It's time to wrap up my year in cycling. I've ridden 4709km

which is less than my goal of 6500km, but considering my mental and physical health this year, I'm pretty happy with it. 302km for this week alone is my biggest week ever.

December 2022 has been a big month in general. With the exception of the 1st when it was _rather_ wet, the 5th and 6th when I went to a conference (YOW! 2022) and the 7th-8th when C was ill with strep throat, I rode every day. After the school term ended I was able to take the time to ride to and from my now-regular bunch rides with the Graceville Bike Community (GBC) group, and found that I am indeed able to keep up with the slightly faster speed group (30km/h average).

Overall, though, my riding has been uneven. At the start I was 93kg, lacking in motivation and when I did get on my bike it was an effort. February was starting to improve over January, but then we got rain for three solid weeks and the house flooded. Dealing with cleanup was much more important so I rarely got out. In April the weather started cooling down, which was appreciated, but in the last week we all came down with COVID19 and were knocked flat. I was off work for 2 weeks, and when I was back on deck there were days where I could only get through half before needing a long nap. I feel very fortunate that my employer has been very understanding of that.

You'll note in this yearly calendar panel

that there were two rides in May. I remember them vividly. All week I had been feeling better and better, and had planned on doing a relaxed River Loop. However when I got to the Jindalee bridge I realised I wouldn't be able to complete it, so just rode to the West End ferry terminal instead. Getting home from that (25km from there, usually an easy hour and 15) was a struggle. I managed to get out the following day for a few loops around Jindalee, but that was it, I was exhausted.

I couldn't get my head right for riding at all in June (I put on 3kg, too), and barely managed to get any rides in during July or August. My post-COVID recovery was accelerating though, and was helped by a conscious decision to try to hit a specific weight by my birthday in November.

J and I had also gone to see our counsellor and I noted that the massive layoffs (August 2017) I had somehow managed to survive were still rocking me and that I really, _really_ missed my friends. At that point I made a decision to finally go and see what the GBC bunch rides were like. My riding mates Shane and Adam had been with them for years and I kept seeing their bunch rides on Strava. So on the 30th of August I rocked up for my first ride.

The GBC "bunch" is made up of several different speed groups - a 34km/h (and faster), a 30-32km/h, 28-29km/h and a "lifestyle" of around 22km/h. I hoped I would be able to keep up with the 28-29 group, and was truly delighted that in fact I did keep up. The people in the group were also very welcoming and considerate, so I....... kept turning up.

I also decided that rather than driving to Darra station then catching the train in to the office ($work likes me to go in one day a week), I would ride in instead. We've got pretty good end-of-trip facilities - secure bike storage, and a towel service with very nice showering and changing facilities - so the only thing stopping me being a bike commuter is me. (Or if it's raining). The route is pretty flat (20km each way), the 2-2.5km through the CBD is generally ok - I've only had 2 too-close passes, and both appeared careless rather than deliberate. It's a great feeling to know that even though I'm spending around the same amount of time as if I drove and caught the train, I'm _exercising_ and outdoors and feeling the wind on my face.

I've also learned new routes from the bunch rides. One that we usually do on a Friday is Spinkbrae Street in Fig Tree Pocket, which is _steep_.

I can climb it in about 2 minutes, I'm still figuring out the cadence I need. The road surface is awful, too. Well past time for a re-do by the council.

Another new route I've done is the ride out to Nudgee Beach, which was long and hot and took me to places I've always wanted to explore. Never having a guide to get there was the impediment, but I'm over that and look forward to doing it again.

As the year wound down I rode more. I decided that yes, I would in fact ride the Tour De Brisbane (medio) on 2 April 2023, that I would ride both Gap Creek and Coot-tha back segments before the end of the year, and that for 2023 my weekly distance goal is 200km rather than 150km. After all, I've been able to hit the 150km goal each week since mid-November, and it feels good to be able to do more.

I'm happy with what I've been able to accomplish through riding this year - made new friends, discovered new routes, lost weight (ending the year at 85kg) and improved my physical and mental health. I've got achievable goals lined up for next year and I'm looking forward to putting the effort in to achieving them.

All in all, not a bad year.

Like many people I quite enjoy playing Wordle, and I quite enjoy playing Worldle, too. I like both of these games so much that I've made completing them my Start Of Day (SOD) procedure.

