Well, a large part of it is CV-driven development, I'll not lie: I need to write thought leadership pieces demonstrating my skill with all aspects of technology and especially infrastructure and DevOps, and these days, that means you have to understand containers. As I've discovered in the course of this, container technology is *really good* for developer experience and makes a lot of tasks so much easier than doing them manually, so doing this was an excellent way to learn.
Which raises the question: given these struggles and the precarious position I exist in, why did I think this was the best use of my time? And why do so many trans women in similar positions also think so? Why, in short, do we keep learning how to do stuff with tech at a high level even when it doesn't seem economically valuable or worth it?
Given that this is the case, erstwhile critics of DEI policies from a broadly leftish perspective need a new synthesis for how to talk about DEI practices that captures the good things they were doing. What were they doing right that means that we're now missing the existence of a lot of these programs? Why did the whole thing fall apart so dramatically given that it was doing useful stuff? And how do those things interact?
The fact, however, is that for a lot of us who've mastered something hard, this kind of experience of bringing unconscious knowledge consciously into the forefront of one's mind by *having it pointed out to you* by a teacher whom you trust is absolutely a thing that happens: often quite a lot.
My life, at least inasmuch as I've tried to live it this way, has been an exercise in acting "as if." I act as if hiring processes and the way in which people decide whom to do business with aren't deeply, deeply bigoted and transphobic. I act as if I can write what I like on my personal blog without it negatively affecting my employment prospects in many places. I act as though people care about craft, skill and artistry in tech, and as if becoming technically brilliant is an important determinant of how well you do in your career. Finally, I act as though proper CI/CD practices and proper data engineering can be expected at any reasonable company and are a basic standard at software engineering shops.