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At the edge of collapse—and creation—two unlikely co-conspirators invite you into a radically honest conversation about the future. This isn’t just another tech or self-help podcast. It’s a story-driven exploration of who we are, what we value, and how we might reimagine the world when the systems around us stop serving us. We blend personal storytelling, cultural critique, and deep inquiry into what it means to be human in an age of AI, uncertainty, and transformation. We’re asking better questions—together.
Because the world is changing fast, but maybe that’s precisely what we need.
Hosted by Beth Rudden and Katie Smith, two builders of systems and challengers of the status quo. Beth is CEO of Bast.AI and a globally recognized expert in trustworthy AI, with decades of experience leading data and ethics at IBM. Katie is the founder of Humma.AI, a strategist who drove innovation and revenue growth at major global brands before turning to human rights and technology for social good. Together, they make complex issues, such as AI and its impacts on everyday people, clear, personal, and impossible to ignore.
Beth Rudden is the CEO and Founder of Bast AI, a pioneering company building explainable, personalized AI for good. With over two decades of experience as a global executive and Distinguished Engineer at IBM, Beth blends anthropology, data science, and AI governance to create tools that amplify human dignity and intelligence—not replace it.
Her work spans healthcare, education, and workforce transformation, using ontological natural language understanding (NLU) to make AI transparent, accountable, and accessible. Through Bast AI, Beth is reimagining how organizations deploy AI that’s not only accurate but aligned with ethical values, cultural context, and cognitive well-being.
Beth is also the author of AI for the Rest of Us and a passionate advocate for AI literacy, epistemic diversity, and the right to understand the systems shaping our lives. She speaks globally on the future of AI, power, and social contracts—and believes we’re all stewards of the next intelligence.
Katie Smith is the CEO and Founder of Humma.AI, a privacy-first platform building community-powered, culturally competent AI. With over two decades of experience leading digital strategy and social innovation, Katie blends systems thinking, Responsible AI, and storytelling to create tools that serve dignity, not domination. Their work spans mental health, civic tech, and digital rights, using participatory AI to make systems safer, fairer, and more accountable. Through Humma.AI, Katie is reimagining how people and businesses engage AI that’s accurate, inclusive, and governed by consent and care. Katie is also the author of Zoe Bios: The Epigenetics of Terrorism, a provocative exploration of identity, trauma, and transformation. They speak globally on the future of technology, power, and justice—and believe human empathy is the intelligence that will define our time.
Subscribe to our Substack for bonus content: https://substack.com/@andwefeelfine
Autumn Patterson (00:00)
Yeah, so when I started at HP 100 years ago, ⁓ my mentor talked to me about going up and down the mountain ⁓ and thinking about and filling in the gaps where necessary where you don't have the actual data, but make reasonable guesses. So for example, if you go as a junior engineer at HP trying to go up the mountain, you want to ask the question, ⁓
How would this ensure that we make money off of our product? I was writing a USB driver at the time. How does it make us money? Well, I can plug in a keyboard. I don't know. That's kind of a hard question to answer. Yeah. Well, these are just work relations. Whatever. We don't need them. Yeah, absolutely.
Beth Rudden (00:33)
Mm-hmm.
Hahaha!
Or a mouse.
You
Katie Smith (00:53)
Tch.
Beth Rudden (00:53)
Or a
coffee holder with the CD-ROM player?
Autumn Patterson (00:56)
Yeah, exactly.
Beth Rudden (01:12)
Hi, welcome And We Feel Fine. ⁓ A podcast all about endings and beginnings. Okay, Katie, we've got a guest today. How are you feeling?
Katie Smith (01:20)
I mean, I could not be more excited about our guest. And I feel very exhausted from the weekend, but for very good reasons. But ⁓ Autumn, thank you so much for joining us. How do you feel today?
Autumn Patterson (01:30)
Yeah, exhausted for the weekend for sure. I had so much fun this weekend. I got to hang out with
Katie Smith (01:35)
Nice.
Autumn Patterson (01:36)
unfortunately that means I was stressed today because I didn't get a head start on my week. But it's all good. I am thrilled to be here and I'm thrilled to be a part of this.
Katie Smith (01:40)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (01:45)
the questions I definitely wanted to start with you, Autumn, ⁓ you have such a wealth of experience. And I think that your entire resume is full of leading engineering teams and really producing the technical vision and your current role of VP of Technology.
What leadership lessons have you learned about building like high performing teams and engineering cultures, especially when it comes to fostering innovation and inclusion?
Autumn Patterson (02:15)
Yeah, that's a great question. think one of the things about this industry is it can be really hard to herd the cats, so to speak. And I mean that in the most dearest way possible because I've been a cat many times in my years as well. Squirrel, cat, Yeah, no.
Beth Rudden (02:33)
Did you say squirrel? No, yes.
Katie Smith (02:35)
Squirrel? Squirrel? My dog is awake now.
Autumn Patterson (02:42)
It's just, there's so much going on all the time. There's a lot of pressure. I really have learned over time. think, and I'll say this, and this won't be, I think this isn't a popular opinion anymore. I think Agile is a really, ⁓ can be a really adept way to manage ⁓ teams to a higher and higher performance within reason. mean, one of Agile's principles is you're
Beth Rudden (03:07)
Mm-hmm.
Autumn Patterson (03:10)
You know, you're not trying to increase velocity. You're trying to understand velocity. You're trying to understand how fast you're going, not using that as a technique to like continue to improve that tactical. ⁓ Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's not, you know, you're trying to find and you're trying to understand when that velocity changes for the better, for the worse, what changed? Like that's the practice.
Katie Smith (03:18)
Mm-hmm.
Faster, faster, faster Willy Wonka tunnel. Yeah.
Beth Rudden (03:35)
Right, right.
