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ARTY: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Episode 135 of Greater Than Code. I'm Arty Starr. I'm here with my fabulous co-host, Rein Henrichs.

REIN: And I am here with our brand new co-host and my friend, Chante Thurmond.

CHANTE: Hello. And I am here with our guest, Saron Yitbarek. Hi, Saron.

SARON: Hey, how's it going? 

CHANTE: Great. Nice to have you here.

SARON: Thanks so much for having me.

CHANTE: You bet. I have the great honor of being able to introduce you officially. Saron Yitbarek is the CEO and Founder of CodeNewbie, the most supportive community of programmers and people learning to code. She's also a developer, speaker, and podcaster. And has been to this show, welcome back.

SARON: Thanks so much. Yeah, great to be back.

CHANTE: The first question that we like to ask everybody is: what's your superpower and how did you acquire it?

SARON: That question is tough. I don't know if I feel like I have any superpowers. I feel like I have a lot of skills, but superpowers is kind of tough. I guess my superpower, if I had to pick one, is being able to figure out what people need and being able to kind of read people. I noticed this a few times where I just kind of like look at someone and kind of based on what they say and what they react, kind of get to see emotions and things that maybe they didn't mean to express and kind of getting a read on people and getting a sense of their motivations. I think that's probably one of my superpowers.

CHANTE: That's a good one, I'd say.

SARON: Yeah, it comes in handy. [Laughs]

CHANTE: [Laughs] How did you acquire it?

SARON: Through a lot of practice, I guess, just growing up and feeling like it's always handy to kind of read the room and read people's expressions and emotions. And also as a psychology major, I'm sure that played a role in it as well.

CHANTE: Yeah, I would guess so.

REIN: Saron, what have you been up to since we talked last?

SARON: Right now, one of my big focuses is Codeland. That's our annual conference that we do at CodeNewbie. It's July 22nd in New York City and it's awesome. I'm super excited about it. We are, at the time of this recording, about a month and a half away. And so, that's what I've been working on. Just making sure it's a really great experience for people and making sure that folks get a lot from there, making sure they're like well-fed, to just being taken care of, to learning and getting all the education and inspiration that they can. So, that's what I've been up to.

REIN: So, for those of you who don't know, Saron was our 26th guest and this is now episode 135.

SARON: Congratulations to you all.

REIN: Thank you. This has been, we last talked to you a little over two years ago, and you have been doing stuff and it's pretty cool. So this conference, I checked it out and you do a lot of cool things. You have free child care?

SARON: Yeah. Super proud to offer free onsite child care this year. It's something that I've wanted to do last year and just the venue, we weren't able to legally do it. And we did have a child care fund to subsidize child care for folks who needed it. But this year, we get to have complimentary onsite child care. We have a certified child caregivers and we have a room and we have some space. And it's going to be a really good time.

CHANTE: That is amazing.

SARON: Yeah. Really, really excited to have it. 

CHANTE: As somebody who has children and as somebody who focuses strongly on diversity, equity, and inclusion, and access, I think that is huge. I just want to say shout out and kudos to you. 

SARON: Thank you. 

CHANTE: And I would love to kind of get your opinion on this. Have you found that, as you kind of traverse the industry, that this is a rarity and what you're doing isn't normal for folks? This is probably some of the issues with attending these conferences.

SARON: Yeah, absolutely. I think that it is becoming more normal. It's kind of like the way code of conducts were. At the beginning, they were, for some reason, controversial which doesn't make sense to me. But for some reason, they were kind of like, "What is this thing?" And then slowly, people started doing it more and more, and some of the more, I like say, inclusion-focused conferences started adopting it and then soon it kind of spread and became kind of expected at this point. I think just about everyone has some type of code of conduct. And I hope child care ends up that way where maybe a few people were doing it and then slowly it kind of grows and catches on. And hopefully, it will get to a point where it's expected, it's totally normal. So, I think we're maybe a third of the way there at this point. For us, especially, we like to say that we are super inclusive and we have a really diverse speaker lineup and diverse attendees, and we have folks from all over different backgrounds attending and we're very proud of that fact. If we can't make it a little bit easier for parents to attend, that I feel like we haven't fully lived up to our promise of inclusion. And so, this is our way of really putting our money where our mouth is and saying like, "We're going to pay for someone to take care of your babies so that we can make it a little bit easier for you all to come."

CHANTE: I like it. Again kudos to you and something that we don't get to see enough of. I'm hoping that people will take this as a call to action.

SARON: Absolutely. And to be fair, I definitely felt pressure as well. I look around at some of these conferences that I really look up to thinking, "Man, if they're doing it, I've got to figure this out." There's a really positive social pressure there, too. So, if we do it, hopefully we'll pressure other people, and we'll all kind of get to this place together.

CHANTE: How would you say, in terms of this year versus last year and you're expected attendees, has this new feature and complimentary service enhanced the early enrollment or commitment to attending the conference?

SARON: We've definitely had some parents listed they need the child care and that they're going to sign up for, which is really nice to see. I think we're still a little bit early in terms of figuring out what the final count is going to be and how many different folks are going to actually need it and take advantage of it. But whether or not people take advantage of it, it's important for us to know that we have it. It's good to know that it's available regardless of whether or not people actually use it. We definitely got some really positive feedback from parents who said, "Thank you for offering this," and just gotten a really positive reaction from it. So yeah, we'll see how people take advantage of it. But even if no one does, I think it was totally worth doing.

CHANTE: Yes. I would love to hear how that ends up and you can fill us in because I think that, again, it creates a call to action. And just the more transparency you can have around that, I think the better. One of the questions I  have just came to my mind as you were talking is, sure, I know that we interviewed you almost two years ago, but for folks who are just chiming in and listening for the first time, and maybe this is the first time that they've heard your name or CodeNewbie's, could you tell us a little bit about CodeNewbie?

SARON: Sure. We are, as you mentioned, the most supportive community of programmers and people learning to code. We are all about creating content for folks who are on their coding journey. We produce Codeland, the conference I have been talking about and then we also produced two podcasts. We produce the Base.cs Podcast which is all about teaching computer science topics in short 20-minute episodes. It's with myself and my amazing co-host, Vaidehi Joshi. It's a really fun show where if you have always wanted to learn computer science and kind of never quite got there, or if you are learning computer science and need kind of some supplementary help, then this show is for you. And then we also have the CodeNewbie Podcast which interviews people on many different parts of their coding journey. We have folks who are just getting started. We have folks who are very experienced. We interviewed like the CTO of Microsoft which is awesome. It's that opportunity to dig into people's stories and hear about how they got into code, how they moved about in their career, and lessons and thoughts that they can share with our community. So yeah, that's what we do.

