April Wensel - Founder of Compassionate Coding

Welcome to the Tacos and Tech podcast, where we discover cutting edge technology and the builders making it happen. I'm your host, Neil Bloom, San Diego's tech ambassador, and together we're going to uncover what technology San Diegans are creating with our own blend of local lifestyle. This podcast episode is proudly brought to you by our friends at Cox Business. Cox Business provides broadband, Internet and cloud services to the modern tech company. Cox Business, a longtime supporter of the San Diego startup community, will be co hosting the annual John G. Watson Quick Pitch competition along with Tethcos Angels and the San Diego Venture Group. Applications are now open on the Quick pitch website@quickpitchsd.com all right, welcome back to another episode. I am joined by April Wenzel, software engineer and founder of Compassionate Coding. Thanks so much for joining us.

Hi, I'm happy to be here.

What a beautiful day in North County, San Diego.

Seriously.

We're sitting at the Encinitas Library looking out on more landscape right now, but ocean views all around usually here.

Pretty awesome.

April, why don't you tell us a little bit what you're working on right now and then we'll dive back deeper into it near the end.

Sure. Sounds good. So my company is called Compassionate coding. And after 10 years of working as a software engineer myself in Silicon Valley, I saw that a lot of the problems in the tech industry weren't really technical problems. They weren't problems with people lacking skills or that sort of thing, but more problems of collaboration teams not able to work together well and be the most productive they could be. And I think it's also related to these issues of the lack of diversity, inclusion. We see, I see those are all symptoms of the same problem, which is a lack of concern for human beings. We've been too focused on the technology. So with my company, Compassionate Coding, I go into these tech companies and I teach the teams about emotional intelligence. And we do workshops on things like building empathy and how to communicate with non engineers, how to between engineers and non engineers, things like that. How to have empathy for your users, even if you're not specifically a UX person. And so that's what Compassionate Coding looks like.

Wow. Incredible. I can't wait to hear the impetus for all of this. But why don't you tell us a little bit about where did you grow up and maybe how you got into technology in the first place.

Sure. Sounds good. So I grew up in Texas, of all places. I was born in Palo Alto, but I grew up in Texas from the age of two and I started coding in high school, in my sophomore year, because we had a computer science class, and prior to that we had had a computer at home. So I'd done things like on the DOS prompt, just not coding, but kind of playing around. Loved computer games, especially adventure games. So it's kind of that classic cliche thing of I wanted to make computer games. So I learned how to code in school and I really enjoyed it. And then I moved out to college in California, Pomona College in Claremont, also in Southern California.

Great school.

So, yeah, it was nice. It's a beautiful campus. But I was so busy studying, I didn't really get to enjoy the Southern California vibe. So it's nice to be back. But then after school, I moved up to the Bay Area, San Francisco, and again was there about a decade working at various startups, and then just a year ago moved to San Diego. So back in SoCal and now actually enjoying the weather and the beaches.

Wow. Pretty recent new. Welcome to San Diego.

Thank you. Yeah.

Tell us a little about first, that journey maybe, of going from Pomona to the Bay Area. Was it kind of a culture shock going to the Bay?

Not so much, because I had been surrounded by computer science people in school, so they all went up there. So I actually lived with two people who were fellow computer science majors for my first bit. So I was fully immersed in the whole startup culture up there from the start. We were working on a startup, but also kind of moonlighting working at jobs as well. So it kind of was a natural fit, I think, at the time.

Cool. Tell us a little about the startup you're working on.

So at the time, we didn't really know what we were doing because we were fresh out of school, but that's the thing to do, right? This was back in 2008, so it was before a lot of recent developments, but it was a curated news service to help people find news that was most relevant to their interests, using machine learning, AI, things like that that we learned in school. It was kind of a combination of projects that one of the other people and I worked on in our senior projects. But yeah, it didn't get too far and we jobs to pay the rent, and then we just kind of went our separate ways. Learned a lot since then.