Autumn Patterson (03:37)
or that's well, that's the theory I'll say a lot of times in practice, it doesn't work out that way. I really have three legs that I like to follow for what I would call engineering stability because I think that's really at the heart of how you build a high performing team. And one is due consideration. So engineers are really smart and you're paying them a lot of money. Like, and they have a lot of training, they work really hard.
Katie Smith (03:41)
Mm-hmm. ⁓
Beth Rudden (03:55)
Mm-hmm.
Autumn Patterson (04:05)
most the time, that usually if they're not working hard, it's because they're not being given due consideration, in fact. And that's typically, they just need to be heard. They don't even need to be right most of the time. And they don't even need to be agreed with. They just need to know that they've been heard, that their opinion matters. I think that's so huge and so overlooked. ⁓ The second one is ⁓ they look for understanding. They want...
Beth Rudden (04:34)
Mm-hmm.
Autumn Patterson (04:34)
We want, I say they, I'm an engineer. haven't said this. Yeah. Like, wait, I'm an engineer. We, I'm saying this for myself too. We want understanding. We need to understand the business and we need to understand customers. And a lot of time that gets abstracted out. ⁓ This isn't so much of a thing anymore. I haven't seen it lately as a meme or anything, but it used to be like engineers and product would
Beth Rudden (04:38)
⁓ huh. I'm like, I relate to this comment, like all of it.
Autumn Patterson (05:04)
fight, you know, like it was always a big, it was always a big to do. And a lot of it came down to, it's like, well, product is supposed to understand the business and the customers. Engineers just write the code. It's like, well, we don't, if we don't know what's happening, we don't know how to deal with that. And then predictability. And this is where I think Agile really wins the day. Well, it wins the day in a couple of ways. We have product owners that come in and, and, join the team in clear ways, but there's also predictability. There's time to work. You're not,
Katie Smith (05:07)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (05:16)
Mmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Autumn Patterson (05:33)
supposed
to at least be interrupted throughout the day. You're supposed to minimize your meetings. You're supposed to provide prioritization. You're supposed to provide solid evaluation and reasonable expectations and working environments that work well for you. Like these are all parts really of the agile ethos. And so while it is, think, falling out of favor, I think it's falling out of favor because people aren't really understanding
Beth Rudden (05:39)
Mm-hmm.
Katie Smith (06:01)
Mm-hmm.
Autumn Patterson (06:01)
how to
implement that as a strategy and why it's so important for engineers to have those pieces of the puzzle put together for them to be able to work quickly. And I will say when those things fall into place and there is due respect for engineers and these qualities of time and attention to detail, you end up ⁓ seeing good engineers become great engineers and great engineers become 10x engineers.
Katie Smith (06:04)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (06:25)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Autumn Patterson (06:28)
In my experience, that's what I've been able to lead when I've been able to put those pieces in place. And I've also seen it the opposite way when that's been dismantled. ⁓ You lose that. Engineers kind of just go, and maybe they're off doing their own thing. Maybe they're just finding their own folly, like whatever it is, ⁓ because they will keep themselves occupied with what seems to be important to them. Yeah.
Katie Smith (06:30)
I believe you.
Shh.
Thank
Beth Rudden (06:55)
So, so do consideration, like really connecting, you know, the vision and making them understand like, you know, do respect. What was the third ⁓
Autumn Patterson (07:04)
Yeah. So the third one is really just predictability, like building predictability into engineers day to day, week to week.
Beth Rudden (07:08)
Yep. Okay.
So I want to say a little bit about this because what I think a lot of people don't know when you are creating any sort of engineering culture, and you said this at the beginning, ⁓ people have to know what their limits are. They have to understand how to tap the power of their limits. And they have to create the data to do so. And so having an engineering team who doesn't understand story points and how to count story points or how long a particular story will take,
you will not have the ability to do prediction because you don't know how to measure your past. And so I think it's really interesting in this world of AI and data right now, think about it, Autumn, like we have to teach people to create the data to ensure that they have an understanding of the process and then measure how long it takes them using the data that they created. And then
Katie Smith (07:49)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (08:11)
you know, allow people to have that full transparency into understanding how could they do better? That how come I don't know it just when you were saying that I was like, have you ever heard about that? Like, I mean, but you have to create the data like this is this is the the thing that I want people to know is so much of what people are thinking AI is, is that you have to have a huge amount of data.
in order to be able to predict something. And you don't, you have to have the right data and you have to understand the fact that sometimes you need to even create the right data so then you can measure how things can be and how it can become predictable.
Autumn Patterson (08:53)
Yeah, well, the right data, the right algorithms, and the right questions, those are all important. Yeah, that's what I meant by right questions. Yeah.
Beth Rudden (08:57)
And the right measurement, right? Yes. Yeah, well, mean,
well, that's so true because people don't realize that measurements are questions. ⁓ How do you view the roles of like, do you do traditional Scrum Master product owner, like as far as like the actual roles?
Autumn Patterson (09:09)
Great. Yeah, exactly.
⁓ I have, I've, when you're in a startup environment, you have to be pretty flexy with those things. ⁓ flexy, yeah, flexy is a, I've got to write a book called Flexy Management. I think that's, that's going to be my, yeah, that's going to be my next adventure. ⁓ No, you do though. You have to be, you have to be, you really do. And the less,
Katie Smith (09:30)
Yes. Flexy. You got to be flexy. Look it up, everyone. Flexy.
Beth Rudden (09:31)
Technical term, flexy.
Katie Smith (09:43)
Autumn Flexi. Sorry.
Autumn Patterson (09:49)
The less funding you have, the less structure you have, the more flexible you really have to be because you don't have the luxury of paying someone, especially if you only have one engineering team, you don't necessarily have the luxury of paying someone just to be Scrum Master, for example. mean, even at HP when I was there, I was a Scrum Master and an engineer and a team lead.
Beth Rudden (10:03)
Mm-hmm.
Katie Smith (10:10)
Mm-hmm. We're not supposed to be, but like, whose
rules? Yeah.