CHANTE: OK. By definition, what would you consider a newbie? Somebody that's like one year in or two years in?

SARON: It's just like because at first, when we first, first started, newbie meant people who were actively learning to code who hadn't quite gotten that first job, that first internships, anyone who was pre-employed, I guess, is the way we looked at it. But there came this kind of like saying in our community that everyone is a newbie, and we had all these experienced folks come on and say, "Hey, I consider myself a newbie because I've learned new language like all the time, and I've learned new tool all the time. So, even if I'm not new to coding in general, I'm new to something within coding." I think since then, the definition of newbie has expanded to people who are just generally learning and who get to a moment in their journey where they are new to something, which happens very often in the coding world.

CHANTE: A brilliant way to look at it, too.

SARON: Yeah. That wasn't me; that came from the community. But yeah, the community is pretty awesome.

CHANTE: And you've been doing this for a while now. If you had to say more so,  the most salient point you've learned thus far in the journey, what would that be, being once a coding newbie yourself and now, you're moving on to doing some of the cool things in terms of evolving your reference, like you have two podcasts and you have a conference and it seems like your community is growing. So, what have you learned looking back?

SARON: That's a good question. I think I've learned that it is important to be consistent. I think this is true no matter what you're doing, what you're about. But I think that you really have to be super, super consistent with all of your efforts, whether you're doing community work, whether you're doing a personal project, whether you're doing a project at work. Nothing gets built overnight. It really does take a while and it takes a lot of commitment. And for a while, no one will care what you're doing. If you think about starting any type of project, unless you have some huge following, at the beginning stages, no one's going to care and no one's going to look at what you're doing and really see your vision for it. And it takes persistence and it takes kind of you believing in yourself, even when you're not getting that external validation to do something really great. So yeah, just keep on going.

CHANTE: That's good advice. I hope folks are listening.

[Laughter]

ARTY: I was thinking about this. Everyone is a newbie kind of mindset and the gear shift that we kind of make when we go into like newbie mode, and what happens to us in terms of how we anchor in ourselves. Being an expert at being a newbie, I'm thinking about what expertise in newbie-ism might look like? It seems like we might have someone here with us today that would know what an expert newbie would mean. So that seems like a great question - what is being expert at being a newbie? How would you describe that?

SARON: Yeah, that's a great question. I think that it's a couple things. I think that it is one, being comfortable being in a state of frustration. There is this really great study that talks about the difference between folks who finished a computer science degree and folks who started and ended up quitting. And the key differentiator between the two groups is that the people who finish the degree were much more comfortable being in a state of confusion, that they knew that things weren't going to make sense for a while and they were kind of OK with that, which by the way, is something I'm terrible at. I need things to make sense immediately. That really stuck with me. Learning to code, so much of it is getting stuck on a problem, encountering a bug that doesn't make any sense. You're pushing and squeezing and trying and bending, and nothing seems to come together. And so, just being comfortable in that place where nothing is really making sense and nothing's kind of adding up, is really, really important to be an expert newbie.

I think the other thing is realizing that at the end of the day, I want to say almost all problems in coding are solvable. If you think about other industries, like if you think about English, like writing, what is the perfect essay? That's kind of this very subjective thing that you're kind of always in search of, making your essay really, really good and making it even stronger and better. If you think about journalism, you're seeking truth. But like, what is truth? Is that even a thing that is attainable? If you think about life sciences, it's about studying nature all around us which frankly, we may never fully understand. We keep learning, we keep theorizing and trying to figure it out. We may never understand it. But when it comes to code, people made code. We literally made it. We created it. So, it is solvable. When we get stuck on something, it is figureoutable. It's not going to be this mystery that you'll never ever, that there is no chance of reaching. It's not unattainable; it is solvable. And so, I think that keeping that in mind whenever we get frustrated, thinking of it like, "Another human being made this. If another human being made this, then all humans have the ability or have the potential of figuring it out." And so, this state is a temporary state and your goal is doable. I think that's super, super important to keep in mind.

And I'd say the last thing is that just generally, patience with yourself, making sure to keep your frustrations external, making sure that we don't take in that frustration and go, "Oh, this sucks. Therefore, I suck." I think it's really easy to get to that conclusion where you internalize your failures. And so, making sure you don't do that and making sure you're able to kind of distance who you are from your work and the things you produce is really important.

ARTY: All problems in coding are solvable. I don't think I've ever heard anyone articulate that in those words. That's one of those statements that you end up shifting into a place of taking by faith of like, I have faith in my abilities that if I just keep at it, as a human being, that humans made code. And so these problems are solvable. And if I'm OK, if I just be OK and just keep at it, I can have faith in my own abilities that there will be light somewhere at the end of this tunnel.

SARON: Yeah, exactly. You nailed it. There is light. It may be very faint, it may be hard to see, but it is there and you will get through that tunnel, for sure.

ARTY: Beautiful.

REIN: It's time, once again, for me to quote Virginia Satir. 

SARON: [Laughs]

REIN: She said, "You know what makes it possible for me to trust the unknown? It's because I've got eyes, ears, skin, I can talk, I can move, I can feel, and I can think. And that's not going to change when I go into a new context; I've got that. And then I give myself permission to say all my real yeses and nos because I've got all those other possibilities and then I can move anywhere. Why not?"

SARON: I like that.

REIN: So, we bring with us the tools we are already equipped with, the tools we need to move into new confusing situations and be successful.

SARON: Exactly. Yeah, love that.

REIN: So you've been doing a lot of teaching, or at least involved in the community that does a lot of teaching. What have you learned about teaching?

SARON: I've learned that teaching is really the storytelling in disguise. It is all about starting from a place where you can both agree. Starting ideally at the beginning of something, kind of maybe teasing people in giving them an idea of what they're going to end up, where they're going to end up, where we're going, and then taking them on that journey step by step and kind of going through every single step, making sure to go through it to build it up. You get to some point of a climax and then there's the -- I forgot how it works in storytelling -- there's like the falling climax or something, and then you kind of get to the end of things. And just going through that step - the beginning, middle, and end. That's really what teaching is all about. And making sure there's a main character, making sure there's a problem to solve, there is an adventure to be had. If we frame teaching opportunities as storytelling opportunities, I think we can all be better teachers.

