to give you feedback as well and give them the time to prepare this properly.

8. Listen To People, Don't Just Hear What They Say

You want people to listen to you? That they not just hear you, that they truly listen and understand what you are telling them? Then it's a good start to listening to them first. Ask them what you can do to make their job easier, how they feel, about their opinion or ideas for a project or needed solution. Take time to do so, if you don't have enough time make an appointment as soon as possible where you can talk undisturbed.
Don’t forget to not only listen to the people you lead, listen to everyone. Your Managers, your colleagues, people from other disciplines. Listening should be your favorite song.

Lead By Example
If we don't start to lead by example our industry won’t change at all because we lead by example to go the wrong way. Let’s change that.

Best "get together", conference, meeting software for events?

Feli (she/her) — Fri, 05 Feb 2021 12:51:36 +0000

Question: which get together, conference, meeting software do you like most for remote events?

For example we used confer-o-matic for an internal conference meeting. It was awesome, I love the gamification background of the software but also that you could stand in a group an chat with each other as soon as you got into a chat zone.

A Grid In A Grid

Feli (she/her) — Wed, 28 Oct 2020 13:30:49 +0000

You want to nest grid in grid with the same definition of columns & gaps? Something like a sub grid which is inheriting the definitions? But you don't know how? No worries! Here are some possible solutions.

Preface

CSS Grid. Is. Not. Easy.
If you haven't understood it completely yet, that's totally fine. Here are some awesome resources which may you help understanding grid better:

CSS Tricks Complete Guide to Grid
Tutorial page by Rachel Andrew

How To - Step By Step

Step 1: Let us define an "example grid"

Lets say we have a grid of 16 columns with a gap of 16px. We will name it my-grid and the child elements cell.

We also want to define an area which is a few columns wide. E.g. ten columns -> cell-10.

.my-grid {
    display: grid;
    grid-template-columns: repeat(16, 1fr);
    grid-column-gap: 16px;
}

Now we want to nest elements. For example we want to have cell children in our wide area cell-10. We don't want to loose the my-grid definitions. But how can we solve that?

Step 2: Nesting Without Loosing The Parent Definition

There are different solutions for different problems:

ignoring the element CSSwise
using subgrid
grid in a grid

We will start with having a wrapper which is ignored by CSS.

Ignoring An Element CSSwise

We can tell CSS that a HTML Element is not existing for styling by using display.
display: contents elements doesn't create a box themselves. They are replaced by a pseudo box and their child boxes. If you like you could also say display: contents is telling the browser that there is now DOM-Element 😉

.this-is-not-the-element-your-are-looking-for {
    display: contents;
}

You may ask, why the heck should I have a HTML element that I don't need? There could be a several of reasons. One could be that a framework needs this wrapper element and you can't avoid it.

Creating A Sub Grid

If we want to create a real sub grid, which is inheriting the grid definition from our parent grid we need to use subgrid_.

.my-inline-grid {
    display: grid;
    grid-template-columns: subgrid;
}

Sadly subgrid doesn't has a good browser support yet.

But what if we want to support at least the current browsers?

A Grid In A Grid

To support the current browsers we need to define a grid which fits to the parent column element. We will use the cell-10 column to test it. Therefore we put in a new element and create a new class which we call my-inline-grid-10. The new grid will get a template column definition with the same amount of columns that the parent column is wide. In our case 10.

.my-inline-grid-10 {
    grid-template-columns: repeat(10, 1fr);
}

Now we can put in new cell*s which have the same width as the other columns, of our 16 column grid.
Of course we want to have the same grid gap as well. That's why we put *my-grid to the same HTML element. Also we have to make sure that class is defined AFTER my-grid in our CSS file to overwrite the template definition.

Conclusions

As we already said: CSS Grid. Is. Not. Easy. and if you haven't understood it completely yet, that's totally fine.
I hope that this short how-to may helped you to learn how to nest a CSS grid in a grid.

If you like visual examples, here is my CodePen that includes all examples from above:

!important always check the browser support

You have another solution, questions or feedback? Would be awesome if you leave a comment 🖤

UI Developers are still underestimated

Feli (she/her) — Mon, 28 Sep 2020 19:53:21 +0000

Why we are not done with the discussion yet and why you may consider to hire and/ or promote User Interface Developers.

You can call them HTML & CSS Developers, Web Developers, Web Designers, Front-end Developers, ...
There are a lot of job titles out there for people who have their expertise in HTML & CSS. In this post I will call them UI Developers.

UI Developers have different backgrounds as other developers have as well. Some of them learned other programming languages in the first step or have a design background or have learned HTML & CSS from beginning on and deepened that knowledge over time. There is no right or wrong in becoming an UI Developer.

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The bigger the project the more likely you want to have UI Developers

In a lot of companies and/ or projects the HTML & CSS part is done by everyone, by the designers or the persons who are programming the rest of the website/ application.
Of course there are cases where this totally makes sense, and in this post I don’t want to say that you always need to have UI Developers. But there are cases where you really need them or at least consider having them.

The bigger the product or more complex the User Interface, the higher the amount of developers on the project or developers who are using the UI (e.g. component library) is, the more you need UI developers.

Let’s say you have a website as a digital business card for a company. You may not need a software architect here, right? Same goes for the UI Developers.

But let’s say you have a big project which a lot of developers are working on. Or you have a component library which is shared with different teams or even different companies. An application which is rolled out in different variations/ countries with different requirements. In this case you want to have a Software/ Front-end Architect. Same goes for UI Developer. In this case you want to have developers with expertise in UI development. If you would like, you can even say that there are cases where you need an UI Development Architect.

