Katie Peters could have used an advocate as she embarked on her tech career.
In her first year at the University of British Columbia, Peters’ computer science classes were split almost evenly along gender lines. But most of her female classmates soon switched majors, and by Peters’ final year there were typically only two or three women in those classes. She felt increasingly isolated and was uncomfortable asking for help.
After graduating with a computer science degree in 2012, Peters took a job as a software developer for TELUS, a Canadian telecommunications company. Joining an organization with more than 90,000 employees, Peters initially found it challenging to make her way around its procedures and structure. So when the position of staff developer opened on TELUS’ new engineering productivity team last fall, Peters jumped at the opportunity.
“I wanted to be the person that I wish could have helped me,” says Peters, who started in the role last October. “There are so many complicated processes in a company as large as TELUS and it’s really difficult to navigate. You end up feeling stupid a lot of the time and you have to ask lots of questions. I don’t want other people to have to experience that. I want to make that better.”
Peters is ‘a brilliant developer and a brilliant technologist,’ says Justin Watts, head of TELUS’ engineering productivity team.
Peters is now helping lead an initiative aimed at changing TELUS’ culture to better empower its developers. Much of that effort is focused on encouraging widespread adoption of Microsoft’s code-hosting platform GitHub to help automate software development at TELUS and make it easier for the company’s roughly 4,000 developers to collaborate. TELUS recently made GitHub available companywide and signed an agreement with Microsoft to help manage its enterprise-level use of the platform and provide GitHub training to developers.
Justin Watts, head of developer experience for TELUS, says Peters’ experience as both a developer and a previous member of TELUS’ enterprise architecture team makes her ideally suited to help redefine the company’s approach to software development.
“This is all being driven by Katie and the vision she has,” says Watts, who heads the engineering productivity team. “Katie is great at capturing that relationship with the developer and what our goals are. She is a brilliant developer and a brilliant technologist.
“She’s seen as a really senior, influential mind in the company.”
Justin Watts.
Peters is already shaking things up. Drawing inspiration from “The Unicorn Project,” a 2019 novel by Gene Kim about a group of renegade developers seeking to overthrow the existing order and make work more fulfilling, Peters has replaced the usual staid presentation decks with ones featuring swirling designs, pink and purple tones and cartoon unicorns, and adopted the book’s mantra of bringing “focus, flow and joy” to developers.
Transform recently chatted with Peters over Microsoft Teams from her home in Vancouver, where she lives with her husband and 2-year-old daughter. The interview has been condensed for clarity and length.
TRANSFORM: Why was the engineering productivity team formed and what is its mission?
PETERS: We’ve been transitioning to the cloud for software development for a while, but it’s challenging. It greatly simplifies very complicated operations activities and turns those things into code. So instead of needing an ops professional to manually create a bespoke server for the developer to host their application, the definition of that server is standardized and codified in a way that can be stored and managed alongside the application code.
That makes it easier for a developer to manage it themselves, but they’re now expected to own that server definition, where sometimes they’ve never previously had exposure to the ops side of software development. That’s a really difficult transition for people. And a lot of legacy processes haven’t caught up to cloud development yet. We’re giving developers a lot more freedom, but it’s also a lot more responsibility in different areas than they might not have had experience in before. So we have to make that not a burden for them.
Our team exists to help developers make that cloud transition and to update all of that legacy process baggage to align with the new cloud paradigm.
TRANSFORM: Why did TELUS see a need to change how software development is done?
PETERS: We need to stay innovative and creative. We need to be able to react quickly to the market, and if we want to be able to do that, we need to give developers the time and the space and the safety to do that while also making sure that what they’re building is secure and reliable.
TELUS’ headquarters in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia.
To enable us to move quickly without sacrificing security and reliability, we need to really make that developer experience our focus. I treat it as the developers are my customers, and what experiences can I give them so that they are inspired to keep pushing and keep innovating, and just unblock them as much as I can, to make it as simple and fast as I can so that they can keep innovating.
TRANSFORM: What role can GitHub play in helping developers shift to this new cloud paradigm?
PETERS: GitHub used to be just for storing the source code, but now it has a lot of other features. When you’re writing code, for example, you need to be able to plan that work and distribute it to people. We can use GitHub projects for that.