REIN: So there is a theory of learning called Conversation Theory which is the idea that learning and teaching happens as a conversation between two -- I would say people, but that's simplifying it. It's between two cognitive entities. It's between two thinking things, and that can be within yourself. But when it's between two people, you have to have a conversation and come to a point of agreement. You have to build a bridge with that person. So, it's a form of constructivism. Teaching isn't about taking some piece of knowledge out of my head and putting into yours; it's about building that knowledge from where the learner is and building them up.

SARON: Yeah, I really like that. As a conversation, yeah, because you're kind of going back and forth. You have to be able to follow the conversation. You don't just like start at the end and then go back to the middle, you just do that. You don't bounce around the conversation. You have to build it together. Yeah, I love that.

REIN: Not only that, because all binaries have to be constructed. The teacher-learner binary has to be deconstructed. Teachers have to learn. Teachers have to learn about the people they are teaching. They have to learn how their mind works, what they think about things, what models they're using to construct the world. They have to learn all these things so they can be effective teachers.

SARON: Yes, absolutely.

CHANTE: The thing that usually comes my mind, too, just my own experiences, is that I think, when I was younger and more naive, I thought that the teacher knew all. And I realize now as I've grown to be more wise and had more life experience, that the teacher -- but the best teachers are the ones who believe they know nothing and that they are constantly asking questions. I've seen that you all are really great about activating conversation online. One of the things that I paid attention to and noticed right away is that you're constantly activating that within, not only yourself and those who are helping you, I guess, manage your social media. Could you tell us a little bit more about maybe the ethos or the belief that you have at CodeNewbie and beyond when it comes to being a learner and a teacher formally or informally?

SARON: There's a couple of things. One is that we really look to the community to teach and to share and kind of pitch in. So when someone tweets at us and says, "Hey, I'm stuck on a problem. Can you help me?" We don't directly answer those tweets. We encourage them to tweet it at us and then we'll re-tweet it on their behalf and then we'll get the community involved. So, that's been really huge and really big, just the opportunity to say, "Hey, we're going to give the community a chance to help out. We're going to give the community a chance to contribute and to really move this conversation along and to help solve this problem." I think that's part of the biggest thing. And then I think the other thing is to make sure that you're helping the person where they are. I think that's probably one of the biggest complaints about Stack Overflow is there's a lot of condescension sometimes. There's a lot of dismissal of people's ideas, of people's questions and kind of a lot of judgment. And so, I think with the way we think about teaching and approaching that conversation is to say, "I'm going to meet you where you are and I'm going to get on your level and see if I can kind of move you up and move you along towards a solution." So, that idea of making sure to be, not just patient, but just to understand the frustrations of that person, to understand that that person may not be as knowledgeable as you are or may not know as much or just be as well-versed, and to be patient and be kind to them.

CHANTE: I think in an era where we really are aware that we have the fourth industrial revolution coming fast and furious, and the digitalization and virtualization of all, it's really exciting when you have this community, in that we are deconstructing what we believe as or what we have believed historically to be education and learning. And just to see you take it to a new level and deliver online, I think, it just makes me think, "What is the future of learning?" And one of the things I talk about a lot is what's the future of work? So, just curious to know what you think that relationship is - the future of learning and therefore the future of work?

SARON: There are tons of different ways to learn, which is amazing. There's so many more ways now than there were even five years ago. There's so many blog posts and people doing live streaming and people doing videos and people doing podcasts. There's so many different ways to learn. I'm really curious and really excited to see where VR goes. The Oculus quest came out. I think, at the time of this recording, a couple weeks ago, maybe a week or two ago, which is like a headset, a VR headset. It costs $400 which is very cheap for a VR headset, and it is portable, it doesn't need a computer or anything. And I'm really excited to see how VR becomes another type of content you have to learn. If you learn via video, if you learn via sound or audio, if you learn via written text, how do you learn with VR? I think it's really amazing. I think that over time, it's only going to get cheaper and more accessible. It's already gotten a lot cheaper just in the last couple of years and so, I'm really excited interested to see where that takes us and how that opens up even new possibilities and even more possibilities in learning.

And I think that also relates to work. I think that work is going to be increasingly remote. I think we're already on our way, well on our way to being that and the expectation being that. It's not just remote friendly but remote first, remote central. And I think that VR is also going to play a role in that in the years coming. I think that it's going to be a really interesting tool to see. Can I recreate an office environment with glasses? Can I create an environment where I feel comfortable working and I can build some of those social relationships by going to this virtual world and doing work there? So, I think we're pretty far away from that one. I think it's going to take a while to have a headset you can wear for like eight hours straight. But I think we're going to get there eventually. So, I'm really excited to see where VR takes us.

CHANTE: Ditto. All that you just said, I share the same sentiments. So, I'm excited too and can't wait. I think, again, going back to the accessibility thing, I think VR is a great vehicle to help us get there quicker for all. Curious if that comes up in the community though, do you see this kind of thread popping up for you all? Or is it something you'll be exploring at your conference?

SARON: I don't think so. I think that it's still a little too early and it's still frankly a little too expensive, a little too financially inaccessible. And VR, right now, is mostly seen as like a gaming to a more than an educational tool. I think it's going to take a while to be seen as an agnostic platform instead of being like another tool for gaming. So, I think we're a little far away from that. But hopefully one day, maybe we'll get some CodeNewbie VR content.

CHANTE: We'll be excitingly waiting for that, so keep us posted, OK? 

SARON: Will do. 

CHANTE: Insider first knowledge on the [crosstalk].

SARON: Deal. 

ARTY: There's a few things you said earlier that struck me. I was taking notes in chat because I wanted to ask you about this. You mentioned this context of Stack Overflow, having this judgy sort of cultural context and contrasting that with this community-oriented mentorship of re-tweeting people that need help. I think about what you're talking about with meeting people where they are, being able to see there. And it seems like raising your hand has always been one of these hard things whether it's in school and raising your hand and asking a question, or whether you're learning and you're stuck in the software world on some problem, being able to raise your hand and ask for help. And I was wondering if you could comment on the contrast between those two things and some of the things you see that hold people back from raising their hand and what kind of things that we can do that we can say to people that we can do to encourage that type of behavior.