Got it. Okay, so tell us a little bit about just that experience of being part of the technology culture of the Bay.

Yeah, so, you know, it's funny because at the time, I had never really lived anywhere else as a proper adult, you know, because when you're in college, it's A totally different experience. And so I didn't have a lot to compare it to. It just seemed normal that when you're on the Caltrain, that's the big commute thing there, other than the bart, everyone's talking about the startup they're working on or, you know, everyone's on. On their laptops, coding, and it's just kind of. It's just what's there. I mean, every night there's tons of meetups to go to about technology. And so those are some of the things that were the positive side of the startup culture up there. Just look at the bright side.

Got it. So take us through some of the companies that you went through and some of the maybe experiences you had.

Yeah, so many. Okay. So I jumped around a lot because that's the thing, you know, with startups, is that they fail a lot. And also the culture is not always the best. And so when I'm unhappy, I do what I can to try to improve things but move on. So I actually jumped around quite a bit. I definitely ignored advice. Keep your job until you find another one. I would always quit because I knew that there were so many jobs up there, so it wasn't a big deal. But yeah, so I worked in. Sony was the big first company that I worked at. Big company. And after that I knew, but I was working at an acquired startup within Sony. So it still had that startup vibe even from the start, but still I could tell the bureaucracy and everything. I knew that big companies were not for me. So I was there less than a year. And then I worked. I finally realized my dream of working for a gaming startup. So I worked for a social gaming startup making Facebook games. Now I feel kind of bad about participating in that.

Farmville maybe.

Thankfully, I can't take credit for those, but I sadly contributed to some of their competitors, which, yeah, not the proudest moment, but I was making games. So my childhood dream came true. For better or for worse. After that, I felt so bad that I wanted to get back into doing good in the world, or at least try. And so I worked at research lab at Stanford and I was in bioinformatics and then kind of kept the doing good train going. And I worked at an education startup called Zoodles, which is really cool. It had been acquired by htc, which was big handshake maker. Yeah, that was interesting. It's always interesting being part of an acquired company just because the culture always changes. Yeah, but they did their. The leaders, the CEO and CTO did their best to insulate Us from the different culture of htc. Yeah. And then probably there were some others in there. But the next significant one for me was a really cool startup called Cognoa, which was using machine learning to detect autism in children.

Oh, wow.

I was first engineer there, and so I got to kind of build out the team, and so I really loved that position. I felt like I didn't have the title cto, but it's basically what I was doing. They just didn't have a cto. Started there, hired a bunch of people, kind of helped drive the direction of the product, all that sort of thing. So I was there for a while. Then eventually they wanted to move in a different direction, so I decided to leave. And I worked at User Testing, which is a user experience company where they help people test out their apps and websites by paying people to record themselves using their apps at home. So it's a great way to get remote user testing done on your product. That was really interesting, too. I was the first female software engineer on a team of about 40. Wow, that was interesting.

What was that like?

You know, there's always this advice. Don't hire just one woman or one person of color or anybody else. Just one, because then they don't have other people to kind of commiserate with. And then two, there's that added pressure of you represent your whole group. So, like, if April makes a mistake, you know, women are just bad at whatever. You know what I mean? Because I'm the only woman. Right. There's a lot of pressure, but I already put pressure on myself, but it was kind of tough sometimes. And I would speak up a lot about diversity issues, and that was not always well received because, you know, sometimes it makes people uncomfortable when you. I try to do it in a compassionate way, but some people who are in privileged positions just, you know, it's hard for them to talk about these sorts of things. So I would say, instead of saying, we need to hire a really good iOS guy, I would say, how about we just say hire an iOS engineer? Something like that. And then everyone's like, oh, April, you're nitpicking my language. It's like, no, I'm just pointing out that, you know, if you think of the phrase cable guy, you're not picturing a woman ever, right? I mean, I'm not. So I think our language can be really powerful.