Autumn Patterson (10:13)
Yeah, by whose rules. Yeah. And I mean, there
are plenty of companies that have figured out that one scrum master works well for four teams. Like you can, if you want to be a full-time scrum master, you go work for a company like that. But for the most part, no, I don't set up teams that way. I'll oftentimes as the manager also just be the scrum master until that stops working.
Beth Rudden (10:31)
Mm-hmm.
Autumn Patterson (10:39)
for our team until I'm too busy to really solve the problems that a Scrum master would solve. And then I look for the reasonable leader. But if we're a team of two or three engineers, then the structure really collapses in on itself, So you have to, you have to, ⁓ I think that's something to really embrace is like a lot of times we think of how to follow things like Scrum as like this.
Katie Smith (10:39)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (10:46)
Mm-hmm.
Katie Smith (10:53)
I'm go
Beth Rudden (10:54)
you
Mm-hmm.
Autumn Patterson (11:04)
Well, this is a perfect strategy and this is the perfect construction. But it's not like that. It's like the reason why agile is a set of principles is because it allows you to craft the actual art of following agile to the needs of your team and the needs of your company. And those could be radically different. mean, the companies that I've worked in the last six years are radically different from something like HP.
have radically different needs, radically different budgets, radically different power structures. It's not one size fits all. You have to try and understand. the beautiful thing, I guess this is an agile podcast now.
Beth Rudden (11:31)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Katie Smith (11:47)
I was
gonna say I'm into it. like have so many like they like what's ending beginning in this because like the principles I like you said like everyone's applied these principles and philosophies in different ways for different sectors. So it is flexible and I wonder like, yeah, do you think it's gonna look different in the future? Like what's ending and beginning an ad job?
Beth Rudden (11:47)
You
Autumn Patterson (12:06)
Yeah, you know, I think it probably will look different because like I said, I feel like there's a lot of backlash for agile right now and I've seen it done very poorly and I think there's a correlation. ⁓ I think, and it's not a matter of like a lot of political systems suffer from this. If you just did it right, then the principles would apply. It's like, wait, no, the principles are pretty flexible. So it's a matter of, and I've seen them work.
Katie Smith (12:20)
Haha.
You
Autumn Patterson (12:35)
Like it's not some ideal that can't be achieved. It's more, I think people are sick of it because it's kind of really a dog and pony show. It's turned into that. so we resist, engineers certainly resist those kinds of false ⁓ flags, those kinds of like things where you're just going through the motions and none of it's real. And nobody's super intentional about it.
Katie Smith (12:36)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (12:46)
That's right. Yeah.
Autumn Patterson (13:04)
So yeah, I think we'll probably come up with a system that looks different. I think ultimately we're going to find practices that make this more like engineering. I think that is possible. I just think it's harder. I think AI will actually help us get there, believe it or not. Yeah.
Katie Smith (13:14)
Mmm.
Beth Rudden (13:18)
Well, I'm
Katie Smith (13:20)
Yeah, I can see that.
Beth Rudden (13:22)
definitely old enough to know before Agile there was Waterfall. And then in between Waterfall and Agile, there was Wagile. I couldn't make this up if I tried.
Katie Smith (13:27)
god.
Autumn Patterson (13:34)
I feel like there's
a three-letter acronym in your past.
Katie Smith (13:39)
haha
Beth Rudden (13:41)
Or many.
and, you know, I love the, you know, I absolutely adore your very practical, grounded sort of hands on, like, let's get shit done kind of thing. And the but I do think and I want to kind of talk about this a lot is cursor.
Autumn Patterson (14:01)
Yeah.
Beth Rudden (14:01)
and
let's talk a little bit about what is more of a formal engineering pattern, which is test-driven development or domain-driven development. And like, you know, that is where I'm like, why aren't you guys using the GPT to write your test cases? And they're like, what, we're allowed to do that? And I'm like, yes.
Katie Smith (14:20)
if
This is a good
practice for that, yeah.
Beth Rudden (14:25)
It
is a good practice. So what are some good things that you have found in order to be able to use cursor or to kind of like use the GPT mansplainer to mansplain, like to write your test cases, to write your documentation, to write the things that you need to start to create your story points and how well you did. mean, engineers love doing that.
This is how well I solved my story point. And here's my test case and here's the code that you can actually see function against that test case. That's when I think it is working.
Autumn Patterson (15:05)
Yeah, and that's an interesting point because I feel like it's hard. So. ⁓
I've been, okay, let me, let me go here. I've been at my current company for just four months now. And so, ⁓ I kind of hit the ground running with, okay, we're going to implement AI here. We're going to think differently about how we're doing engineering. I'm going to lose my engineer in a couple of weeks because of, a positive change for him. ⁓ you know,
he's coming back, but in the meanwhile, it's largely going to be me and another person who's technically very adept. And then a lot of people in our organization that just like to code and want to take their evenings and weekends like crazy people and write code for us as well. So it's, it's a very different strategy from a really formal.
Beth Rudden (15:45)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Autumn Patterson (16:02)
structured team where it's like, I've hired engineers to do this work. ⁓ So what I'm doing in this environment, ⁓ and by the way, we're also ⁓ flying faster than our coding angels can, or coding faster than our coding angels can fly. So we're using AI really to ⁓ speed up our process. And we don't, we're not, there's,
Beth Rudden (16:29)
Yeah.
Autumn Patterson (16:31)
I'm starting to implement story points. So we also work with a contractor. And in that setting, in that specific setting, what I noticed is ⁓ we're not doing a very good job of utilizing their talents. And so what I decided I would do is like, well, we can put a structure around this where we have a clear time box and start thinking about velocity. And then I can use those measurements of velocity at
Beth Rudden (16:35)
Mm-hmm.
Katie Smith (16:47)
Good.
Beth Rudden (16:59)
Mm-hmm.