SARON: I think that what holds people back from raising their hand is just not feeling safe. I think that to be vulnerable, you have to feel safe. You have to feel like there is space for you to be vulnerable and that you're not going to be judged, you're not going to be dismissed, you're not going to be punished in some way, usually some emotional way, for being vulnerable. So I think that the biggest thing is just not feeling like you're in a safe space where it is OK to be and you are free to be vulnerable and you're free to raise your hand. So I think that for us to create that environment, I think we have to demonstrate vulnerability. I think that we have to be really good at asking questions and to be really good at offering our own stories and sharing our own struggles because the moment I say, "You know what? I really suck at this and I'm having a hard time," that immediately gives you permission to go, "Oh, my God! I suck at this too. I'm also having a really hard time." So, I think that going first, saying like," I'm going to show my vulnerability. I'm going to raise my hand and I'm going to tell you and share with you what I'm struggling with, what I'm self-conscious about," and then using that as a way to help foster this community. And the moment you start doing that, the moment other people will be much more likely to raise their hand as well.

ARTY: I'm thinking about an experience I had in college where I remember some folks in the class that came up to me and said, "Thank you so much for all the questions you ask in class," because they're like all these things in my mind that I wanted to do but I didn't have the courage to raise my hand and ask the question. And that's all I do, is just sit there and I'm like, "I don't get it."

SARON: Yup, exactly. You're the star. You're amazing, and you're the one that makes it so much easier for everyone else. Even if they don't speak up, they don't raise their hand, they feel like they still have a voice and they saw the presence in the room. So yeah, you're doing the good work.

ARTY: You know, it's kind of awesome every time someone says, "You're the star." Because I just changed my name to Arty Starr.

SARON: Oh, there you go! [Laughs] 

ARTY: It fits me.

SARON: [Laughs]

REIN: I think a lot about psychological safety and how to build it. Psychological Safety is defined as the ability to take interpersonal risks. So, it's literally the ability to do something that makes you vulnerable in a social situation. And what that enables is basically everything we're trying to do in terms of building collaborative, friendly, kind communities. That's the bedrock for everything else.

SARON: Yeah, absolutely.

REIN: What do you do to try to make people feel safe to take these interpersonal risks?

SARON: I think it goes back to showing our own vulnerability. So, it's me saying I'm struggling with this and I am having a hard time with this and kind of putting myself out there which is always risky too when you put yourself out there. It puts you in a situation where you might be punished or you might be judged, and that might be something that comes with some negative outcomes. But I think it's about putting your foot forward first and then seeing who is willing to join you.

REIN: So, it's about modeling those behaviors.

SARON: Yep, exactly.

REIN: And letting people see, "Oh, that wasn't so bad at all. That got a good response."

SARON: Yup.

REIN: Behavioral conditioning is very problematic. But I think it is useful to reinforce good behaviors with appreciation. I think when we see people saying, "I don't know." We should say, "Oh, that's cool. Let's go find out."

SARON: Yeah, exactly. Yes. You nailed it. It is also a great way to kind of deal with your own 'not knowing of things' too. Instead of saying, "Oh, I don't know." It's, "I don't know but I'm excited to learn with you." Or, "That thing didn't work? Wow! We're going to go on an adventure." So, take an opportunity to take those moments of insecurity, those vulnerabilities and kind of turning it on its head and turning it into this new thing that you're going to do together is a really great and helpful technique.

REIN: Benjamin Zander is the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. He also does a lot of views like interpretation classes where he sits down with extremely good musicians and helps them be better. And he did one of these at like a TED Talk, I think, and it was really cool. One of the things he did is the musician made a mistake. And then at the end of the performance, he said, "I noticed that you messed up that part there and what you did, you kind of went 'ugh'. You kind of closed off and went 'ugh'. I don't like it. What if instead of that, every time you made the mistake, you went 'how fascinating' and you throw your arms up in the air." And I think about that a lot.

SARON: Yeah. That's how I trick myself into being excited about bugs is by [inaudible] something and going, "Wow! That totally didn't work the way I wanted to. I wonder why." And try to trick myself into not being angry and frustrated at things. So yeah, I use that even when I'm just working by myself. Really helpful to try and turn those negative moments into moments of learning. Unintentional learning has been really helpful.

REIN: You mentioned being comfortable in uncertain or confusing situations and it turns out that that is a skill that will be important for your whole career. There are whole industries like the resilient engineering community, one of their main focuses is on what the safety community calls being poised to adapt which is building skills and people to prepare them to deal with unknown or confusing situations. So, that is how you get resilience is you help people become more able to deal with those situations and do a better job of responding to those challenges. So, these things that you're teaching these people, that the community is teaching these people about this, aren't just tools for beginners. 

SARON: Yep, it's tools for everyone. I think everyone can learn from being a little bit more open, being a little bit more patient, and being a little bit more valuable.

CHANTE: And I'll take that and just say that that's where I like to focus on because I think that's what makes humans different than the software or the technology that you're building. It kind of reminds us to come backwards to this, to the human side of what we're even talking about, Greater Than Code. Would you say that that's something that you are trying to harness and really cultivate at CodeNewbie? Was that intentional or unintentional?

SARON: I think it's very intentional. I think that it is always our goal to create the safe space and to create this environment where it is OK to ask questions. The more we model that behavior, the more we enable other people and empower other people to do the same thing. So yeah, that was very much intentional. I wanted to make sure that this was the space for everyone to join in and feel like they could really be themselves. So yeah, that was on purpose.

CHANTE: Did you build this space, and maybe you've answered this question in the past, so forgive me if this is a repeat. But for me and for others who maybe, like I said, who are new to this conversation, did you build CodeNewbie with that intention of saying, "Listen, there wasn't a space for me and there wasn't a community like the one I'm building, so I'm building it."

SARON: Yeah, that's exactly what it was. It was me saying I had my own community of people who were learning to code and I got that through a bootcamp. So, I went to the Flatiron School and one of the most valuable things I got from it was this community of people who are learning to code and who understood the ups and downs, the highs and lows of that journey. And so in going through that process, I said to myself, "It'll be really great if you could get this type of community without paying tens of thousands of dollars to get it," because bootcamp is pretty expensive. And so, that's kind of where that came from. It came from this feeling that everyone should have a supportive community, everyone should have a place where they can go where they feel safe and they feel wanted and welcome and being able to design for that thing that I felt like was missing.

