The Human and the Technical

I wrote a small thing on LinkedIn yesterday about the differences in media and tech companies, based on my experience of working for various large companies. I wrote:

Tech companies tend to focus on process, data, and engineering practice. Media companies focus on the humans driving the technology. Great software engineering orgs should have a balance of both.

It's a high bar, to be sure, but occasionally, companies do get this right. I've been watching sessions from the current Ubuntu Summit the last couple days, and I'm reminded that Canonical did pretty well at this when I was there.

When I joined, Ubuntu was using the tagline "Linux for human beings," and one of the things I really enjoyed about working there was the diversity of humans working at Canonical, the level of interest in human endeavors outside of tech, and the technical rigor we undertook in our work. There was a lot of effort on the teams I was on to figure out our development process, how to structure our work, and how to deliver value on the six-month Ubuntu cadence. There was also a recognition of humans behind the technical work, and I had great chats with colleagues there about art, literature, gaming, and more. I suspect this says as much about open source development as it does Canonical, but I did think about it while watching these Ubuntu Summit sessions recently.