What skills do UI Developers have or need

I won't draw one specific picture of an UI Developer. Most of the time there are too many factors which need to be considered for a job description. UI Developers can be specialized in different fields such as performance, accessibility, user interaction animations, etc. This variety would make it impossible to make one definition. That's why I would like to draw a bigger picture of what professional skills an UI Developer may have:

semantic HTML
CSS (+ CSS pre-/post-processors, CSS in JS)
performance / accessibility / SEO
(basic) JavaScript
(User Experience/ Interaction) animations
component libraries (
the glue between the design and development team
... and of course I'll have forgotten some skills, but not on purpose. Feel free to add them in the comments

We still have work to do

Back in the days when I started working full time in the industry (my graduation was 2005) HTML and CSS were the task you did just beside everything else (e.g. Java, PHP, CMS, ...).
Over time a lot of things have changed. From optimizing for Netscape, IE6 and Opera in pixel perfect to HTML5 and CSS3 and CSS pre-/post-processor until CSS in JS, animations in CSS and so much more. We even had the discussions that HTML5 and CSS3 is turing complete. From table layout to CSS in JS. The front-end, devices and browser changes are fast.

You may guess that all the changes over the year have also changed how we see or appreciate UI Developers. But sadly, most of the time this isn’t the case.

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A lot of UI Developers are still getting told that they need to get better in JavaScript. That they need to learn that specific JavaScript framework if they want to make their next step career wise. Even if they have a deep knowledge of HTML & CSS which blows your mind. We are not there yet where UI Developers are seen on the same professional level as other developers.

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The problems of not having UI developers

I have seen projects who have big issues with UI bugs, developers who tell their project managers that a specific bug is a browser bug (even if it wasn’t and they didn’t have the knowledge to know it). Teams who needed days to solve UI bugs, where UI developers only needed hours, projects who needed help just a couple of weeks before go live to fix the whole UI part. All of this can create frustration and problems. Problems need solutions that cost money.

This is no surprise if you don’t have people or a whole team who know how to set up the (let’s call it) UI architecture, who know how to debug (cross browser) UI bugs, who see the pitfalls in refinements, who know how much effort you need for a feature implementation or initial setup.
Would you ever let someone do JavaScript or complete project architecture if they don’t have an expertise in this area?
Why treat it differently? You need people who have their expertise in UI programming - especially HTML & CSS. To minimize your technical debt, to minimize potential bugs which can cost a lot of time (and money) to be solved, to create the best possible product.

UI Developers do not need to be Designers or JavaScript experts or Front-end Fullstack Developers. They can, if they want to.

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We need UI Developers and we need to appreciate them, in the same way we appreciate other developers.

May 17, International Day Against Homo-, Bi-, Inter- and Transphobia 🏳️‍🌈

Feli (she/her) — Sun, 17 May 2020 12:48:37 +0000

It's International Day Against Homo-, Bi- Inter and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT). Today I want to share what my colleagues and I did to raise awareness of the day, its meaning and why it's important.

We asked our colleagues to show their support

At SinnerSchrader we have a Skill Group called Diversity Matters. Among other things we also discuss topics and plan actions around special days, such as the International Day Against Homo-, Bi-, Inter- and Transphobia.

To do so we sent out the following e-mail to our colleagues:

Sunday, May 17 is the International Day Against Homo-, Bi- Inter and Transphobia and we (the Skill Group Diversity Matters) would love to show our support as a company.
Since all events for this year have to happen online, we came up with the idea to create a social media & blog post. Therefore we want to create a mosaic picture of us (as a company) wearing colors of the LGBT* pride flag to raise awareness and show our support.

How can you support? Send a picture of you (until 14th of May) to diversity_sg@sinnerschrader.com wearing any of the following colors:
/ RED - Love
/ ORANGE - Respect
/ YELLOW - Freedom
/ GREEN - Tolerance
/ BLUE - Equality
/ VIOLET - Pride

The date May 17 has been chosen because the WHO removed homosexuality from the list of diseases on May 17, 1990. More information can be found on may17.org.
Let’s shed more light on LGBT+ rights violations together

If you have any questions, please get in contact with diversity_sg@sinnerschrader.com.

Pictures can say more than words

Our hope was, that we get an awesome picture from our colleagues which we can share on social media to show our support, but also to raise awareness in the company.
In total we got 150 pictures from our SinnerSchrader colleagues and even our friends from Accenture ♥. A lot of them let us known that they like this initiative. We as the Diversity Matters group were so delighted that this topic seems to be important to them. We are truly thankful for the solidarity our colleagues showed!
That’s why I wanted to share this story: Sharing is Caring.

The result speaks for itself

More about LGBT+ rights and awareness

We didn’t want to “only” ask our colleagues to show their support. We also wanted to raise awareness of the day itself. That’s why Annika interviewed our colleague Lea, who had the idea to highlight that day.
They talked about the importance of the IDAHOBIT, why Lea involves herself in diversity actions at work and what she wishes for the future.
You can read the interview here, Diversity matters: About the significance of raising awareness of LGBT+ issues 🏳️‍🌈

We say no to Homo-, Bi-, Inter- & Transphobia. No to violence against LGBT+ people. No to discrimination in countries all over the world.
We say yes to tolerance and respect. Yes to inclusion and diversity.

Join us in raising awareness, even with little things. Let’s stand together and create a better and more equal world!

Even though the International Day Against Homo-, Bi- Inter and Transphobia and other days dedicated to related issues are important and have to be used to accentuate current events, we (the diversity matters group at SinnerSchrader) find that these topics should be discussed every day. We are constantly thinking about initiatives in order to do so. Let us know, if you’re interested in learning more about this!