Autumn Patterson (17:00)
what we're trying to accomplish and structure our input as a company into that process with our contractors to have an outcome where we can go, ⁓ you know, if we started asking these sorts of things of our, our customer, not our customers, our, ⁓ our partners, they would probably be able to move faster and maybe, maybe even introduce added them as well.
Beth Rudden (17:07)
Mmm.
Autumn Patterson (17:26)
Back to your original question, that was a long walk off of a really short pier. ⁓ I think ultimately what will happen with that, I'm hoping at least we'll see, ⁓ is that we'll start seeing AI play a bigger and bigger role for both them and us. And we are gonna start hiring engineers into this process as well. And I'm looking for a way to kind of seamlessly make all that work. And I do think probably Cursor,
Beth Rudden (17:46)
Mm-hmm.
Katie Smith (17:50)
Hmm.
Autumn Patterson (17:53)
And Claude are going to be our core tools to really help us do that in a way where we're, we're, we're truly sprinting in a real, real sense. Yeah. We're moving really fast.
Beth Rudden (17:56)
Yeah. Yeah.
So say more, why Claude?
Autumn Patterson (18:05)
Why Claude? For several reasons. One is so far in the testing that I've done personally, so this is hardly empirical, but N equals one. ⁓ I found Claude to produce the most reliable code so far of the, that I've tried, and I've tried Claude, ChatGPT. You could call Lovable, something like that. ⁓
Beth Rudden (18:25)
Mm-hmm.
Autumn Patterson (18:34)
You can use Claude with Cursor, for example. That's really good. ⁓ It's really versatile. It allows, so the API is pretty easy to access in a lot of different ways. ⁓ And so, and now they have Claude, they have Claude code. That's harder to say than I realize. have Claude code, which is ⁓ really helpful. There's lots you can do with Claude code. For example, you could set up Claude code as a Git hook.
Beth Rudden (18:37)
Mm-hmm.
Katie Smith (18:38)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (18:51)
Claude. Yeah.
Katie Smith (18:55)
You
Beth Rudden (18:59)
Mm-hmm.
Autumn Patterson (19:03)
And you could go, hey, Claude code, ⁓ I'm getting ready to submit something. Could you do a PR for me on that? Thanks. And just a really good job with that. The downside with having a right test and stuff for you, what I've found so far, is ⁓ sometimes it's not real good at reasoning. And I wouldn't expect it to be. ⁓
Beth Rudden (19:08)
Yeah. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yep.
Katie Smith (19:28)
They're
not there yet.
Autumn Patterson (19:29)
They're not there yet.
Beth Rudden (19:30)
Mmm.
Autumn Patterson (19:30)
Right. And so you have
to be careful because it is just, it is just a generator at the end of the day. And so you have to understand sometimes it's going to generate. So I'll have test cases that are way off the rails, you know, and
Katie Smith (19:45)
Quick follow up on the Claude and Cursor. Do you find it's saving you time? Or are you like, no, I have to put all the pieces together on the back end, and so it doesn't save me time. Maybe it's just good for documentation. So for example, some of our engineers are like, it saved me 30 % today, or it saved me 80 % today if it's documentation. But if it's code, it leans more towards 30%. I'm like, well, that's quite nice, actually, that efficiency.
Autumn Patterson (20:10)
Well...
Katie Smith (20:10)
if it's real.
Autumn Patterson (20:13)
So.
Beth Rudden (20:13)
Well,
Autumn Patterson (20:13)
⁓
Beth Rudden (20:13)
you can find that out.
Autumn Patterson (20:16)
So I've
done it, okay, so I've done a couple of experiments with Claude so far, and I've just used it as well as a user, but there have been a couple of times where I've broken into experimentation. And this last round of experimentation, I'm still in the middle of, so I don't have a full round of data here, but what the reason I'm, so right now it's at 100%, pretty close to it.
Because what I've done, we started out, we're doing some new product development, like you do. That's important. ⁓ And it's rather undefined. ⁓ And the things that were defined were very, very nebuletic. And so I'm like, I think you guys need something to push against. And so I was like, I don't want to have to write that code. And I don't know if it's going to be any good because I don't think anyone knows what good is yet. ⁓
Katie Smith (20:58)
Ooh, fun.
Autumn Patterson (21:14)
So I was like, hey, Claude, how's it going? How would you like to write this for me? And it did. So we're using Claude in conjunction with Lovable. ⁓ Lovable, we found it to
Katie Smith (21:17)
haha
interesting.
Better
than Cursor, think, in terms of using Claude as a base or code tool, I should say.
Autumn Patterson (21:31)
I
So, Lovable is really, so I found it to be really great to build ⁓ front ends, like really quick. It struggles, it struggles with some of the more deep conceptual things, like I need authentication, like that actually works. It can't quite get there, right? But what it can do is it can at least go, you know, I don't have to sit there for days and days and days and goof around with a bunch of little
Beth Rudden (21:43)
Yeah.
Katie Smith (21:44)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right, yeah.
Autumn Patterson (22:06)
you know, ⁓ drop downs and widgets here and there and styling. Like it just goes, ⁓ this would probably be a good style and set up for what you need. And then you can tweak it and it's really easy. if you can't get Lovable to do what you need it to do, you just reach in and change the code. They've made that very easy.
Katie Smith (22:16)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yeah, which is great.
Yeah.
Autumn Patterson (22:25)
Interestingly
enough, so ChatGPT 5 just came out recently. I don't know when this is, I guess this is coming out this week, so this won't be super irrelevant. It just came out, right? So, ⁓ they, Lovable did a little experiment. I don't know if they're still doing it, but I got to be part of that test and I was, I was right in the middle of something. And so I thought I'd give it a shot. It gave me the option to turn on ChatGPT 5. It was way slower.
