Open Source Apprentice Program with Tracy Lee & Moshe Milman

Five, four, three, two, one. Drop that. Welcome to the Test Guild Automation Podcast. We're all getting together to learn more about software testing and automation with your host, Joe Calantonio.

Hey, it's Joe. And welcome to another episode of the Test Guild Automation Podcast. Today we'll be talking with Tracey Lee and Moshe Millman all about testing the new innovative Open Source Apprentice program. And I'm sure we'll probably touch a little bit on JavaScript and visual testing. If you don't know. Tracy is a Google Developer expert, a woman Techmakers lead and RxJS core team member. She's also the host of the Modern Web Podcast and founder of what I think is the very cool this JavaScript. She's also a very active organizer for Contributor Days, Google Developer Group and RX Workshop. Basically she's one of the go to experts for all things JavaScript related. And Moshe is the co founder of one of my favorite test companies, applitools, a cloud based service for automated visual testing. If you haven't checked out visual testing, you need to check it out. It's really awesome. As part of his role at applitools, he's helped companies across the industry implement state of the art test automation suites. Moshe is also passionate about software testing. He's helped me get numerous guests on the show over the years, so he's been a great help. So listen up to 2 of the developer and testing industry titans as we talk about the new Open Source Apprentice program that gives junior level developers from a range of backgrounds a path to contribute to Open Source and also helps achieve its vision of supporting tech diversity through open source programs and beyond. You don't want to miss this episode. Check it out. The Test Guild Automation Podcast is sponsored by the fantastic folks at Sauce Labs. Their cloud based test platform helps ensure your favorite mobile apps and websites work flawlessly on every browser, operating system and device. Get a free trial, visit testguild.com sourcelabs and click on the exclusive sponsor section to try it for free for 14 days. Check it out.

Hey Tracy and Moshe, welcome to the show.

Hey Joe, great to be here.

Thanks for having us.

Awesome. So I guess before we get into it, I gave a little intro, but is there anything you want to tell us a little bit more about yourself that I may have missed?

Nothing really. I mean, Moshe and I have actually been working together for about a year or more now. Moshe. It's been quite some time, right? Yeah, it might have been even a year and a half or more, but we've been working together on.

Trying to figure out how open source contributors and open source in general can help support underrepresented minorities in tech. So it's really exciting to come on this podcast and talk about it.

I want to dive into your awesome new initiative, but first I just want to set the stage of maybe the current atmosphere that developers find themselves in. Do you know what the state of diversity is in the development and testing field now going into 2020? Since when you started, has it changed? Is it getting better? Or are there different challenges that you see people struggling with now that you didn't have earlier in maybe your career?

I think it's definitely getting a lot better. I think when I started, there were definitely women in tech. And this was maybe a few years ago, but not as many. And right when I started was kind of when things people were starting to notice, hey, why aren't there more women? Oh, maybe we should have more women. And now there's, you know, people just dedicated to kind of helping, trying to change the ratio in tech, especially at conferences I've seen. But I think now the community is kind of more moving towards. So what do we actually do? Right. We know there's a problem. Okay, we're starting to do some things related to featuring women more, but what are the next steps? So I think the community is continuously starting to think about this.

Yeah, actually, I can't agree more. I mean, I think, like, what's interesting, I remember, like, when we started the company, obviously our audience initially was mainly. Our target audience was mainly developers and customization engineers. And I've seen people, you know, registering to the product. And initially we wanted to speak to almost everyone that signs up to get feedback to learn about what we're trying to achieve, how it's working for them. And it was probably over 80%. Man, it was really frustrating. And I remember, like, every time, you know, like, women would sign up, I would feel excited and, like, you know, really want to jump on the conversation and see, you know, like, how it's working for them, what are their perspective, anything different. I think now it's definitely starting to improve. And you see it even when you go to conferences. Like a few years ago, testing conferences, it was like.

A big ratio, like.

Significantly more men than women. But now I think we're starting to see more. I think we definitely have a lot of work to do as an industry and we're still far from where we need to be, but I think it's definitely starting to get better.

Awesome. I think one of the ways it's Going to get better. From what I can tell is by this new initiative that you've come up with, Tracy, on the Open Source Apprentice program. So for folks that haven't heard of it yet, what is the Open Source Apprentice Program?

So.