Yesterday's Worldle was Vatican City, a place that J and I visited when we had an amazing five week long trip to Europe in 2005. Worldle gives you a black-on-white image of the geographic area to guess, and each day's image is approximately the same size in your window.

I thought this was pretty easy to guess - to me it just looks like a fortified place like a castle or ... a city state. There aren't too many of those on this planet so it was a 1 from 1 situation. I forgot to save a copy of the clue version, so imagine this picture below but with everything inside the walls filled in, in black:

This morning I got to thinking - if you've only got the edges of a word (start and end letters), how many unique combinations are there? [Yes, I'm only thinking about the English language].

A quick check of /usr/share/dict/words on my workstation (standard Linux dictionary installed) shows that out of 104334 words there are 7044 with five letters. Clarifying that just a little, if you remove those that are capitalised (proper nouns and acronyms) you're left with 4667 five letter words.

>>> import re
>>> words = open("words", "r").readlines()
>>> len(words)
104334
>>> fivers = [j.strip() for j in words if len(j) == 6]
>>> len(fivers)
7044
>>> fivers[0:20]
["ABC's", "ABM's", 'AFAIK', "AFC's", "AMD's", 'ANSIs', 'ANZUS', "AOL's", 'ASCII', "ASL's", 'ASPCA', "ATM's", "ATP's", 'AWACS', "AWS's", "AZT's",'Aaron', 'Abbas', 'Abdul', "Abe's"]

>>> fivers = []
>>> for w in words:
...     m = re.match("^[a-z]{5}$", w.strip())
...     if m:
...         fivers.append(m.group(0))
...
>>> len(fivers)
4667
>>> fivers[0:20]
['abaci', 'aback', 'abaft', 'abase', 'abash', 'abate', 'abbey', 'abbot', 'abeam', 'abets', 'abhor', 'abide', 'abler', 'abode', 'abort', 'about', 'above', 'abuse', 'abuts', 'abuzz']

That's good enough to look at the initial and final letter combinations. To do that we'll use a set:

>>> enders = [(i[0], i[-1]) for i in fivers]
>>> len(enders)
4667
>>> snend = set(enders)
>>> len(snend)
411
>>> snend
{('a', 'z'), ('t', 's'), ('p', 'x'), ('d', 'f'), ('s', 'i'), ('u', 'e'), ('z', 'i'), ('v', 'a'), ('g', 'a'), ('y', 'h'), ('j', 't'), ('t', 'x'), ('m', 'i'), ('l', 'e'), ('j', 'n'), ('k', 't'), ('q', 'k'), ('o', 'l'), ('h', 'x'), ('l', 'h'), ('u', 'a'), ('k', 'n'), ('b', 'l'), ('d', 'i'), ('y', 'a'), ('v', 'd'), ('g', 'd'), ('v', 'g'), ('k', 'u'), ('o', 't'), ('r', 'y'), ('c', 'r'), ('c', 'l'), ('s', 'p'), ('j', 'i'), ('l', 'a'), ('b', 't'), ('m', 'm'), ('k', 'i'), ('u', 'd'), ('c', 'f'), ('n', 'r'), ('u', 'g'), ('n', 'l'), ('p', 't'), ('y', 'd'), ('f', 's'), ('y', 'g'), ('t', 'l'), ('p', 'n'), ('d', 'm'), ('u', 'r'), ('a', 's'), ('l', 'd'), ('q', 'y'), ('p', 'u'), ('x', 'v'), ('l', 'g'), ('m', 'c'), ('b', 'i'), ('d', 'p'), ('t', 't'), ('k', 'z'), ('r', 'x'), ('h', 't'), ('h', 'n'), ('s', 'e'), ('s', 's'), ('s', 'h'), ('o', 'm'), ('e', 'y'), ('h', 'u'), ('x', 'n'), ('z', 'h'), ('w', 'n'), ('t', 'i'), ('g', 'n'), ('b', 'm'), ('m', 'e'), ('m', 'h'), ('c', 'm'), ('b', 'p'), ('z', 'a'), ('d', 'e'), ('d', 'h'), ('c', 'o'), ('p', 'p'), ('a', 'l'), ('s', 'w'), ('b', 'c'), ('m', 'a'), ('j', 'e'), ('t', 'm'), ('c', 'k'), ('f', 't'), ('v', 'o'), ('h', 'z'), ('j', 's'), ('c', 'c'), ('r', 't'), ('a', 'f'), ('k', 'e'), ('n', 'o'), ('z', 'd'), ('a', 't'), ('r', 'n'), ('k', 's'), ('t', 'p'), ('d', 'a'), ('m', 'w'), ('w', 'z'), ('f', 'u'), ('g', 'z'), ('s', 'r'), ('o', 'e'), ('s', 'l'), ('m', 'd'), ('y', 'o'), ('u', 'k'), ('b', 'e'), ('f', 'i'), ('s', 'f'), ('b', 'h'), ('d', 'd'), ('a', 'i'), ('m', 'r'), ('q', 't'), ('l', 'o'), ('d', 'g'), ('p', 'e'), ('q', 'n'), ('p', 's'), ('o', 'a'), ('p', 'h'), ('c', 'y'), ('d', 'r'), ('b', 'a'), ('t', 'e'), ('o', 'w'), ('f', 'm'), ('t', 'h'), ('c', 'a'), ('j', 'r'), ('n', 'y'), ('e', 't'), ('j', 'l'), ('h', 'e'), ('a', 'm'), ('b', 'w'), ('o', 'd'), ('e', 'n'), ('h', 's'), ('k', 'l'), ('f', 'p'), ('o', 'g'), ('u', 'y'), ('n', 'a'), ('b', 'd'), ('x', 's'), ('b', 'g'), ('y', 'y'), ('t', 'a'), ('w', 's'), ('o', 'r'), ('i', 's'), ('c', 'd'), ('c', 'g'), ('a', 'c'), ('b', 'r'), ('l', 'y'), ('s', 'm'), ('t', 'w'), ('x', 'x'), ('n', 'd'), ('i', 'x'), ('p', 'r'), ('b', 'f'), ('p', 'l'), ('t', 'd'), ('s', 'o'), ('t', 'g'), ('s', 'k'), ('p', 'f'), ('f', 'e'), ('s', 'c'), ('t', 'r'), ('f', 'h'), ('a', 'e'), ('m', 'o'), ('r', 's'), ('h', 'r'), ('a', 'h'), ('c', 'v'), ('h', 'l'), ('d', 'b'), ('t', 'f'), ('d', 'o'), ('l', 'x'), ('f', 'a'), ('w', 'l'), ('i', 