Katie Smith (22:51)
interesting. ⁓
Autumn Patterson (22:53)
It wasn't as creative, and I don't like using that word
because I know it doesn't mean what we think it means here. ⁓ But the solutions it would come up with were a little bit more sterile, ⁓ which was interesting to me. And that was the feedback I gave. And a lot of other people, I think, gave that feedback too. And they switched it off. And maybe they just wanted that data. I don't know. But that was my experience there. Anyway, all that to say, yeah.
Beth Rudden (23:03)
Yeah.
Katie Smith (23:04)
Mm-hmm.
That's very interesting.
Autumn Patterson (23:22)
Yeah, I've been using,
Katie Smith (23:23)
Yeah.
Autumn Patterson (23:24)
so I would, so part of my workflow for this was to say, okay, I'm going to build this piece out. That's a big, giant question mark in Lovable and have it kind of define some of the ground rules, set that up in the tool that's a lot of times used that back into that called super base. And it's all set up. It has a sed function. And then I kind of go yoink and take that over to Claude and say, okay Claude, plus I have it.
Katie Smith (23:43)
Mm-hmm.
⁓
Autumn Patterson (23:51)
best thing about Claude right now is they set up projects. And there's a whole lot of different data, different kinds of data that I need for my generation to really be grounded in something reasonable. There's formulas, there's APIs we use, there's several different things. And so I've loaded all of that up in there too with some examples and all kinds of things like that.
Katie Smith (24:07)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Autumn Patterson (24:17)
really giving Claude a lot of context to work with. And I just said, OK, here's what we're trying to do. And I understand it now, but I didn't then. So I didn't even understand how this particular instrument worked. Claude actually helped me learn what it was I was doing. But I just, you know, that's the way it works. so it's
Katie Smith (24:20)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
wow.
You're vibe coding
now. You're like a vibe coder now.
Beth Rudden (24:41)
Well, well,
Autumn Patterson (24:43)
I'm like,
Beth Rudden (24:44)
it can...
Autumn Patterson (24:44)
I'm going to try it. Let's vibe code. That's really what's happening. Yeah, exactly.
Beth Rudden (24:48)
But fill in the blank. mean, Autumn, what you were lacking was a domain expertise in this particular area. And so Claude was able to help translate it because it's a very common area of finance and fintech. And so there's a whole language that, of course, Claude has that language that helps you interpret that. ⁓ I do, I, you know,
Autumn Patterson (24:53)
That is right.
That's all. That's it.
Exactly.
Beth Rudden (25:14)
I went to my CTO and I was like, hey, who's using cursor? And he's like, I need to show you something because that's how my CTO functions. And so he like pulls up somebody's code and he's like, look at how elegant and gorgeous and wonderful this is. And I like start reading it. was like, damn, this is really, really slick. It's great. And I'm like, wait a second, isn't that like a function that's part of our core libraries? And he's like, exactly. He's like, it rewrites.
Everything. So all of the encapsulation, polymorphism, like all of the traditional principles that you would get out of object-oriented language where you write something once and deploy many, you lose all of it. Because unless you feed your entire code base and allow it access to your GitHub repo, it's going to go, you need a...
Katie Smith (26:08)
Let's choke on that.
Beth Rudden (26:10)
you need a shitty authentication function here in the middle of your like whatever call and you're like, no, you don't. And so that was my, know, kind of like I just wanted to talk about like, you know, these ideas of object oriented programming language that date back to C++ when you finally didn't have to write the window in order to write your code in. Like that still holds true and
those type of software architectures like microservices or SOA, ⁓ all of that needs to be understood by the system. Otherwise, it's going to rewrite it all the time in beautifully elegant code, which sounds great until you have 27 copies of a slightly varied function that you really should have written once and encapsulated into or inherited into.
Katie Smith (27:02)
Hmm.
Beth Rudden (27:06)
your next batch of code. And that's where I think it was very interesting. And my CTO made me understand by reading other people's code in a second. That's what I want to ask you. How many people do you think can read other people's code?
Autumn Patterson (27:22)
Oh, I don't know. I feel like there's probably, I'm just going to throw a number out there because all statistics, 75 % of statistics are made up on the spot. I would say 10 to 20 % probably of engineers can really effectively read other people's code.
Katie Smith (27:34)
Hahaha
Beth Rudden (27:39)
That's right.
Yeah, I used to have this like ⁓ evolution of the engineer. yeah, evolution of the engineer. People learn by copying and pasting. So it's a mimic. It's a simulation of reading other people's code. But what they're really doing is they're like Stack Overflow, Chat, GPT, whatever, give me the code and then slap it in. it worked good. They're not reading and understanding.
Katie Smith (27:44)
I am surprised by that. I am surprised by that.
Well, I understand the cut and paste, but you're
saying like they don't even learn how to read it.
Beth Rudden (28:06)
Nope. then, and then you start with a blank sheet, literally. And then if they're good enough, they can start to read other people's code because it's typically, ⁓ you know, somebody's story and stories. I used, I'm super old. Excuse me. I, yeah, I used to make, I used to make people write out as a story beginning, middle, and end.
and then use that to start to create test cases and your middle is your main and like, you know, who are your characters, what are the things and the functions you want to do over and over again. So it is what it is. like, I think it's very interesting to me to use cursor or any sort of generative AI for anything that is disposable. So like, if you know that you need something that you need to show as a prototype,
Katie Smith (28:54)
Everyone.
Beth Rudden (28:58)
or you know that you need something that you are going to run up once to go get the weather in Denver at this moment in time, like whatever it is, like you can write it as a, know, or have it generated. And that's where I love having the solid architecture.
And then you can use the architecture to say, OK, go generate, ⁓ this agent generates this type of code for this type of function that can be inherited into this entire system. So then you can have the ability to have that polymorphism and that object to be able to have that many. So anyway, I went way down in the deep end on this one. I don't hear.