CHANTE: When you can basically take an issue and a problem that's been front and center in your own life and solve it for yourself and others, it's so beautiful. Do you see that there has been a lot of folks who have been inspired by your work and taking a page out of your book and try to replicate it or to add on, augment it in any way?

SARON: I don't know if I was the inspiration for it but I know that over the past couple of years, there have been a lot of other communities that have popped up who are doing similar works that are trying to provide safe spaces for people to learn and they're all a little bit different. Dev.to comes to mind. They're more of a blogging platform but there's still this idea of creating this really safe, really inclusive space for folks. FreeCodeCamp is another one that comes to mind. They're more about actively teaching you how to code but still with this huge emphasis of community and kindness. And then there are the organizations that came before me, like Women Who Code, Girl Develop It. There are lots of organizations that have been very kind and very welcoming and inclusive that have been in the same spirit of what we're trying to do.

CHANTE: Do you have formal or informal relationships with those organizations and try to do your best to kind of pool resources and help out everyone?

SARON: Yeah, I think that the way that's worked is mostly through just asking for advice. So, me reaching out and saying, "Hey, we're doing this thing. Can you help out?" Or, "Hey, I'm struggling with this thing. Can you give me some advice?" And vice versa, them reaching out occasionally and saying, "Hey, we'd love to collaborate," or, "We'd love to work on this problem together." So, I think it kind of goes both ways. But I think it's more about the leaders of these groups coming together and making sure that we all support each other, given that we're doing a lot of the same work.

CHANTE: Right. There's enough problems to go around. So, the more we can get inspiration and support from one another, the better. One of the things that I've heard quite often from folks and have pondered a lot is there's so many resources out here for people nowadays especially that we digitize everything. And it can be like almost drinking from a fire hose. Do you have any advice for code newbies out there that are listening? Where can they go to kind of get a very grounded understanding of what's kind of going on in the community, and then maybe like, "All right. Here's where I'm going to go. If I pick one or two places to go, this would be a really good one." And you can always plug yourself. But just curious, what kind of advice would you give for code newbies out there looking?

SARON: Actually, I think that there are so many places where you can learn to code. Obviously, go to CodeNewbie and I'm sure we'll be able to help you out. If you go to Dev.to, they have tons of great resources on there. If you just go to medium.com, there's so many great blog posts and articles where they round up a lot of resources. So, I don't think that the finding resources is really the hard part. I think the hard part is sticking with resources. There's so many resources available that it's easy to hop around. We hear this all the time in our community of folks who say, "I started with this thing and I did it for like a week or two, then I started this new thing and that I did that for like a couple of weeks. And then, oh man, this thing came out that I really wanted. And there's this problem of just like shiny objects." I think the harder part is sticking with something. Even when it starts to get a little boring, maybe it starts to get a little tough, just going through it and finishing it anyway, I think that's the harder thing. That's what I encourage you folks to do is, it almost doesn't matter what the resource is, just pick one, stick with it, see it all the way through and you'll make way more progress than if you jump around.

ARTY: I think that's a great example of what intentional learning is.

SARON: Yeah.

REIN: My experience with building these sort of high psychological safety communities is that they need trust. They're based on trust. And when you have this requirement that people trust each other, this really has become pretty vulnerable to bad actors because people who break that trust can really destroy the foundations of that community. And so, my question for you is, first of all, do you agree with that characterization? And second of all, what do you do in your communities to deal with bad actors?

SARON: I totally agree with that. I think that for our community, people are really good at kind of self-moderating and moderating the community themselves. Frankly, we've been really lucky that we haven't really had many bad actor situations, that they could have maybe two that I can really think of. And when they happened, it is relatively minor incidents. But when they happened, the community kind of stood up for itself and they said, "Hey, we don't allow that here. We don't agree with the way that you think and this is not acceptable, and this is harassment," or whatever it was. And so frankly, I haven't really had to do very much. It's basically them being able to know who we are and who we aren't, and being able to kind of rise up and challenge the person who was behaving in an inappropriate manner. So yeah, we haven't really had to do very much. But we anticipate that it's not always going to be that easy, and so, we'll kind of deal with it when it gets there. But I think that it's just tough, it's always tough to kind of figure out what is the right way of solving a situation beyond just like taking someone out. What is the goal and how do you approach that is really tough. But fortunately, we haven't really had to deal with that yet.

REIN: Why do you think that the community felt so empowered to take that on themselves?

SARON: I think it comes out from modeling that behavior. I think that when you model that behavior, you not only teach people how to behave but you also attract people who really want to behave that way. And so, between those two things, you end up with a community that is very much in line with what you hope it is, that's very much in line with the mission of inclusion, and be really kind to each other. And so yeah, you end up with a really strong community of people who have the same values of things. So, that's how you do that.

REIN: The interesting thing for me is that the obvious bad actors, the harassers, are relatively easy to deal with. You go, "Oh, that's bad behavior. We want that to stop." But there are things that are sort of borderline that I think are much harder to deal with.

ARTY: I feel like you are actually doing a whole lot. You said the key here is everyone knowing who we are and who we aren't, and having a community full of people where you've essentially modeled what the gravity, the home tree of this community is. You've created clarity in terms of who we are and who we aren't. And then taking your ball of gravity and expanded that to a group of people. And the game mechanics of, I think, about just contrasting this with Stack Overflow being seen in a peer mentorship community as being one of the people who isn't too afraid to raise their hand and being one of the people that jumps in and helps. So, you create visibility and honor and a sense of arrow of which way is up in terms of what is valued. And you reward those things through kind of the mechanics and the systems that are set up by creating a clear dynamic, a clear knowing who we are and who we aren't as a community versus if you look at the game on Stack Overflow, you're working in sort of a competitive context almost to be seen as the smart one. And that game is very different when you're essentially helping someone, but at the same time, you're in this mindset of competitiveness of 'I want to be seen as the smart one'. This is about seeing if I can come up with a cool smart reply than as more and more negative competitive dynamics and energy kind of comes out and that gets more and more normalized, that tone sort of builds up in the conversation. But it's an artifact of the platform of the game of the gravity that is built around it versus a fundamentally different kind of gravity. You basically instantiated a new kind of gravity and this is the home tree. "I'm going to plant the flag in the ground. This is where we stand. These are the behaviors of who we are and who we want to be. And I want to make that super clear to everyone and attract all the people that want to believe the set of values and live in this world." And you instantiate that by being a star. So, that's cool.

