Hi everyone,

Good morning! Just. I've been heads down in work this week, but that's fine as it's reminded me of some of the thinking by women about work that I've found useful recently.

Let's start with Meri Williams, whose thinking about "culture add not culture fit" I quote at even the slightest provocation. I've found it really helps to reframe conversations about hiring, at the level of choosing between candidates as well as at the wider level of how you get candidates in. Anyway, this is a whole long, good post and that's the bit that resonated most deeply with me:

Culture add matters a lot more than culture fit. You don't need someone who's just the same as you. "I'm not saying hire people who will cause huge ructions in your team," says Meri, "but someone different enough to add something new."

https://www.turingfest.com/blog/meri-williams-scaling-engineering-teams

Of course, you might be reading this and thinking, this is not strictly relevant to me as I don't have a software job. If that is you, there is still something for everyone in this piece by Helen Hou-Sandí on what software teams can learn from music, specifically the practice of masterclasses. If you ever need to give or get feedback, there is lots here that I'm going to be thinking with for a while:

Not only does feedback need to be inclusive of a group while also targeted to each individual, it needs to be clearly contextualized. In music, that means including music history and theory as well – the performance practices of the era, specific notational quirks of the composer, what harmonies are and how do they drive the piece, and limitations of instruments and how they interact together.

https://helen.blog/2020/07/what-software-teams-can-learn-from-music-masterclasses/

Finally, here is someone who is good at presentations – it's friend of Fem Fri Alice Bartlett, who has generously put together advice for all on how to be better at them. It's great and it's funny and you get a sense of how true it is from this slide:

https://speakerdeck.com/alicebartlett/presentations-ft

I HOPE YOU HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND. If it's started already, you can save these links for Monday!

A xx.