Naomi Freeman on Empathy in Software

05/10/20 • 43 min

In this episode I'm talking to Naomi Freeman, two time nominated Woman of Influence for Royal Bank of Canada's Women Entrepreneur award. Naomi has been an engineer, team lead, CTO and founder. Naomi is also an instructor for Treehouse and LinkedIn Learning and she actively takes a mentoring role in Rails Girls and Coder Dojo.
Naomi is passionate about using Software to better the world and is currently co-authoring a book on Software and Empathy with a working title of The Compassionate Coder. In this episode we talk about Naomi's journey from a Philosophy and Creative Writing degree to software development, diversity in the software workplace, Naomi's work with RailsGirls and CoderDojo and of course, empathy in software development.
Naomi gives us an excellent book recommendation, besides her own, of The Black Box Society by Frank Pasquale.
I think you'll enjoy this one!
Links:

Naomi's website - https://www.naomifreeman.com/
Compassionate Coder - https://compassionatecoder.com/
Treehouse - https://teamtreehouse.com/
LinkedIn Learning - https://www.linkedin.com/learning
RailsGirls - http://railsgirls.com/
CoderDojo - https://coderdojo.com/
The Black Box Society - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Black-Box-Society-Algorithms-Information/dp/0674970845/ref=sr_1_1

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Naomi's website - https://www.naomifreeman.com/
Compassionate Coder - https://compassionatecoder.com/
Treehouse - https://teamtreehouse.com/
LinkedIn Learning - https://www.linkedin.com/learning
RailsGirls - http://railsgirls.com/
CoderDojo - https://coderdojo.com/
The Black Box Society - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Black-Box-Society-Algorithms-Information/dp/0674970845/ref=sr_1_1

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Previous Episode

Will McGreal wants Honesty

Hey Everyone, in this episode I'm talking to Will McGreal, a technical recruitment team lead with Morgan McKinley, who specialises in the recruitment of senior technical appointments.
Will and I talk about the differing aspects of the relationship that recruiters have with Software Engineers, from the person who is a candidate for a role, to the engineer who is the interviewer. This brings up some interesting scope on how professionalism is understood from a recruiters point of view, and how the software engineer takes two different perspectives for a recruiter.
We talk about honesty on both sides of the table, whether being too flexible is a drawback, putting candidates at ease, how not to arrive for an interview, and how the importance of the technical interview is waning.
Will also gives us our most laid back book recommendation yet in Tyson Fury: Behind The Mask. A book that really opens up our thoughts about mental health.
As always, I hope you enjoy the show and if so, do please subscribe.

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