SARON: [Chuckles] Yeah.

REIN: I remember when Eugenia Chang was on. She talked about Congressive and Ingressive Cultural Patterns. Ingressive is a sort of competitive, winner-takes-all, hierarchical, zero-sum, 'if I win, you have to lose' sort of an approach. And congressive is growth, and learning, and 'we all win together' sort of approach. And it seems to me like what you're trying to do is build a congressive community.

SARON: Yeah, absolutely. I think that you win in our community by helping someone else and by contributing to someone else's learning and someone else's success. So that's what you're competing for if you're competing for anything. So when you win, basically everyone else wins. So yes, I completely agree with that.

REIN: I think that's a great definition of congressive - my success is determined by my contributions to others.

SARON: Yep, exactly. My successes is exactly correlated and tied to and really goes back to your success. So, we have to be successful together in order for anyone to win.

CHANTE: Saron, do you think that that would be indicative or reflective of being the fact that you are a female and at the helm of starting this community, because I feel like that's more so a trait that I see in women as we build this community.

SARON: I think that for me, it is maybe tied to that. I think more broadly, it's tied to just always feeling like the outsider. I'm a woman, I'm a person of color, I'm an immigrant, I'm Ethiopian. And so, I think that there's a huge reality of intersectionality there that makes me almost always feel like I don't belong. Like there are rarely rooms that I walk in and I go like, "Yes, I'm meant to be here." I always kind of feel like I stick out and not in a good way. And so, I'm particularly sensitive to creating positive environments. I'm particularly sensitive, too. And I think that's where my super power comes in of like reading people and seeing like are they comfortable, if they want to speak up, do they want to speak up and they're just not saying. Kind of reading people, I think that comes in as well. It's just me feeling like I don't really have a home base, I don't really have a community, and making sure that no one else feels that way. So, I think that I am a little bit more well-equipped, I guess, naturally to look out for those things and try to create those environments. 

REIN: That's really interesting because when she originally came up with those terms, it was because she wanted to shed the association between those modes of being and gender roles. She didn't want caring for other people to be just a thing that women do.

CHANTE: Right. One of the things I'm really interested in is just how our intersectionality really shapes our life experiences and the things that we build. In this case, it's the community and beyond. You're doing so much more. But I think that calling that out is, first of all, it's beautiful. And secondly, it gives space for others to do the same thing. Do you feel like that's something that you all talk about online and offline, a lot about is in your intersectionality and your identities?

SARON: I don't really know. I think that we generally talk about our backgrounds and we're very open and honest about talking about where we come from and why learning to -- and just our coding journey and how it relates to it. I don't know if we explicitly talk about like, "Yeah, I'm a person of color." But we do talk about, "Hey, I'm a mom and being a mother affects my journey in these three ways," or, "Hey, I'm the only person in my company who is black. And so, that's really frustrating for these reasons." I mean, I think it's always tied to something that we're struggling with or dealing with or maybe something that we're celebrating when it comes to our coding journey. But I don't know if we explicitly talk about it independently. I think it's always in that context of coding.

CHANTE: If we think of coding, like if we liken it to something like art, is it hard to parse out and say like, "Your art is a reflection of you. And so, your code is likely a reflection of you." I think the way which we would maybe code something in terms of binary code would be like the accumulation of what we learned and how we interpret it, like the context. So, just curious if you have any thoughts about, again, going back to the future of work in intersectionality and the way in which we're going to build communities digitally, and offline and online.

SARON: I don't know if I agree with code being a reflection of you. I think it's a reflection of -- I don't think it's a reflection at all. I think it's just literally what you produce. I think I'll liken it more to following a recipe or cooking a dish. Like if I make a bowl of pasta, I don't think the pasta reflects me. I think the pasta is just something that I've created. I think a distinction is really important because if we look at the code as a reflection of who we are, I think that it's very easy to get into that internalization of failure. If I code something that sucks, then I guess I suck too. If I code something that isn't beautiful, then I'm not beautiful. I think it's really easy to look at our work and identify it so closely to who we are that we end up beating ourselves up over things, or maybe even worse, assuming that we can never get better. If we keep trying and it's not quite working out, then maybe it's because we just physically cannot do it. We're not wired that way. We're not made to do it. So, I think that it's a little tricky and tough to think of it that way. So, I'd argue that code is independent of who we are and I think that it's just an output. It's something that we produce. And if we try harder, we can produce better and cooler things.

CHANTE: That's interesting. And I like your answer. It's giving me more to ponder. So, I appreciate that. 

REIN: I'm going to have to crunch on that one for a while because at the same time that you don't want to be ego-invested in the code you produce, if your code is doing something wrong, that's not because you're a bad person. It's also important to have an internal locus of control and say, "I have the ability to make these changes to do the right thing. I have a lot of control over my own output and how I produce code." I guess like one of the struggles of my whole career is how to balance those two things, how to feel like I have the control I need to do the work while not being so ego-invested that if there a bug that I ship to production, that I feel bad about it for a week.

SARON: I think that control actually supports the position that code is just output. Because if I work harder, I will produce better things. If I follow the recipe and really have an understanding of the ingredients, my dish will be better. There's like a very direct correlation between how much effort I put in and what I get on the other side of it. So, I think that the more we can emotionally distance ourselves from our code, I think the more control we can actually exert on it because I can say, "I'm going to increase my input and I'm going to get a better output."

CHANTE: It strikes a chord with me in the sense that because I think I have an aversion to the word like output and production and optimization only because we are human. I mean, there's machines for that. Literally, we can build AI and bots. And the beauty of machine learning these days is that it can help us be better. We, as humans, don't necessarily need to push ourselves to that brink because that's the point of having augmentation and technology to do that for us. So, that's why I'm just curious if we think of it in that way and we think about code and you say it's output, is code also though a language that we, as a community, those who are coding in that spoken language or that type language, is that something that will remain forever or does it change with the times, like with the lexicon?