'l'), ('d', 'k'), ('a', 'a'), ('j', 'p'), ('j', 'o'), ('k', 'o'), ('w', 't'), ('q', 's'), ('v', 't'), ('i', 't'), ('g', 't'), ('s', 'y'), ('a', 'w'), ('v', 'n'), ('k', 'k'), ('z', 'y'), ('f', 'd'), ('f', 'g'), ('o', 'o'), ('a', 'd'), ('b', 'b'), ('u', 't'), ('a', 'g'), ('s', 'a'), ('p', 'm'), ('b', 'o'), ('m', 'y'), ('f', 'r'), ('u', 'n'), ('o', 'c'), ('x', 'i'), ('f', 'l'), ('r', 'r'), ('c', 'b'), ('e', 's'), ('r', 'l'), ('y', 'n'), ('a', 'r'), ('b', 'k'), ('g', 'i'), ('p', 'o'), ('d', 'y'), ('f', 'f'), ('l', 't'), ('n', 'b'), ('p', 'k'), ('l', 'n'), ('s', 'd'), ('p', 'c'), ('s', 'g'), ('h', 'm'), ('k', 'h'), ('t', 'o'), ('x', 'm'), ('t', 'k'), ('h', 'o'), ('i', 'm'), ('g', 'm'), ('q', 'l'), ('j', 'a'), ('t', 'c'), ('k', 'a'), ('o', 'y'), ('h', 'c'), ('r', 'i'), ('w', 'p'), ('q', 'f'), ('g', 'p'), ('b', 'y'), ('d', 'x'), ('j', 'd'), ('p', 'y'), ('e', 'l'), ('k', 'd'), ('r', 'm'), ('p', 'a'), ('q', 'i'), ('t', 'y'), ('h', 'h'), ('f', 'o'), ('r', 'p'), ('w', 'e'), ('p', 'w'), ('a', 'o'), ('i', 'e'), ('g', 'e'), ('f', 'k'), ('w', 'h'), ('v', 's'), ('f', 'c'), ('g', 's'), ('g', 'h'), ('m', 't'), ('r', 'c'), ('a', 'k'), ('p', 'd'), ('h', 'a'), ('m', 'n'), ('p', 'g'), ('c', 'x'), ('e', 'i'), ('q', 'm'), ('d', 't'), ('u', 's'), ('s', 'b'), ('w', 'a'), ('d', 'n'), ('y', 's'), ('h', 'd'), ('w', 'w'), ('h', 'g'), ('l', 's'), ('r', 'e'), ('r', 'h'), ('w', 'd'), ('f', 'y'), ('i', 'd'), ('w', 'g'), ('i', 'g'), ('g', 'g'), ('a', 'y'), ('e', 'p'), ('o', 'n'), ('w', 'r'), ('v', 'r'), ('i', 'r'), ('g', 'r'), ('v', 'l'), ('r', 'a'), ('b', 'n'), ('g', 'l'), ('e', 'c'), ('c', 't'), ('k', 'b'), ('q', 'e'), ('w', 'f'), ('c', 'n'), ('b', 'u'), ('g', 'f'), ('q', 'h'), ('r', 'w'), ('u', 'l'), ('n', 't'), ('y', 'l'), ('n', 'n'), ('r', 'd'), ('r', 'g'), ('t', 'n'), ('c', 'i'), ('q', 'a'), ('l', 'r'), ('a', 'x'), ('e', 'e'), ('l', 'l'), ('y', 't'), ('e', 'h'), ('p', 'b'), ('z', 's'), ('n', 'i'), ('b', 'z'), ('t', 'b'), ('u', 'i'), ('e', 'a'), ('j', 'y'), ('m', 's'), ('k', 'y'), ('q', 'r'), ('v', 'm'), ('d', 's'), ('e', 'w'), ('c', 'p'), ('t', 'z'), ('l', 'i'), ('w', 'o'), ('e', 'd'), ('i', 'o'), ('g', 'o'), ('e', 'g'), ('f', 'n'), ('w', 'k'), ('a', 'n'), ('e', 'r'), ('u', 'p'), ('a', 'u'), ('o', 's'), ('z', 'l'), ('b', 's'), ('s', 't'), ('c', 'e'), ('l', 'p'), ('r', 'b'), ('m', 'l'), ('s', 'n'), ('c', 's'), ('c', 'h'), ('r', 'o'), ('h', 'y'), ('v', 'e'), ('l', 'c'), ('m', 'f'), ('s', 'u'), ('b', 'x'), ('v', 'h'), ('d', 'l'), ('n', 'e'), ('f', 'z'), ('w', 'y'), ('n', 's'), ('n', 'h'), ('i', 'y'), ('g', 'y')}