Yeah. Was this the first time you kind of recognized that language, or had you been noticing it the whole way through?

I'd pretty much been noticing it the whole way through. But as I got more experience in the industry, I got even more comfortable speaking up when I saw things like this rather than kind of silently suffering and not saying anything and like, oh, I don't want to ruffle feathers. I decided I want to ruffle all the feathers. And, you know, kind of. Actually that leads right into why I started Passion Coding, because, like, now I see myself in some ways as a professional troublemaker. So I took, you know, my troublemaking inside of companies and kind of turned it into a service where I help companies. I make trouble, but in order to make positive change at those companies.

I like that a lot. So was that the time after user testing is when you decided to start your own thing?

Yeah, yeah, it is. And the truth of that, and I've been pretty open about this, is that I kind of rage quit, so to speak, that company. I gave two weeks notice, but I got tired of all the pushback about the diversity stuff, and so I just, I gave two weeks notice when I got feedback like, oh, you know, you speak up too much about, blah, blah, whatever. So I decided, you know what, it's time to do my own thing. Finally, again, I tried. Right after graduation, I'd always. The idea of being independent and having my own thing really appealed to me and I finally felt in a position where I had the cushion of saving so I could actually start. And I also had these ideas brewing and I saw a real business need. And so everything just kind of came together that let me start the company.

That's great. What year was that?

2016.

Okay, so you started it while you were still in the Bay?

Yes, I did. So for a year I was operating from up there, but again, mostly traveling around, talking, speaking at companies, speaking at conferences, a lot of travel.

Got it. And so what brought you to San Diego?

Yeah, so there was this great event that happened in 2017 up in the Bay Area, I believe it was called Tacos and Tech, perhaps. So it was this event at the Computer History Museum where startups from San Diego came up to recruit people from the Bay Area. And they did this great job of selling the people there on the idea of there being 262 days of sunshine in San Diego. And I was like, you know what? This is what, this is what I need. And everyone was really kind and really friendly and humble. And when I'd ask, I'd go around to the tables and ask companies about their diversity, and they would speak about it really openly. They didn't seem scared by the question. And that really appealed to Me too. So although I wasn't looking for a job because I had one and go do my own thing, I thought this is a culture that could really work for me. And all that sunshine, really appealing. We had had a particularly rainy and cold winter. I was getting some of that seasonal affective disorder thing going on. So I thought. So I gave my was coming up and so I gave notice and I gave away most of my stuff, packed up my little two seater car and just drove down with very, very little material belongings and just got an Airbnb first, then a vacation rental in Mission beach for a month and then I landed permanently in Cardiff.

Wow, that's awesome to hear that. The tacos and tech event brought you down here and brought you to the Talkos and tech podcast.

There you go. It all comes together.

It all comes full circle. Really cool to hear that. Well, we're really happy to have you here. Yeah, well, thank feedback about the openness to speak about diversity here. Some data that we very recently uncovered about San Diego Startup Week, our kind of largest regional event, is that our member of attendance, 42% are women, which is we find high for a tech conference.

Definitely.

I'm looking forward to uncovering if there's something unique about the San Diego tech scene.

Yeah, that's great.

Have you seen anything significant about San Diego now that you've been here?

Yeah. That's interesting. I mean the biggest thing that stood out for me here so far is really just the humility and the welcoming quality of the people here. It's just so different from the Bay Area. The Bay area in the whole Silicon Valley, San Francisco, there's just so much competition, but not that kind of healthy motivate each other competition, but just like an I'm better than you, I'm smarter than you competition that's just really exhausting to participate in because it's like I have to keep asserting that I'm smarter. I keep have to show that my startup's better and like I get more funding, I get all this and down here it's like people just seem much more like wanting to help each other and like giving first and like not, you know what I mean? And that's, I think that that could definitely contribute to better inclusion in the community. Because when you come in with that mentality of not trying to compete, then you're willing to look at, you know, are we being fair? You know, because if you're trying to compete with somebody, does it matter if you're excluding them for, you know, unfair reasons? Maybe not because you're more concerned with winning, but if you're more concerned with building a community, then you want to include these diverse perspectives. And so I think that that general humility and kindness and openness could be a big part of it. But that's, you know, that's just my theory.