I do not hear engineers talking about this enough because, know, the, the, and second question I really want to talk about a little bit is Autumn, you have a background in both, you're really hands-on and even in this conversation, you're like all the way down, you know, 50,000 feet down.
all the way at the ground and then you can pull yourself 50,000 feet back up and you have the understanding of the strategy as well as like how to pull up the teams. How did you do that? you know, what, yeah, like, how do you have the deep technical focus and the big picture thinking? It's the, you know, it's the, both the vertical and the horizontal. What do you, what do you think, how did you create that?
Katie Smith (30:17)
That's real talent right there. Rare talent.
Autumn Patterson (30:20)
Thanks.
Beth Rudden (30:32)
instinct and that knowledge. Like how do you train other people to do that too?
Autumn Patterson (30:36)
Yeah, so when I started at HP 100 years ago, ⁓ my mentor talked to me about going up and down the mountain ⁓ and thinking about and filling in the gaps where necessary where you don't have the actual data, but make reasonable guesses. So for example, if you go as a junior engineer at HP trying to go up the mountain, you want to ask the question, ⁓
How would this ensure that we make money off of our product? I was writing a USB driver at the time. How does it make us money? Well, I can plug in a keyboard. I don't know. That's kind of a hard question to answer. Yeah. Well, these are just work relations. Whatever. We don't need them. Yeah, absolutely.
Beth Rudden (31:09)
Mm-hmm.
Hahaha!
Or a mouse.
You
Katie Smith (31:29)
Tch.
Beth Rudden (31:29)
Or a
coffee holder with the CD-ROM player?
Autumn Patterson (31:32)
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
The copy holder or, ⁓ you know, we moved into mass storage, which is really, that started getting really interesting, really fast. You can imagine going from my sinky boards to mass storage, for example, and plugging a thumbnail drive and how that changed everything for us. When we started thinking about that, there are lots of other aspects to that project that won't get into, but, ⁓ having someone set down and say, Hey, you need to start thinking about how.
Beth Rudden (31:46)
yeah.
Autumn Patterson (32:01)
this line of code goes all the way up 50,000 feet and then back down and affects and then out even thinking about like how this is going to affect other pieces of the puzzle, et cetera, was a really powerful way of thinking. And sometimes it really got me in trouble because a lot of engineers are really bottom up and they don't think about that. And I was being taught to be more middle out.
Beth Rudden (32:20)
Mm-hmm.
Katie Smith (32:20)
Ooh, I'm interested in that part.
Autumn Patterson (32:30)
⁓ and really that middle out comes with a spiral. ⁓ so you're going up and down the mountain, but it really more looks like a spiral where you are, you're thinking about, okay, well, I don't want to just do this one thing. That's the other piece of it is, he taught me this idea of a golden thread where it's like, well, it's kind of like vibe coding. And I've used that to like back into what people are calling coding today. But, but the idea is, like, well, ⁓
I'm going to write something and it might be wrong and I'm okay with that. I'm going to sit with the discomfort of not necessarily knowing I'm going to be right and then figure out how to build it from there. The next piece of that is then learning how to think about how those golden threads get better and better. So the next time you start something new, you're starting something new that's going to be stronger. Or the alternative way to approach that is I'm going to
Beth Rudden (33:15)
Mm-hmm.
Autumn Patterson (33:26)
build two or three of these things in very, very short order and know I'm going to throw them away. And so you start getting past the fallacy of the sunken cost and all of those sorts of things. So there's a curriculum that I like to bring engineers through that is a combination of object-oriented training. There's a book called Anti-Patterns out there that's still really good.
Beth Rudden (33:53)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Autumn Patterson (33:54)
to read,
highly recommend if you can find it. ⁓ Object-oriented patterns, I think, is still important. So the Gang of Four, think, you know, I'm showing my age here, but I think these things are still really very valuable. And ⁓ if I don't have those resources available, I still will teach through those materials, ⁓ even if I don't make them available as references. And that's a start towards that. And then I start getting people to think about
Beth Rudden (33:58)
Yep.
Autumn Patterson (34:23)
Like ⁓ I trained a project manager at my previous company. And ⁓ one of the things she wanted to do right away was start putting dates on things because who doesn't? It's like, well, if I measure, this is my way to measure things. You're both shaking your head, you know, where this is headed. But I was like, well, that's interesting. What business case does that serve? So there's all these heuristics you can start thinking about too. so I trained her.
Katie Smith (34:45)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (34:45)
Mm-hmm.
Business case should
not be a heuristic. It should be like... Don't you find that? You're right. Project managers, formal scrum masters, a lot of it is like, here is the dragon we have to slay. And I'm like, why did you create that? Why did you create that project plan now that is the dragon we have to slay? We have enough work to do.
Autumn Patterson (35:06)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Right. it may not, yeah,
well, and it may not have anything to do with what we actually need to accomplish for the business. Like have we asked that question? And so, and if we have, then why does this date matter? And what happens? the, the heuristic, this is the heuristic I was getting to was what happens if we don't hit that date? Does the company fail? okay. That's like our top priority now. And we've got to hit that date.
Beth Rudden (35:30)
take.
Katie Smith (35:33)
Mm-hmm.
Autumn Patterson (35:37)
is it like just another day in paradise? It's like, I don't care if that day gets hit or not. I'm going to go find the things that are going to move my business forward. And it's one thing to do that at HP where everything's kind of cushy and if you mess up and don't get the right answers. You get, well, I know it's, it's, well, it's still wait, listen, it's still, it's still way more cushy than, than the startup environment.
Katie Smith (35:40)
You
Beth Rudden (35:51)
It's not cushy anymore, Autumn.
Autumn Patterson (36:05)
it's like, you know, your project's probably going to be canceled in six months from now and, and you want to create value for the company anyway. And you're just excited to, to be a developer and, and value wherever you go. Like those are really great things to think about as a developer. ⁓ What you'll find is, is you're able to create things that survive that cancellation of the project.
Beth Rudden (36:15)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Autumn Patterson (36:28)
One of my
open source projects out there is living proof of that.