That's quite a few pairs! I'm easily amused by things like this, so let's see how many words are in the list which start with 'g' and end with 'y':

>>> gy = [j for j in fivers if j.startswith("g") and j.endswith("y")]
>>> gy
['gabby', 'gaily', 'gamey', 'gassy', 'gaudy', 'gauzy', 'gawky', 'gayly', 'geeky', 'giddy', 'gimpy', 'gipsy', 'glory', 'gluey', 'godly', 'golly', 'goody', 'gooey', 'goofy', 'gouty', 'gravy', 'grimy', 'gully', 'gummy', 'gunny', 'guppy', 'gushy', 'gusty', 'gutsy', 'gypsy']
>>> len(gy)
30

Let's check the distribution (aren't buckets fun?) amongst all the start/end combinations:

>>> buckets = {}
>>> for b in snend:
...     buckets[b] = len([j for j in fivers if j.startswith(b[0]) and endswith(b[1])])
...

I admit some surprise at seeing that there are 92 start/end combinations which only have one word in the list

>>> unobuckets = [b for b in buckets if buckets[b] == 1]
>>> len(unobuckets)
92
>>> unobuckets
[('a', 'z'), ('p', 'x'), ('z', 'i'), ('y', 'h'), ('t', 'x'), ('j', 'n'), ('h', 'x'), ('k', 'n'), ('d', 'i'), ('y', 'a'), ('v', 'g'), ('k', 'u'), ('j', 'i'), ('k', 'i'), ('u', 'g'), ('y', 'g'), ('q', 'y'), ('p', 'u'), ('x', 'v'), ('l', 'g'), ('b', 'i'), ('d', 'p'), ('k', 'z'), ('r', 'x'), ('h', 'u'), ('x', 'n'), ('z', 'a'), ('b', 'c'), ('h', 'z'), ('a', 'f'), ('n', 'o'), ('z', 'd'), ('f', 'u'), ('g', 'z'), ('y', 'o'), ('u', 'k'), ('f', 'i'), ('q', 'n'), ('o', 'w'), ('f', 'm'), ('j', 'l'), ('f', 'p'), ('o', 'g'), ('x', 's'), ('x', 'x'), ('c', 'v'), ('d', 'b'), ('t', 'f'), ('l', 'x'), ('j', 'p'), ('z', 'y'), ('b', 'b'), ('o', 'c'), ('g', 'i'), ('f', 'f'), ('n', 'b'), ('k', 'h'), ('i', 'm'), ('j', 'a'), ('h', 'c'), ('q', 'f'), ('d', 'x'), ('q', 'i'), ('r', 'p'), ('f', 'c'), ('q', 'm'), ('w', 'a'), ('w', 'w'), ('h', 'g'), ('i', 'g'), ('e', 'p'), ('e', 'c'), ('b', 'u'), ('r', 'w'), ('n', 't'), ('n', 'n'), ('q', 'a'), ('p', 'b'), ('n', 'i'), ('b', 'z'), ('u', 'i'), ('q', 'r'), ('v', 'm'), ('t', 'z'), ('l', 'i'), ('a', 'u'), ('z', 'l'), ('l', 'p'), ('r', 'b'), ('m', 'f'), ('s', 'u'), ('f', 'z')]

Let's choose five:

>>> for b in ("a", "z"), ("f", "z"), ("q", "n"), ("r", "x"), ("d", "x"):
...     q = [j for j in fivers if j.startswith(b[0]) and j.endswith(b[1])]
...     print(q)
...
['abuzz']
['frizz']
['queen']
['relax']
['detox']

I didn't really have a point to make here, I just wanted to share my amusement at how many five letter words there are to guess compared to the approximately 300 geographic entities on the planet that you'll shown the edges of in Worldle. Also that knowing Python means you can make short work of asking and answering these questions.

There's always discourse (on twitter, reddit, HN etc) about hiring, JDs, interview processes etc. Mostly about how it all sucks (which is true to various degrees).

My colleague left (_1_ day after his probation ended; I was _unhappy_) and I got to write his replacement's JD. I've become increasingly aware over the last few years of the implicit and explicit bias in tech hiring, and vowed that if I was ever in a position to do something about it, I would.

Since I've got a BA, not a CS or EE degree, I've always felt like I didn't quite fit in in the industry. This, despite having 2y of CS and Physics in my BA where I wound up majoring in Maths and Modern History. For a long time I put myself in with the "non-traditional entry to tech" pool.

After leaving Oracle in 2019 I talked with AWS and GCP recruiters, who all emphasized questions on CS theory, recommended specific study guides for their interview processes... which I read .. and I still couldn't answer their questions. They made me feel incompetent so I eventually stopped responding to them.

At that point I'd been a successful Solaris kernel engineer for many years. I learnt good software engineering theory and practice from some of the giants in the industry. Just as important, perhaps even more so, though, was the _culture_ I imbided. I'll ramble on about that some other time.

In q3 2019 I had an interview with a different FAANG-like entity. It took seven hours, and I thought I got out lightly. There were three questions in that time which got me mad. One was from a ~3y PhD who asked why I hadn't written a Python generator (had not had a need too). The second was from a former CS prof, who was disgusted that I had never implemented a thread stack.

Him: How can you call yourself a software engineer if you've never implemented a thread stack?

Me: In the Unix kernel space, that's a solved problem. And solved by people who are much smarter than me.

(We then spent the rest of the hour-long session whiteboarding (ugh) stacks with queues and vice versa).

Seriously - I've met and worked with some of the people who worked on threading in the Solaris kernel. They are incredibly smart and excellent engineers. More importantly to me, though, they showed me both how and why the implementation worked. Never in a "I'm so smart" fashion, but always matter-of-fact, "I worked it out, I need to know that you can do it too".

The third question was from one of the overseas members of the panel, who after expressing horror that I didn't know how the internals of Apache Spark worked, demanded that I size - off the cuff - an ElasticSearch-based solution to a text-processing problem that they had just described to me. Including how much ram, how many cores, how much disk and network capacity..... I told the interviewer (and, later, the hiring manager who asked me for feedback on the whole process) that I didn't think that was a reasonable question under any circumstance.