After you’ve developed code, there are tools you can use to tell you if there are problems with how you’ve written it. In the past, we would wait until we were trying to release that code to our customers before we would run those tests. So when things went wrong, it was really costly. Now, developers can push their code back to the public repository on GitHub for the rest of the team to see. Then we can run all of these automated tests and security scans, so it’s easier to make fixes right then, whereas in the old world, it was potentially months later they would get that feedback.
With GitHub taking over that developer lifecycle, that allows us to build in a lot of automation so we have end-to-end visibility on where developers are spending their time and what they’re doing. That’s good for metrics on how we can improve that experience and make it better for people.
TRANSFORM: GitHub is ultimately a tool. What other components are you thinking about in driving this cultural shift at TELUS?
PETERS: As a big company, TELUS can be a little formal. It’s hard for people to ask for help. We really wanted to change that culture. We wanted to be open and approachable and let people vent to us in a psychologically safe place to share their problems. That way, we can understand all the little things that add up to so much toil.
Peters draws inspiration from ‘The Unicorn Project,’ a novel about a group of renegade developers.
We have a lot of really creative people at TELUS, a lot of talented developers, and they come up with really interesting ways to deal with the status quo that don’t actually fix the problem for anyone else — it’s just a workaround that they’ve developed. We need people to feel safe coming to us with their problems and trust that we can help them solve them, so that we can then bring that to everybody and drive that improvement across the board.
TRANSFORM: How did your interest in computers start?
PETERS: My parents really wanted me to be interested in computers, so they bought me my own computer when I was a kid. They got me into robot building camps and software development camps and all sorts of stuff.
I started playing video games when I was 4 years old. I played Putt-Putt Goes to the Moon and Fatty Bear’s Birthday Surprise. I loved all sorts of video games. Morrowind was another big game for me. They had a modding community, and I learned a lot about computers in general by participating in that community. (Modding refers to the practice of altering content or creating new content for video games.)
I wanted to work in the video game industry, but when I was applying for co-op placements during university, I got into Sierra Wireless (a Canadian IoT solutions provider). As I was exposed to that industry, I liked the consistency and stability of the telco industry and the feeling that you’re contributing to something important. Providing internet to people is really important.
TRANSFORM: You said you felt at times like you have imposter syndrome. Did you feel that way particularly as a female developer?
PETERS: I’ve always had a lot of imposter syndrome, which I think is true for a lot of software developers. I’m not unique in that way. I do think it’s worse as a woman, but I think it’s just common in software development to have those kinds of feelings. The industry is kind of steeped in this mythology of like, really smart geeks who live and breathe computer science and build Google or Microsoft in their basement, and they’re all geniuses and always know everything about everything.
TELUS, which employs around 4,000 developers, is using GitHub to transform its approach to software development.
There are really high expectations in the software industry in general, and I think everybody experiences that, but I think it’s amplified for a woman. Because the expectation, I think, at least when I started in the industry, was that I don’t actually know what I’m doing. I’m a poseur and I just got my place because I’m a woman. So I had to work really hard to appear extra smart.
TRANSFORM: Is it important to you, as a woman in this role, to attract more female developers to the field?
PETERS: Absolutely. When you’re the only woman, it can be really challenging. And when you have one or two women in a large group, sometimes you can be forced into this weird sense of competition with them. People are always comparing you to the other women.
But when there’s a critical mass of women, you really get to be comfortable working with other women who typically come from the same kinds of experiences. You get to open up a little bit in a way that you might not have been able to otherwise. Most women I encounter in computer science are so supportive and friendly.
It always makes me happy to see more women in the industry. Any opportunity I have to try to make that easier for somebody or to help somebody go in that direction, I’m very happy to be able to do that.
Top photo: Katie Peters stands on a deck at TELUS’ headquarters in Vancouver, B.C. (Justin Watts photo courtesy of Justin Watts; all other photos by Jennifer Gauthier)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Artificial intelligence‘s recent rise to the forefront of business has left most office workers wondering how often they should use the technology and whether a computer will eventually replace them.
Those were among the highlights of a recent study conducted by the workplace communications platform Slack. After conducting in-depth interviews with 5,000 desktop workers, Slack concluded there are five types of AI personalities in the workplace: “The Maximalist” who regularly uses AI on their jobs; “The Underground” who covertly uses AI; “The Rebel,” who abhors AI; “The Superfan” who is excited about AI but still hasn’t used it; and “The Observer” who is taking a wait-and-see approach.