SARON: That's a really good question. I love that question because I think that it can be a form of expression, as well. But I don't think those two things are independent. So, I think if you ask a chef how they think about food, that's probably different than if you ask like an average person who maybe frankly doesn't really care about food. They both got to eat and they both got to figure out how to feed themselves. But if you ask the chef, it probably is about expression, it probably is about the creativity in them. I love MasterChef so much. I'm also very hungry which is why I keep talking about food [chuckles]. But they're always talking about like, "Oh, you put yourself on the plate." And they tell these stories of their families and what it was like to grow up in their mom's kitchen. They tell these beautiful stories and they're able to lay it out through a dish. I think there is definitely room for that human expression for things to be artistic, but there's also room for it to just be a sandwich. And there's also room for it to just be like just bread, it's got some meat in it, and I'm hungry, and I got to eat it. And that's totally OK, too. So, like most things, I think code is just a tool. And if you want to use it as a tool for expression, you can totally do that power to you. And if you just want to use it as a tool to get something done, power to you, as well.

CHANTE: That's a powerful statement. Love that. Thank you.

REIN: That is very similar to the way I've been thinking about it which is that the code is just an artifact of this bigger process, and that process is the thing that's creative. And the code is just a thing that happens. It's really a side effect of that process.

SARON: Yeah, I agree with that.

REIN: And actually, that's what makes it hard to read old code and understand it because the code is really just a fraction of everything, of all of the information that went into producing the code. The code only shows you a small fraction of what the people were thinking, what their context was, what they knew at the time, what their goals were, all of that stuff. The code is contingent on all of that. So, it's in this encoded message about what was happening when it was created.

SARON: I love that. I've never thought of code that way before as kind of this or why it's frustrating to go back to old code because you're right, I'm trying to figure out not just what is the code saying but what was I saying. What was I thinking at that moment? What was I dealing with? What were the problems I was solving? What state of mind was I in? And it's hard to figure a lot of that context out just by looking at the code. And frankly, as you get better with coding, I think that you're better at leaving those clues and the documentation behind. But yeah, it's a piece of a larger puzzle that you're trying to figure out.

REIN: Yeah. It's like looking at pottery shards and then going, "OK, was this an agricultural society? What did they eat?"

SARON: Yeah, absolutely.

ARTY: I wanted to talk a little bit more about lexicon and when you're having these conversations about helping someone out with a problem. What are some of the words you use to communicate in your community that have become kind of shared language because a lot of this stuff is in wordless space. What is some of the lexicon you see sort of developing around these things?

SARON: I think that one of the things that comes up a lot is that we use 'we'. No matter what the situation is, it's always a 'we'. It's never a 'you', it's never 'me', it's a 'we'. And so, I think that it is really when the practices that have come up, I think maybe, I don't know if it's intentional. I think on my end, it's intentional. I don't know if the community it's intentional. But we'll say like, "Let's figure this out together. What should we do?" Or, "Here's something that we think." It's kind of making sure that there's no separation, there's no divide between you and me, that we're in this together, we're on the same team. I think it's something that's really super important. Another thing that's really important is just this idea that we are moving through this journey together. And so, we need to show kindness and we're always talking about kindness. So we use the word love a lot, we use the word support a lot. We ask a lot of questions. There's a lot of prefacing, and I think that specifically, women get reprimanded a lot for being too apologetic and being too -- we preface things too much. I think that's absolute bull crap. I think everyone should be more apologetic. I think everyone should preface things more. I think it is perfectly fine for me to go, "Hey, I don't want you to take it this way, but here's what I was thinking." Or like, "Hey, I might be new at this, but here are my thoughts." I think it is perfectly reasonable. I think that it is an excellent way to communicate. And I think that our community definitely takes advantage of that. I think that we're very good at saying, "I was thinking about this a different way. Let me know how you feel, but here's how I feel." And all that's doing is just saying, "Hey, I have an opinion, but my opinion might be different from yours, and I'm respecting that difference. I'm respecting the potential difference that we may have in that idea." And I think that is absolutely a good thing and I think that our community practices that a lot.

REIN: There is a linguistic concept called Mitigated Speech which is, I think, what you're describing where you might say, "We're going to do X," as a command. But then one level of mitigation might be, "We should try to do X."
 
SARON: Yes.

REIN: And then the next level of mitigation is, "Why don't we try to do X?" And then the next level of mitigation is, "Do you think X would be useful in this situation?"  And then the next level of mitigation is, "Out of these alternatives, which one do you like the most? And what do you think about X?" And then the next one is, "I wonder if there is a problem that we should try to solve here," and so on. And so, the goal for me is there is a study about mitigated language and its impact on incident response. So like, planes that crashed because the co-pilot was culturally unable to give the pilot the information they needed without mitigating the speed. So rather than saying, "We're going to crash into that mountain," they would say, "Hey, it's good to look at our radar, isn't it?" 

SARON: [Laughs]

REIN: And so, for me, it's about finding a balance. Mitigation is useful because it acknowledges that I'm not the only one that matters in the conversation. 

SARON: Yes.

REIN: And so, for me, it's about finding the level of mitigation where I'm not subjecting myself and I'm not dominating the other person where we can be equal.

SARON: Yeah, I love that. I've never heard of that before but let me use that from now on. Mitigated language, is that what you call that? 

REIN: Mitigated Speech, mitigated language. 

SARON: I love that so much. I think that is a huge, I think that's so important especially when you're communicating via Twitter, via text. It is so hard to figure out what the intent of someone's words are and how they're feeling. And frankly, I was talking to a friend of mine, Adrienne Lowe, who's an amazing coder, amazing engineering manager, and she was telling me about how when you work with someone, especially when you work with someone you don't know very well, you have to build up your trust bank and you start with an empty vault. You start with just no trust at all. I don't know you; you don't know me. And frankly, there's a huge chance that if you say something, even slightly the wrong way, I'm going to take it the wrong way. I'm going to take it all the way to the worst way that I can take it. And that trust that I build with you happens over time where eventually we have a shorthand, eventually we have an understanding where if you say this, I know you really meant to say this other thing. But when you're talking to strangers online, you don't have any type of trust. You have no trust bank. Your trust bank is at zero. So at that point, mitigated language, I think, comes really, really handy because it helps to solve for the fact that we don't know each other and we don't trust each other yet. And hopefully, might end up building that trust among people online as well.

REIN: The other interesting thing is that it's a tool for navigating power dynamics. You'll often find that people on the bottom end of a power dynamics, they mitigate their speech more, is one factor. But they also, when the person who has more power says something, they'll bump it up the mitigation ladder. If your boss who signs your paycheck says, "Hey, I think you should do X." That is a command. Right?

SARON: Yeah. 

REIN: And so, one thing I think about when I am a senior engineer and I'm mentoring and pairing with a junior engineer, I think about how much I need to mitigate my speech so that it actually hits at the right level.