Beth Rudden (36:32)
We
have many threads. How does this relate to the recruiting for people who can actually get shit done? For delivery?
Autumn Patterson (36:34)
in the future.
Yeah,
that's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love how you, I'm probably gonna give away little secret. You can just cut this out if you want. Your question that you gave me was a lot longer than that, but I like your version better. How do you find people to get shit done? Bottom line.
Katie Smith (36:51)
We love sickens.
I'm sorry.
Beth Rudden (36:58)
Yeah, well, I mean,
and isn't that also the answer to how you have to understand what shit needs to get done? Like you have to light a fire. Like you have to be able to know what is the business priority. And there are many people who do not want to go up the mountain at all. They just want to, they just want to do the code that works and, or on the data science version here, it's 97%. I'm like against what?
hahahahah
Autumn Patterson (37:29)
% obviously n equals 5 million. I don't know what do you want?
Katie Smith (37:31)
Haha
Beth Rudden (37:33)
well it was 60 and I'm like against what?
Autumn Patterson (37:37)
What happens when we get to 100? Yes. Can we get to 500 %? Is that okay? I don't know. There's new math out there. I've heard stories. Anyway. Divide by zero error. Finally done. Good. Halting problem solved.
Beth Rudden (37:38)
Yes.
You
Divide by zero error. Good job. ⁓
Katie Smith (37:55)
How much of your time
do you think is recommended just to let people do that sandbox creative thinking that you were sort of alluding to earlier? Like, I feel like that's almost like essential to give people that creative strategic time so that when they do have to climb the mountain, they've almost like exercise their brain so that they can. Is that a thing?
Beth Rudden (38:02)
Mm.
Mm-hmm.
Autumn Patterson (38:19)
It can be a thing. Let me back up for a minute. I want to talk about that. I don't think every engineer is set up to go up and down the mountain. I think there's some engineers, you just leave them at the bottom of the mountain and they do the knitting that they are adept at doing. There are different, I mean, just like.
Beth Rudden (38:34)
Mm-hmm.
Katie Smith (38:38)
Everybody has, there always
has to be a group that's managing base camp. I'm really thinking of Everest right now. You're making me think of like Everest. There's people who climb the mountain and hopefully they come back alive. And there's people who keep base camp that makes it so that we can even climb the mountain. Right. Yeah.
Autumn Patterson (38:46)
Yeah, well then how do you foster that?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
And so ⁓ I always view that as a process of mentorship because ⁓ nobody teaches you that in school, right? Like, and maybe in the software engineering curriculum at UC Boulder, I don't know, there's very few software engineering curricula out there. It's all computer science. So you're just all nerding out on like what the ones and zeros are. And nobody's telling you how to actually write software.
Beth Rudden (39:02)
Mm-hmm.
Nope, nope, all the, nope, nope, nope. Maybe ⁓ I'm.
Autumn Patterson (39:21)
Right. Like, let's be honest, that's the dirty secret of our industry.
Katie Smith (39:21)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (39:24)
That is such, it's not a dirty secret. It's like ⁓ every large company will teach you how to software in the way of that particular leader. So, and you'll hear it in, ⁓ I was trained by John's team or I was trained by Paul's team or Phil's team. It's very rarely Mary's team or Beth's team or Autumn's team, but. ⁓
Katie Smith (39:48)
Not anymore, we're changing that right now, folks, on this podcast.
Beth Rudden (39:54)
But it is, all in the language and it's not about, I mean, we've talked about principles and techniques, both words are very bad. Like, you know, we should be talking about product and things that are already built, not, anyway, I digress, but yes.
Autumn Patterson (40:09)
Yeah. Well,
yeah. And if we're going to talk about principles, that's, see, here's the thing. That's, if we talk about principles, then we have to, that has burned a lot of managers because there are engineers that want to climb up in the ivory tower. And then all we do is we set up tools and we think about principles.
Katie Smith (40:24)
Hmm.
Beth Rudden (40:24)
That's right.
They talk about tools. Here's my tool.
Autumn Patterson (40:32)
And boy is this really, really great. And give me three or four years and I will give you the most perfectly constructed system of software development and maybe eventually get around to actually writing software in that system.
Katie Smith (40:47)
was gonna say that's definitely not a startup environment.
Beth Rudden (40:52)
It is, it is, there's a, I see a version of that all the time. so, yeah, absolutely. They take one vertical slice and they're like, here is your app. It is fully functional. It is enterprise worthy. It has total governance around it. And you're like, what's the difference between your authentication and your authorization mechanism? there's a difference? ⁓
Katie Smith (40:56)
Really?
Autumn Patterson (40:56)
all the time.
Zero. No.
What's the difference? I don't know.
Katie Smith (41:18)
love I just want to
say for the audience I am a non technical CEO on a podcast right now with two engineers if anyone else is not following you're not alone it's okay
Beth Rudden (41:20)
you
Autumn Patterson (41:29)
Sorry, we're totally nerding
Katie Smith (41:31)
No, no, actually, I love it.
I'm just like, there's, there's every like every beat. I'm like, I think I got that one. Next beat. I'm not sure about that one. Next beat. I don't think I understood that point. So yeah.
Autumn Patterson (41:38)
⁓ Feel free to write us in at any time. my goodness. The back, I was just going to say back to that point
Beth Rudden (41:39)
You
Autumn Patterson (41:47)
of like, ⁓ the engineers, you identify the engineers that can go up and down the mountain. And this, want to get all the way back. Spider, we're spider webbing here. I want to get all the way back to how do we hire good engineers that can get shit done. So, so.
Katie Smith (41:58)
Let's do it.
Beth Rudden (42:02)
Mm-hmm.
Autumn Patterson (42:04)
And that falls into camps and I love Kevin Borders. I don't know if you know him at all, but I hope you do. And if you don't, by the end of this podcast, please go look him up. He's so brilliant. ⁓ Everything that I have learned and talked about, he has also learned and has applied in his career and has this great newsletter that he puts out called Minimal Engineering on Substack. There is a pitch for you for the day, but.