What I realized a little towards the end of 2018 was that there are so many companies talking about trying to get women and help women get into tech and there's a lot of women trying to get jobs and there is this big disconnect. So we decided to spend some time and energy building up this thing called the Apprentice program. And Moshe and Apple Tools was, you know, one of the first people to basically buy into this idea and say, okay, we're going to try to do this. So the whole idea of the Apprentice program is to actually give women their first opportunity or first job and pay them for it. I think this is the especially as we see diverse candidates coming into the field, they're typically coming from non traditional backgrounds and from boot camps. So typically this is their second career and jump. And.

As you're not a fresh grad, it's really difficult to get that first opportunity.

So we've been really happy with this program to be able to shepherd women through this program, provide them with a mentor to be able to actually make their first contribution into open source. And specifically we've been working with applitools to.

Help women integrate visual testing into open source projects. Great examples are we've done it for ngrx, which is one of the largest, most popular libraries in Angular. Also RXJS which has. I can't remember if it's 20 million downloads a week or a month now. Those have been some really big, large projects. Lona by Airbnb Preact Material Components NGX Board Bootstrap to date we've helped and worked with about 13 apprentices and done contributions to over 20 open source projects. It's a nice benefit because it's also. We're adding visual testing to Open source, which I think is really important too. I feel like everybody wins.

Awesome. It's not just visual testing though. It just happens to be. Applitools is one of the first people to contribute. How does it work, Moshe? You. You hire someone to contribute to different open source projects and you monitor them and shepherd them along that process.

Yes. Actually Tracy deserves all the credit here. But I think when I met Tracy and she told me about this initiative, it actually came at a perfect timing because at that time we were looking at contributing more to open source projects and getting more open source projects. To use applitools for many reasons. One, we always like to support the community. And the other thing, we also wanted to spread the world about open source. And open source projects are always in the edge of innovation and using the latest technologies and doing really cool stuff. So getting their feedback as they use it at scale is always very helpful and beneficial. And we're trying to think about ways to make it happen. You know, open source contributors are always busy. Usually it's not their full time job, they have another day job and they do it during the nights and weekends. So trying to think, how can we help these projects get open source, get testing coverage, get visual testing coverage to these projects. And when Tracy was telling me about this idea, it seemed like a win for everybody. It's a great way to get these apprentices to get into tech and mentor them. So the way it actually works, I mean, Tracy is finding these people that are like the apprentices that are relevant. We have a mentor again from Distort that is helping them and giving them guidelines how to get started, reviewing their code, training them on the job. And open source projects that are interested in getting these contributions, I mean, we're working with them to add it to their pipeline. And that's kind of like at a high level. I mean, Tracy might be able to share a little bit more color around it.

Yeah, I think. Well, you know, like this actually wouldn't be possible if Apple's tools didn't actually pay for it. So thank you.

It's hard, right? Like this type of work is definitely super difficult. But one of the reasons why we started this program is because I think open source maintainers care about helping underrepresented minorities. They are constantly trying to figure out how they can do it. But I think a lot of people out there within the tech community who want to help just don't know how. Because there is not a concrete way for them to do so by doing this and saying, hey, if you like the idea of visual testing, we can add it to your library. And by the way, it's going to be a woman in tech doing it. If you're just nice to them and shepherd them through the process. It's a very concrete way for open source maintainers who really, really care about this to actually do something in a way that is not just sitting there going like, okay, I'm ready, what do I do? Somebody tell me what to do. So that's been quite awesome in my opinion. And we've seen a lot of maintainers be really, really excited And a lot of relationships being built between the maintainers and the apprentices, you know, which they'll have forever.

Yeah. And I think one of the beautiful things about it which really got me excited, is that we actually saw some of these apprentices actually getting jobs based on that experience. I think this is, you know, this is the ultimate goal of this whole thing. And this, I'm sure Tracy feels great about it too, but I think this is awesome achievement.

It's hard. I mean, I think being a woman in tech and getting your, you know, I mean, you know, just making generalizations, right? Like if you're transitioning into a second career, you have, you know, you. You probably have more responsibilities in your life because you're a little bit older and you're probably used to getting paid, you know, more money than you would as a junior developer. Typically, you know, not always the case, but sometimes, and, you know, it's very hard to make that transition. And again, you know, there's this sort of stigma, which I think is starting to change within companies. Companies are starting to realize that if they want diverse pipelines, they do have to look at boot camps and take these into consideration. But it's, you know, it's like we're still a few years out, I think, of solving the problem.