SARON: Yep, absolutely. 

REIN: For the way that they're perceiving the power dynamic.

CHANTE: I think that's a really important point to kind of talk about a little bit because I think as I'm thinking about diversity and inclusion, this is often the point I'm trying to make with folks. So, we need to be designing universally and thinking about how we can basically centralize or decentralize the power, basically. How we can make sure that everyone has a voice and space to speak their voice when they're ready. I'm just curious because I am not a technologist. I am not a coder or a developer of any sorts. I'm just here sort of to question and to ask these questions in a way that would provoke more of us to get involved in the conversation because this technology is going to impact all of us. Once you are in a position of power, like you Saron, you have this responsibility. Do you feel like this is on your shoulders to get this right and that this is going to go down in history? And that if you walk away from this, somebody could come in and [inaudible] the community that you built, and maybe looking at the coding language, the lexicon that has come from this community. Does that ever cross your mind?

SARON: No, not really. I think that what we do is important. But I also think that I can't look at this and go like, "I did this." I think I look at this and go, "I created a room where cool things can happen and magical things happen." 

I have a talk called The Magical Living Room where I talk about how I learned a lot of my community building skills from my mom. We're a community of Ethiopian immigrants and we don't always feel like we belong. We don't always feel like we have a place specifically in the US and we don't have a place that really understands us and that wants us, frankly, and that keeps us safe. And she did an amazing job growing up of always creating the safe haven in her living room. And she was always making sure that people felt taken care of, people felt really at home. And so, I kind of look at what I do as doing that but online. I look at it as like I'm trying to create a magical living room for people to come and like hang out and do what they do best. And so, I can't really take credit for the actions that happen. I take credit for making sure the sofa's clean and tidying up the space and making sure there's good food served. But the real magic comes from the community members who are there, who want to talk, want to connect and who really take that responsibility seriously.

CHANTE: And that goes back to that question I was asking. Is what we're building an extension of who we are? Because culturally, that influenced you and how you set up the space. 

SARON: Absolutely. 

CHANTE: So, that's like the unspoken language that's getting encoded here.

SARON: Yep, absolutely.

ARTY: I think this also goes back to your superpower. You talked about being an outsider and having this experience of feeling like an outsider your whole life, and the pain and the suffering that comes with that experience. And then when you are in a position of privilege in your life to be able to build a magical living room and your superpower of being able to see this need, see all these people that needed that kind of safety space because you experienced the pain of that yourself, you went, "I'm going to create a magical living room and instantiate it into the world." And you saw the needs. So much power in that. You saw the needs and you created a gravity. You created a pattern. You created a template of this room. And right now, your job is to kick back and feed and nurture this space that you've created, this room that you've created. And so, your role kind of shifts gears, trying to make sure the sofa's clean. You're continually creating a space, and nurturing and protecting and guarding and standing up for the meaning of the space by seeing the need and helping everyone else to see that need, too. I think you're giving other people your eyes of that particular need through your work.

SARON: Thank you. I appreciate that. I think that the living room has to stay clean. You could just clean it once and then walk away and then assume that everything's going to be fine. You have to keep serving people food. You got to keep making sure that all the surfaces are wiped off. There definitely is a lot of maintenance that needs to happen, a lot of nurturing that needs to happen. Yeah, that's where I spent a bulk of my time.

ARTY: At this point in the show, we usually go into reflections. Each one of us will wrap up with any final thoughts, topics that stood out to us. Things that we saw, connections that we made, and things we're going to take away from this.

CHANTE: One of the things that stood out to me now. Well, there's not one, there's two. It's everyone is a newbie. I love that. That you all have something to learn all the time. And then going back to this kind of concept of making sure that you have this living room that's welcoming, inviting, and that you're constantly thinking about how you're going to keep it as such once you make it a welcoming place. And I would say that you're on your way to building a house or a neighborhood, not just a living room. So, I think that's pretty neat. And I like it.

REIN: One of the things that really struck a chord with me is how much ego investment in our work is appropriate. I've been struggling with this for my whole career and I've come up with different answers at different times. I used to think it was zero. I used to think that any ego investment meant that we would be irrational when our work was criticized and whatnot. And I'm starting to think that it's more than zero and that the real challenge is being involved in our work in a way that is healthy. And when someone criticizes your work, realizing that it is in some sense a criticism of yourself, but that's OK, that people can criticize you and you don't have to feel bad. And so, I like being proud of the things that I do. Even though the code that I write is a small part of everything that I do for my job, I still want to be proud of the code that I write. I still also want to take in criticism and become better, but I want to do that in a way that's healthy for me, in a way where I can look at the criticism and take in the parts of it that I understand and agree with, and shed reject, just let the parts that I don't like pass me by. And that's really the challenge for me is to not -- I think that being completely not invested in your work is a way to avoid that harder problem. But if that harder problem is worthwhile, that harder challenge is worthwhile to take on.

ARTY: I've been thinking about just these 	connections from the last show we had with Halleemah Nash. She talked a lot about intentionality. And in this call, we talked about intentional learning and all the things that means. What we ended up coming to was creating this magical living room space, creating a home tree of gravity for what that means, modeling that behavior, attracting people that want to believe in and live and embody the set of values. And then you kind of grow that little ball of gravity, grow that magical living room, that space, and then you kick back, let the community, let the gravity that you've created kind of take on a life of its own. You kick back and you keep the sofas clean. You keep doing the everyday growing up tomatoes, the needs to get done to keep that living room a magical space. And I think that's sort of what we need to shift to is this model of intentionality of building the room, is also about taking that gift and giving it away, is letting it be the 'we'. Beautiful.

SARON: Love that. For me, I think what I'm walking away with is the Mitigation Speech. I absolutely love that. I've never heard of that term before or that way of thinking. I've always felt like I had this general idea of prefacing, I had this general idea of there are different ways of saying the same thing that don't feel as harsh or as abrasive, but never had the words or the language to describe it. And now, I do. So, I think that the Mitigation Speech is probably the thing I'm walking away with today.

REIN: The term Mitigated Speech came from Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. I think it's somewhat problematic. But what he did there is he took work that had been done in the field and then just gave it a catchy name. So, you can go find the original research. There is a paper called Cultural Diversity and Crew Communication, that a lot of those came from. But you can go find that stuff and you don't have to take Malcolm's word for it. 

SARON: OK. Cool. 

CHANTE: Saron, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for coming back on the show.