Anyway.

After than FAANG-like entity I wound up at my current employer. I had two interviews, one with hiring manager and team lead, the other with the rest of the team. Rather than the torture session I anticipated, these were two very pleasant discussions. We talked about what they did, what I'd done, got to know each other. When I met the wider team via zoom on my first day (we were in lockdown so that was my only day in an office for another 4-5 months) my Director started the meeting by welcoming me and asking me for a short intro. I was delighted and relieved to discover that the people I'd interviewed with were representative of the rest of the org.

A few months after I started we got some interns via a bootcamp called Coder Academy, and I was asked to be their onboarding buddy. We had lots of sessions in their six weeks, talked about anything and everything, and I was truly delighted when my boss announced on their last day of interning that we'd hired them as employees.

These three (two in my team, one in an adjacent team) people brought home to me just how much I knew, and how much of what they wanted to know I had learnt in my two years of CS - three decades previously. What's that I hear? The claim that you _must_ have a degree in order to succeed in this industry? Utter tosh. Bollocks. A complete lie. These three (and this is my personal experiences, I'm not alone here - check twitter!) demonstrate that there is more than one pathway in to tech, and no singular definition of success.

Back to job descriptions.

My and my colleague's JD's were not wordsmithed. They were also chock full of "must have" and specific tech stack references. I've been in this role for seven and a half months now, but even in my first week I knew that general principles, an inquisitive nature and a desire to make this SCALE were more important than any particular piece of "do you have this certified piece of knowledge right now".

I spent maybe two hours re-writing the piece. I asked a very good friend (ht @girlgerms) for help and she gave me an excellent phrase to use, which was along these lines:

Your work history should show that you are already skilled in, or have the ability to quickly become skilled in these areas

With this way of expressing our needs, it was a fairly small jump to using the indirect language of "generic technology space, we're using (X)" to round out the requirements:

Data Pipeline Technologies such as (but not limited to):

• Apache Kafka, including Confluent or Aiven’s managed offerings

• Relational Databases and SQL. We primarily use PostgreSQL and MS SQL

• Containerisation

In my part of the company we're gearing up for a hiring spree, and my group (I've been reorg'd into another team) needs two "data devs", one Java dev, a business analyst and a product manager. Several other groups within our org are also down at least one, sometimes two developers - so there's a lot of activity right now around writing job descriptions. In the first two weeks of April I spent several hours with my new manager working on wordsmithing our requirements, putting a lot of effort into removing language that we believe actively discourages people who do not look like us (we fit the stereotype) from applying for these roles.

Just before Easter the manager of another team within our org sent an operations-focused JD around for comment, and it was ... ok. Ok in that it asked for specific tech and a degree, but that was about it. This JD fit the stereotype, and it was meh in the 90s, it's definitely not good enough now, 20+ years later.

I suggested he change some of the language, focus on principles rather than specific tech, and entirely remove mention of requiring a degree. Yesterday afternoon he pinged wanting a bit of clarification so I went into more detail, and I am delighted that his second draft (again, sent to our Director and our peers) did just that. There's still some wordsmithing required, but overall it's a much better document.

Yesterday morning I had a chat with our org's Recruiting Partner about my former colleague's replacement. He clued me in on a few of the vagaries of recruiting, which was really helpful, and then we talked about interviewing. He was relieved to hear that I flat out refuse to do whiteboarding, live coding or leetcode - for myself, and for candidates. He also asked me why any candidate would want to work with me on my team. I admitted that I hadn't thought of an answer for that question - but I came up with something that I think is an ok platform to build a better answer on. By the time I get to interview any candidate I'll have worked on it a lot more :).

That's enough rambling and self-aggrandizement. Time to wrap this up.

I'm now in a position where I get to directly and formally influence how my company presents itself to potential employees. I do not believe that there is a candidate "pipeline problem" - there are plenty of candidates out there who could fill any of the roles that we have, _we_ have to make ourselves attractive so that they'll consider us in the first place. _How_ we do that starts with what we write, and for too long (waay too long) our industry has been focused on some specific hiring language and practices which are both implicitly and explicity exclusive. I want that to change, so I'm making changes.