So, Moshe, just curious to know why you felt like it's important to contribute to more open source initiatives.

Yeah, for sure. So, I mean, I think first open source is now powering a lot of the technology in the world. So I think open source is extremely important and bringing benefits to the greater good of everyone. But also one of the key reasons for us to take some active initiatives beyond the apprentice program, like, for example, the Selenium IDE open source project, which we're currently actively contributing to, was we wanted to find ways to get more people the ability to start using applitools. And we saw that people have the right engineering skills, the right engineering background, can easily start using it with tools like Selenium and Cypress and other solutions. But people who didn't have these capabilities, we saw a lot of people that reached out and said, I'm like a QA engineer or test engineer, I want to start using it, or I'm part of the marketing team, I want to start using it to check my website or my mobile application, but I just don't know to use these, some of these underlying tools. So being able to help create some tools that will give people the ability to kind of like, in a codeless way, get free access to just Record a set of actions and play it back and start using it. So that's kind of like another reason for.

Contributing to open source, which also kind of benefits us and also benefits the community.

All right, so I'm still trying to understand. So basically it's apprenticeship. You give them real world experience working on an open source project, and by doing that, then even if they went to a boot camp or had a degree, and then companies are more interested in these candidates because not only do they have maybe some training, but they also have hands on real world, like a portfolio that they could point to. Is that how it works? Do you actually match them with potential players as well?

We don't hook them up with employers, but that is the biggest problem with boot camp grants. They go through the boot camp and nobody will give them their first tech opportunity. They'll have side projects, they'll have different things like that, but they don't have anything concrete within their portfolio where a company will say, okay, I'll hire you because you have experience. So we're giving them that first opportunity.

Cool. So you said 13 so far have gone through the program. Do you have any success stories or what you see as maybe ways that people can be successful when they enter in your apprentice program?

Well, to enter the apprentice program, you actually have to go through, you know, a test process. So we put you through a code review to make sure that you have the skills necessary and then we pair you up with a mentor. In terms of success, I think being able to do your first PR is, you know, well, you've already gone through this protest, so we already believe that you can do it. Right. You've already kind of proved yourself on the technical level.

But we've seen quite a few apprentices go off and get positions because of it. Right. And I think that is really cool. I remember there was this one apprentice, and I'll leave names out of it, but she was just so thankful. She had been working so hard to get anything and she was about to give up. She was about to drop out of tech and, you know, finally, you know, we gave her the opportunity and she was able to then go on and get a real job in tech, which was really cool. Right? Like that type of stuff is why we do it, to help these women get positions and, you know, get started.

So, Moshe, do you have maybe suggestions to other companies that want to get involved, how you were able to be successful contributing to this program?

Yeah, I think the key is like, you know, if. If in the company they have some initiatives around diversity and initiatives around open source contribution. They would like more open source projects to get involved in using their technology and get feedback from them, get them to use the product at scale. It's very easy to get started. I mean just identify some open source projects which seems like could benefit from your product or your technology and then I think Tracy pretty much takes care of everything else. So. And again, from our perspective it's, you know, it's not a significant investment. It's just kind of like an investment which we feel brings a lot of benefits to this very important cause and it also brings us benefits which are also significant. So I think it's definitely, I mean I'm pretty sure that any company that will do it will enjoy these benefits and it's, it's an investment that will be beneficial for everyone.

So tricy along lessons learned as well. Is there anything you've seen your apprentices struggle with that they had in common that you think if people knew more about, maybe they'd be able to accelerate their introduction to the tech industry?

I think the biggest thing that boot camps tend to not teach you is the project management or.

How to use Git or you know, Jira, those types of things. And so that's, I think it's like working within teams, right? Like that is the biggest struggle I see when people first get started in tech that you know, again, they might, they might have the technical skills to be a junior developer but then they get a little bit lost from a, from just like an organizational standpoint of how to work in this sort of new development lifestyle, workplace.

So Moshe, you're part of a growing company. You've been really exploding. So you have experience also with hiring at a mass scale. Curious as a company, how do you ensure that you're hiring more women, that you have a process in place that you're not overlooking certain populations because of oversight or whatever reason is. How do you tighten up your, I guess your hiring process to make sure you're including the largest net possible to get the best qualified people possible?