Only 50% of the respondents fell under the Maximalist or Underground categories, posing a challenge for businesses that want their workers to embrace AI technology. The Associated Press recently discussed the excitement and tension surrounding AI at work with Christina Janzer, Slack’s senior vice president of research and analytics.
Q: What do you make about the wide range of perceptions about AI at work?
A: It shows people are experiencing AI in very different ways, so they have very different emotions about it. Understanding those emotions will help understand what is going to drive usage of AI. If people are feeling guilty or nervous about it, they are not going to use it. So we have to understand where people are, then point them toward learning to value this new technology.
Q: The Maximalist and The Underground both seem to be early adopters of AI at work, but what is different about their attitudes?
A: Maximalists are all in on AI. They are getting value out of it, they are excited about it, and they are actively sharing that they are using it, which is a really big driver for usage among others.
The Underground is the one that is really interesting to me because they are using it, but they are hiding it. There are different reasons for that. They are worried they are going to be seen as incompetent. They are worried that AI is going to be seen as cheating. And so with them, we have an opportunity to provide clear guidelines to help them know that AI usage is celebrated and encouraged. But right now they don’t have guidelines from their companies and they don’t feel particularly encouraged to use it.
Overall, there is more excitement about AI than not, so I think that’s great We just need to figure out how to harness that.
Q: What about the 19% of workers who fell under the Rebel description in Slack’s study?
A: Rebels tend to be women, which is really interesting. Three out of five rebels are women, which I obviously don’t like to see. Also, rebels tend to be older. At a high level, men are adopting the technology at higher rates than women.
Q: Why do you think more women than men are resisting AI?
A: Women are more likely to see AI as a threat, more likely to worry that AI is going to take over their jobs. To me, that points to women not feeling as trusted in the workplace as men do. If you feel trusted by your manager, you are more likely to experiment with AI. Women are reluctant to adopt a technology that might be seen as a replacement for them whereas men may have more confidence that isn’t going to happen because they feel more trusted.
Q: What are some of the things employers should be doing if they want their workers to embrace AI on the job?
A: We are seeing three out of five desk workers don’t even have clear guidelines with AI, because their companies just aren’t telling them anything, so that’s a huge opportunity.
Another opportunity to encourage AI usage in the open. If we can create a culture where it’s celebrated, where people can see the way people are using it, then they can know that it’s accepted and celebrated. Then they can be inspired.
The third thing is we have to create a culture of experimentation where people feel comfortable trying it out, testing it, getting comfortable with it because a lot of people just don’t know where to start. The reality is you can start small, you don’t have to completely change your job. Having AI write an email or summarize content is a great place to start so you can start to understand what this technology can do.
Q: Do you think the fears about people losing their jobs because of AI are warranted?
A: People with AI are going to replace people without AI.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration said Tuesday that it would provide up to $325 million to Hemlock Semiconductor for a new factory, a move that could help give Democrats a political edge in the swing state of Michigan ahead of election day.
The funding would support 180 manufacturing jobs in Saginaw County, where Republicans and Democrats were neck-in-neck for the past two presidential elections. There would also be construction jobs tied to the factory that would produce hyper-pure polysilicon, a building block for electronics and solar panels, among other technologies.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on a call with reporters that the funding came from the CHIPS and Science Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022. It’s part of a broader industrial strategy that the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, supports, while Republican nominee Donald Trump, the former president, sees tariff hikes and income tax cuts as better to support manufacturing.
“What we’ve been able to do with the CHIPS Act is not just build a few new factories, but fundamentally revitalize the semiconductor ecosystem in our country with American workers,” Raimondo said. “All of this is because of the vision of the Biden-Harris administration.”
A senior administration official said the timing of the announcement reflected the negotiating process for reaching terms on the grant, rather than any political considerations. The official insisted on anonymity to discuss the process.
After site work, Hemlock Semiconductor plans to begin construction in 2026 and then start production in 2028, the official said.
Running in 2016, Trump narrowly won Saginaw County and Michigan as a whole. But in 2020 against Biden, both Saginaw County and Michigan flipped to the Democrats.
Although no one likes a know-it-all, they dominate the Internet.
The Internet began as a vast repository of information. It quickly became a breeding ground for self-proclaimed experts seeking what most people desire: recognition and money.