That's great. I definitely feel the we give before we get here in San Diego, so I'm glad that others feel that too.

Yeah, definitely.

That's awesome. So tell us a little about kind of life in San Diego now. I mean, you're obviously fully engrossed in the beach scene here up in North County, Cardiff. Have any favorites? Have, like, a favorite taco spot yet?

I do, but it's actually not north county, but my favorite taco spot is Rancho's Cochina in North park because they have vegan tacos and I'm vegan, and they're amazing and they do like. There's one with soy chorizo. Highly recommend.

Okay, let's check it out for sure. Shout out to Rancho Escatina.

Yeah.

How about favorite coffee spot?

So I go a lot to Better Buzz in Encinitas, but I also really like the atmosphere of Swell coffee at Del Mar.

Oh, yeah, Flowerville Mall.

Yeah.

Really cool.

They have, like, a typewriter that has plants growing out of it. It's just a really neat place.

Yeah, definitely. That's a good hangout for sure. How about beer? Are you into the beer scene here?

You know, not so much anymore. I did quite a bit of drinking up in the area, and I've kind of cut back quite a bit. However, in Cardiff, there's this cute little place called the Lost Abbey Confessional, and they have some good beer, and a lot of their beers are vegan, which is cool also for me.

Didn't even know that. Yeah, that's a good shout out. Yeah, really cool. Well, how can people find you and hear what else you're working on?

Yeah. So the best place is compassionatecoding.com my website. I have a newsletter there where I send out updates as they come out. Just stuff I'm doing and tips and resources for people who want to learn more emotional intelligence and be more effective on their teams. And then I'm on Twitter aprelWentzel, and my company's Twitter handle is compassioncode, shortened like that because of Twitter username restrictions. But, yeah, those are the best places.

Got it. And if companies want to just, like, you know, get involved and learn how to bring you in, what's usually the best person within a company to initially work with.

You know, that's an interesting question. I found it's best when it's somebody from the engineering department just because of the nature of what I do. Sometimes, though, it is somebody from HR that also can work and they just can, you know, contact me. Aprilompassionatecoding.com Usually we just have an info session where they tell me what their pain points are and that's what compassion is. It's alleviating suffering. So they tell me the pain points. We talk about how we can alleviate those pain points.

That's great. And are you working with any San Diego companies currently?

No, not yet. Because, you know, I have to say, and I'm not just saying this, but I think a lot of San Diego companies understand this better than companies in other, you know, tech scenes. So I think there's, you know, I'm sure that there are some companies I could work with here, but I'm getting here is more where I recharge and get inspiration and then I go out and do these workshops at a time. But I do some public workshops too down here. I did one on speaking. I did one on test driven JavaScript last year, but from a compassionate angle. So that's what I've been doing in the community here is talks and workshops.

Cool. So maybe we can use San Diego as kind of some test case of already implementing that from day one.

Yeah, that would be cool.

Awesome. Well, April, this has been great, really great to talk to you. Really excited to have you in town. Your energy here is going to be incredible and looking forward to helping you in any way. Forward.

Thank you. And likewise, thanks for having me here.

Definitely. Thanks so much.

All right, have a good one. Thanks.

Thanks for joining us on the Tacos and Tech podcast with Neil Blum. Thanks again to Cox Business for helping make this possible by expanding the reach of the San Diego tech ecosystem. This has been a partnership with the San Diego Venture Group and the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation's SD Life Changing Campaign. You can find Neal bloom on Twitter eelbloom and on LinkedIn. And join us next time when we'll have James Martin, founder and CEO of Rally Corp. On the podcast.