It's very difficult and it's a big challenge. And it's not just about thinking about it and speaking about it. You actually have to proactively do things to make it happen. And we're still not doing enough and we're still not doing great with regards to diversity, especially on the engineering side. I think we still have a long way to go and to improve, but we have some awesome people that are focusing on lot about it. We have an HR leader in our tel Aviv office, which is doing a lot of events. I mean, she's very active, doing meetups for women in tech and bringing all of our engineering leaders to speak about it, to teach, you know, boot camps to mentor people about, like, interview questions and help them get prepared for interviews, help them build their first project. So, you know, it's a work in progress that continues all the time, and we're trying to do a lot to make it happen, but it's not easy. And I can't say that we cracked it or solved it. I think more and more companies are now trying to do it. So it helps to bring more relevant people into the pipeline or into the funnel. But there's still a lot of work that needs to be done.

I think there's actually some good examples lately that larger companies that have done this. I know Salesforce had this equal pay initiative that they did, and they ended up trying to figure out whether there was pay gaps between genders. And they ended up spending, what, over $6 million one year on trying to fix that. And I think what Moshe says of what Applitools is doing by, you know, just getting involved in places where underrepresented minorities might be, whether it be boot camps, etc. Really helps. One thing that has been pretty prominent within the industry these days is just looking out for gender bias in your job applications. Like a good example is saying, you know, come hang out. We have ping pong and beer Fridays is not amazingly inclusive for, you know, let's say, women who might not like beer. Again, that's also a gender bias thing. Right. But like another great example is Pinterest. What Pinterest makes sure to do is they make sure that when they're doing interviewing, there's at least one ethnically underrepresented candidate and at least one woman on the hiring panel. And so making sure that the people that are coming in, if you do get them into your pipeline, that they feel welcome and that they realize that there are actually people like them on the team. I think that's also a very important thing. I know when a lot of companies are actually going through the hiring process. Right. There's also this implicit bias that happens. And so with implicit bias, it's really difficult because we all have it, which is why we just need to recognize we have it and really take that into consideration when we're actually interviewing underrepresented minorities.

Absolutely. So, Moshe, does aplitos have anything in place similar to that?

Yeah. No, we're not doing it in this organized way. I Think we're still small and moving very fast and interviewing a lot of people. So we don't have this kind of structured committee with representative people from all the different.

Like genders and everything else. But we're focusing a lot on giving equal opportunity. And I think if I have a bias, it's probably the opposite bias. I would always prefer to hire a female. So I mean we don't have this formal process in place, but we're doing a lot of efforts and team leaders or like managers that only have or they don't have like equal representation in their team are not feeling comfortable about. Let's put it this way.

I personally also really like it because I see leaders like Angie who are on the Apple Tools team and she's just like such a strong female presence in tech, which I love. And I think like when you do programs like this, like I've always told Moshe, and we haven't found the right person yet, but it's like if you have programs where you can kind of test people people out, like the apprentice program, it's probably going to help you find awesome entry level developers potentially. We've seen that actually with the apprentice program where some of our clients have said, oh okay, I actually want to hire this person now. That's been really cool to see.

By the way, I also wanted to mention Angie. I think she's doing an amazing job and when speaking about diversity, part of it is getting into tech and getting the first role in tech and engineering. But I think another important part is also progressing your career, speaking at conferences, getting to leadership positions. And I think NG is doing an amazing job mentoring a lot of people, helping them progress, helping them get accepted to do public speaking, speak at conferences, mentor them through the process of doing their first talk. And getting your name out there helps a lot and speaking at events, it just makes a big difference and helps progress the career. So it's not just about getting people to get into the first job, it's also about progressing from that point and advancing the career.

Yeah, I think it's a great example to have empowering people to know that it's not women aren't just for beginner programmers, they're also hardcore developership, they're in leadership positions and they're well seen within the industry. So you promoting that actually has maybe a trickle down effect that people see people in power that look like them or a women like them and they know that there's a path for them hopefully going forward.