Today, anyone with an Internet connection and some typing skills can position themselves, regardless of their education or experience, as a subject matter expert (SME). From relationship advice, career coaching, and health and nutrition tips to citizen journalists practicing pseudo-journalism, the Internet is awash with individuals—Internet talking heads—sharing their “insights,” which are, in large part, essentially educated guesses without the education or experience.
The Internet has become a 24/7/365 sitcom where armchair experts think they’re the star.
Not long ago, years, sometimes decades, of dedicated work and acquiring education in one’s field was once required to be recognized as an expert. The knowledge and opinions of doctors, scientists, historians, et al. were respected due to their education and experience. Today, a social media account and a knack for hyperbole are all it takes to present oneself as an “expert” to achieve Internet fame that can be monetized.
On the Internet, nearly every piece of content is self-serving in some way.
The line between actual expertise and self-professed knowledge has become blurry as an out-of-focus selfie. Inadvertently, social media platforms have created an informal degree program where likes and shares are equivalent to degrees. After reading selective articles, they’ve found via and watching some TikTok videos, a person can post a video claiming they’re an herbal medicine expert. Their new “knowledge,” which their followers will absorb, claims that Panda dung tea—one of the most expensive teas in the world and isn’t what its name implies—cures everything from hypertension to existential crisis. Meanwhile, registered dietitians are shaking their heads, wondering how to compete against all the misinformation their clients are exposed to.
More disturbing are individuals obsessed with evangelizing their beliefs or conspiracy theories. These people write in-depth blog posts, such as Elvis Is Alive and the Moon Landings Were Staged, with links to obscure YouTube videos, websites, social media accounts, and blogs. Regardless of your beliefs, someone or a group on the Internet shares them, thus confirming your beliefs.
Misinformation is the Internet’s currency used to get likes, shares, and engagement; thus, it often spreads like a cosmic joke. Consider the prevalence of clickbait headlines:
You Won’t Believe What Taylor Swift Says About Climate Change!
This Bedtime Drink Melts Belly Fat While You Sleep!
In One Week, I Turned $10 Into $1 Million!
Titles that make outrageous claims are how the content creator gets reads and views, which generates revenue via affiliate marketing, product placement, and pay-per-click (PPC) ads. Clickbait headlines are how you end up watching a TikTok video by a purported nutrition expert adamantly asserting you can lose belly fat while you sleep by drinking, for 14 consecutive days, a concoction of raw eggs, cinnamon, and apple cider vinegar 15 minutes before going to bed.
Our constant search for answers that’ll explain our convoluted world and our desire for shortcuts to success is how Internet talking heads achieve influencer status. Because we tend to seek low-hanging fruits, we listen to those with little experience or knowledge of the topics they discuss yet are astute enough to know what most people want to hear.
There’s a trend, more disturbing than spreading misinformation, that needs to be called out: individuals who’ve never achieved significant wealth or traded stocks giving how-to-make-easy-money advice, the appeal of which is undeniable. Several people I know have lost substantial money by following the “advice” of Internet talking heads.
Anyone on social media claiming to have a foolproof money-making strategy is lying. They wouldn’t be peddling their money-making strategy if they could make easy money.
Successful people tend to be secretive.
Social media companies design their respective algorithms to serve their advertisers—their source of revenue—interest; hence, content from Internet talking heads appears most prominent in your feeds. When a video of a self-professed expert goes viral, likely because it pressed an emotional button, the more people see it, the more engagement it receives, such as likes, shares and comments, creating a cycle akin to a tornado.
Imagine scrolling through your TikTok feed and stumbling upon a “scientist” who claims they can predict the weather using only aluminum foil, copper wire, sea salt and baking soda. You chuckle, but you notice his video got over 7,000 likes, has been shared over 600 times and received over 400 comments. You think to yourself, “Maybe this guy is onto something.” What started as a quest to achieve Internet fame evolved into an Internet-wide belief that weather forecasting can be as easy as DIY crafts.
Since anyone can call themselves “an expert,” you must cultivate critical thinking skills to distinguish genuine expertise from self-professed experts’ self-promoting nonsense. While the absurdity of the Internet can be entertaining, misinformation has serious consequences. The next time you read a headline that sounds too good to be true, it’s probably an Internet talking head making an educated guess; without the education seeking Internet fame, they can monetize.
