Leave things better than how you found it

Whether it's a piece of code or any random interaction, I always try my best to leave it better than how I found it. This could be just having a positive interaction with a stranger, or going above and beyond with a unit of work. This value drives me to be a little bit better every day. Being kind and respectful. Sustainable practices. I'll sometimes get it wrong, but when I do, I'm going to learn.

I find Cassidy Williams' Lift as you climb  to be an amazing example of this.

Strive for quality

I believe we've become complacent with low quality: be it goods, services, or even the interactions we have (looking at you, Twitter). I try to bring quality to everything I do. I strive to make every piece of code I write as efficient and performant as possible, but without sacrificing readability. As with everything, finding that balance is key.

Relating back to sustainability, I think (collectively) we are so focused/pressured on getting products out to market (looking at you, late-stage capitalism) that we end up with something that's low quality and low performance. I actually consider this opposite to my values as such software requires far more resources than what should be necessary. We should really strive for better, but again, I think we've become complacent with setting the quality bar fairly low.

Think beyond the first order

Too often I see poor decision making due to the lack of consideration beyond the first order. This leads to myopic results that often only benefit the individuals making those decisions, or a group closely associated with the individual.

For example, I live in the downtown of an urban area. I see, hear, and smell all of the traffic, and find it rather unfortunate how the area in which I live lacks lots of green space because of the infrastructure needed to support this traffic. Recently, a mayoral candidate was proposing a freeze of public transit, with a reduction in cost for various groups that really need it. Many of the constituents that were against this were coming from suburban areas, where they have vehicles and are upset that their tax dollars may be paying for something they don't use.

This is the height first-order thinking, and I see it all too often in these scenarios. Second-order thinkers would realize that cheaper public transit would likely:

1. improve the lives of many families, since they would have more disposable income, and
2. reduce traffic, since many people opt for public transit.

Third-order thinkers would then realize:

1. public transit would improve, perhaps encouraging even more people to take it, increasing first order effects;
2. reduce maintenance costs, since there's less traffic on the roads;
3. reduced accidents and better emergency response, also due to less traffic; and
4. improve the happiness of many, since commutes would be faster and those taking the bus could focus on reading, listening to music, or whatever they enjoy doing that they couldn't do while driving.

There's likely even more second and third-order effects too, but that gives you an idea. All of this is a bit hand wavy too, but it's a great picture of how to think beyond the first order.

Live with presence

We exist in a physical world with other humans, and it's good to maintain a presence that reminds of us that. For example, sharing the sidewalk with oncoming pedestrians, actively listening to someone, or acknowledging one's biases and privilege. Individuality and autonomy is important, but I believe we all need to think more deeply about how our choices impact others.

As a corollary to this, I think it's also really important to think not just about the first-order effects of the decisions we make, but as many orders beyond. It's difficult to do perfectly, and it's okay to be wrong, but I think sticking to first-order effects leads to myopic results.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion

Diversity is also the key to reaching our full potential. I see such a lack of diversity in so many areas, especially the tech industry. Research has shown time and time again that diversity leads to better outcomes, yet so many seem allergic to it. Diversity can't be a token hire either. They have to have a voice. What I often see though, is a subset of voices speaking the loudest, or gatekeeping that censors or suppresses a voice.

In that same vein, I try my best to make decisions that are equitable, which may mean giving someone more than myself to balance out our privilege. Putting us all on a level playing field is how I believe society grows to its full potential.

Inclusion is the final piece of the puzzle. It's not enough to have diversity and equity, we need to ensure everyone feels that they have a safe space to voice their thoughts and opinions.

Keep it simple

Simplicity is really important to me. I see the simplest possible form in everything I do and everything I say. This is especially true in software development, where I believe that building a simple system is a prerequisite for building a quality system. That doesn't mean some accidental complexity doesn't find its way in, but I strive to keep it to a minimum. Simple systems are:

1. Easy to reason about, which encourages fast onboarding and easy reasoning / debugging.
2. Easy to change, which accelerates development and reduces the cost of change.
3. Easy to maintain, which reduces the cost of ownership.

Conciseness and precision

In all my communication and work that I do I seek to be concise. Specifically, I want to ensure I cover everything that's needed, but with as little language as possible. Comprehensive, but minimal.

Alongside this, I aim for precision in language. I try to avoid being too nitpicky, but I do believe precision is key for effective communication. A great example of this as related to software: there's a big difference between simplicity/complexity and easy/hard, and we often use the latter terms to express the former. Rich Hickey talks about this distinction in his Simple Made Easy  talk.

Be honest and true to yourself

I'm not one for any form of lying or deception. It's why sales & marketing often bother me, as they often play with the truth in such a reckless way! In every action I take, and in all of my communications, I strive to be direct and honest.

I do believe that so many people and companies aren't honest, trying to take an ostensibly positive trait and present it as the primary motivator. For example, a company may emphasize how they're helping introduce more entrepreneurs, but at the end of the day they don't truly care about that unless it's making them money (a bit cynical, perhaps). Also in that example, they're not confronting the need for increased consumerism, and the positive or negative impacts of that. Sure, the economy is happy, but are we better off as a society? These are the kinds of questions I like to confront.

Privacy and autonomy

You have probably heard someone say something along the lines of "I have nothing to hide", and that's great, but it also almost comes from a place of privilege. Various institutions still monitor and collect data from us which can then be used against anyone, but oftentimes it ends up being minorities who are disproportionately impacted.

I believe that everyone, regardless of how you as an individual feel, has the right to privacy and full autonomy over themselves, to the extent that it doesn't infringe on the rights or have some negative impact on others. For example, vaccination can be a hot topic when it comes to bodily autonomy, but the choice to not be vaccinated (barring medical reasons you cannot be) can have a negative impact on others.

Less is more

When I reflect on the society in which I live, I feel like we have such abundance and yet are still rife with problems. People building egregious amounts of wealth, generally only spending on things that will benefit them (not inherently bad, unless your society's wealth inequality is severe). People feeling like they need to buy things to be happy, hoarding things they don't need. Hustle culture demanding unreasonable amounts of our time, again mostly benefiting a small amount of privileged people.

That last one in particular is something I've realized lately is undesirable to me. We work so hard throughout our lives, and have so little time to pursue the things we are truly passionate about, and for no reason too. We talk about how amazing productivity is, and instead of cashing in productivity gains to give people back more of their time, we just demand more and more from them.

I suspect that the root cause of all of this is the present form of capitalism which has manifested in North America. It demands constant and steady growth, pushing people to work harder and consume more. Our focus on growing the economy always seems to neglect the people which it's supposed to serve. Sure, it's great for the economy to grow if the wealth is being distributed evenly, but that's not the case. The wealth gap continues to grow, preventing large amounts of our society from really self-actualizing, as they have to spend so much of their time meeting basic needs.

I believe that by doing less we can achieve more, as it gives us the room to focus on self-care and well-being.

More haste, less speed