Oh, that's totally a thing. I think I've been so. I wear dresses all the time. I don't really own a pair of pants. I own leggings. But, you know, even folks who have been speaking for 20, 30 years, I love it when I go to a conference and they're like, tracy, I'm wearing a dress because of you. I've never worn a dress to speak before. And I'm thinking, oh, my gosh, that's totally crazy. So it's silly. Small things like that where you see people in positions of power or positions of leaders within the industry where they're like, oh, I can do that too. And I think that's really powerful.

Actually, Tracy, I didn't think about that. I'm not sure I can find a dress my size, but maybe.

Well, it seems trivial, but that's something I would not even thought of. And, you know, I just not. It would not even be in my, My, my point of view. So that's a great point. Things like that, you can't just have. You need to have women in order to kind of convey the things that a guy is probably not going to notice or be sensitive to, I guess.

Yeah. I remember speaking at this conference in Australia and I went to a meetup prior and, you know, the meetup organizer was a little bit quiet and strict. I don't know how else to describe reality, but I saw these women in the crowd who were so timid, and I was like, you can lead too, you know. And the next day, two of them actually came up to me and they said, I'm wearing a dress because of you. So, like, this is, it's so weird that, you know, something that I'm not even doing on purpose, which is, you know, I don't even think as a model. You know, as a model actually affects, you know, people who watch. Right. And again, it's. It's a small thing, but it's. I don't think it's necessarily like the fact that you can wear a dress. I think it's more a symbol of like, oh, I can be who I want to be.

Absolutely. Now, how can more people contribute to the Open Source Apprentice program to get more people involved? How can they become an apprentice? How can people contribute to this awesome initiative?

Well, I think first off, if you're an open source contributor and you, you want to participate in any way, you can always just email me or reach me on Twitter ladyleet. My email address is Tracy.

I think if you're a company who's interested, again, you can just email or message Me. And then for apprentices who are interested, you can just message hirethefempirethisdot co. And we're always accepting applications and trying to find new opportunities for underrepresented minorities to get involved in what we're doing.

Okay, Tracy and Moshe, before we go, is there one piece of actual advice you can give to someone to help them with the diverse hiring efforts and let us know the best way to find or contact you.

So the best advice I can give is just to be proactive and think about creative ideas. Because.

There is one thing to just give equal opportunity and try to avoid bias in the interviews. I think this is really important, but it's also important to try to think about ways where you can really make a difference, where you can really get people that have the right talent and have the right potential, but just don't have access to the right opportunities. So I think there are many opportunities to do better around it and just try to think creatively, try to be proactive. And the apprentice program is one great example. I think there are many other ways. Bootcamps, hackathons, bunch of other things that can can make a difference. And the best way to reach out to me is like, you can reach out, find me on Twitter, Osha Millman, or just email me, Moshe Appley Tools. I'm pretty responsive usually, and I think.

For me, one of the best ways that I would recommend is just making sure that you're thinking about inclusion in the workplace now. So thinking about, you know, who you are as a company and maybe having somebody come in who maybe is more from a diverse background and. Or talking to the people who are diverse within your organization and asking them what can be done that could be better. Because, you know, it's one thing to hire somebody and say, hey, I want to hire somebody in tech that's underrepresented, but another thing is just actually keeping them as well. So if they don't feel welcome and they join your team, then you know it's going to be all for naught. Right? And hiring is extended, expensive. So making sure that, you know, you actually have a sticky culture.

This one too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you, Tracy and Moshe, for your audit. Thank you, Tracy and Moshe, for your thank you, Tracy and Moshe, for your mentoring awesomeness. Links to everything of value we covered in this episode. Head on over to Test Guild.

Head over to testguild.com a Alec Automation 281.

And while you're there, make sure to click on the and while you're there, make sure to click on the Try it for free Today link under the Exclusive Sponsor section to learn all about Sauce Labs awesome products and services. And if you haven't heard already, registration for Automation Guild 2020 is now open. Automation Guild is the largest online conference in the world, dedicated 100% to helping you succeed at creating what we like to call Test Automation Awesomeness. You definitely want to check it out and register today. Head on over to automationguild.com so that's it for this episode of the Test Guild Automation Podcast. I'm Joe and my mission is to help you succeed with creating end to end full stack Automation Awesomeness. As always, test everything and keep the good. Cheers. Thanks for listening to the Test Guild Automation Podcast. Head on over to testguild.com for full show notes, amazing blog articles and online testing conferences. Make sure to subscribe to join the Guild and continue your testing journey. This has been a Joe Calantonio production.