Beth Rudden (42:08)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Katie Smith (42:14)
Okay, I love it.
Mmm.
Beth Rudden (42:30)
you
Autumn Patterson (42:31)
He said there's two kinds of engineers. There's ones that have been to Burning Man and there's ones that haven't. And you should make sure that your team has both. That was recent. was like the whole few days. I'm I'm just going to some money. Anyway.
Beth Rudden (42:42)
Mm-hmm.
Katie Smith (42:43)
That actually deeply resonates with me.
Beth Rudden (42:48)
Yeah,
I have a very different philosophy on that. ⁓ I mean, fish, Grateful Dead, like you can insert different variations of that over time. But yeah, I think that that's, I think you need field engineers. And I also think you need like your DevSecOps engineers. And then you really need your developers. And those are three distinct camps.
And ⁓ it's very difficult to, ⁓ when you're in a startup, people have to literally put on different hats. Because your field engineers have to talk to your users. Your DevSecOps have to make shit automated as hell so that they can get back to playing the video games, which they don't have time to play because they have to put on another hat and go develop the code. The DevSecOps people like...
Autumn Patterson (43:25)
That's right.
Katie Smith (43:35)
the
You
Beth Rudden (43:41)
say, it's, it's, it's automatable, go develop new code, you know, so it's like, it's very hard when you're in a startup, but there are, I do three camps, not just up and down the mountain. Like I need all of those engineers to at least be aware there's, there's a damn mountain and not to create one. Have you ever met the engineer that creates the mountain? yeah. That, that's, that's
Autumn Patterson (44:01)
Yep. Yep.
Beth Rudden (44:03)
That's the 10x coder that nobody else can read their code. They can't follow without a... That is a danger, yes. Because they don't know how to function on Teams, really great at R &D and prototyping, do not ask for any sort of production-grade ⁓ engineering. ⁓ We went back into engineering, I'm going to divert us a little bit. ⁓
Katie Smith (44:04)
That scares me.
Autumn Patterson (44:13)
That's a dangerous 10x coder.
Katie Smith (44:16)
I see.
Got it.
Autumn Patterson (44:30)
Yeah, we can
move away from that. But I didn't fully deliver on my promise that I was going to weave back all the way back to the beginning. That's fine.
Beth Rudden (44:38)
Yeah,
Katie Smith (44:38)
You're still working on it, it's fine.
Beth Rudden (44:38)
well, yeah, we'll get there. ⁓ You know, technical environments are, ⁓ they're shitty for people who are different, like completely, especially because the status quo is your brogrammer with like, you know, the hoodie. So as a trans woman in technology, how's your lived experience and how has that informed your approach to leadership, mentorship and creating more? ⁓ I want to say the word was welcoming, but I actually think the word is inclusive.
Autumn Patterson (44:41)
We'll get there. Perfect.
Beth Rudden (45:07)
I think that's the right word.
Autumn Patterson (45:07)
The word is inclusive. Yeah,
⁓ definitely and more and more. ⁓ So being anything, but being trans is a journey, right? ⁓ So ⁓ my first experience with that journey was pre-transition, where I was really trying to be someone I was told I was supposed to be. ⁓ Forget about it. It was impossible. I was trying to live up to too many other people's standards and then applying that to everyone else.
Beth Rudden (45:17)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Autumn Patterson (45:37)
my level of inclusion was just based in a very small version of the faith that I carried with me. Not very inclusive at all. Transitioning and allowing myself just to be myself allowed me to adopt a much bigger view of that. And I thought I was doing a really good job back then, by the way, of being inclusive. was a value I had, but I just didn't understand how to do that because I wasn't.
Katie Smith (45:44)
Mmm.
Autumn Patterson (46:04)
I wasn't even including myself. So once I transitioned, leadership became attainable to me in this way, in this industry that I love so much. I was doing leadership outside of that, but I was like deer in the headlights all the time because I was so busy focused. I spent so much energy and time trying to fit the mold that I was supposed to be in, that it was difficult for me.
Katie Smith (46:06)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (46:06)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Katie Smith (46:23)
Mmm.
Autumn Patterson (46:32)
to actually think outside of that and think about strategy and without thinking about how does this impact me? The biggest shift that I had through transition was, which is going to be mind blowing probably for some people to really hear, but the biggest shift was I shifted away from thinking about myself all the time. A lot of people believe that you transition,
Beth Rudden (46:41)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Autumn Patterson (46:57)
in or you you come out as queer because you're trying to draw all this attention to yourself. It's like, no, I'm announcing to the world I no longer doing this. I am moving on to my actual self now. And in so doing, I don't think about myself at all anymore. I mean, I do, obviously, I comb my hair, whatever, but but I'm not I'm not fixated on that anymore. And that really freed me up.
Beth Rudden (47:11)
Mmm.
Autumn Patterson (47:23)
to think about other people and how systems impact people and all these other things that I was missing out on before because I had to be so kind of narrow focused on trying to fit the mold and why doesn't everyone else want to fit the mold? Anyway, all that to say that and learning about
Katie Smith (47:24)
Hmm.
Beth Rudden (47:40)
Mm-hmm.
Autumn Patterson (47:48)
how our systems in this country have failed us. And all these other aspects help me when it comes to interviewing candidates that don't look like me or talk like me or to try to have an understanding of their lived experience, the best that I know how with a, because I'm still very privileged. I still have lots of privilege and just recognizing that ⁓ is really critical.
Beth Rudden (47:51)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Katie Smith (47:58)
Thank you.
Autumn Patterson (48:15)
to being able to step up and say, I have this individual that I'm interviewing right now on Zoom, by the way, because that's just the way it works these days, which is more difficult, frankly, I think, my opinion. ⁓ And I need to show up for this person in a way that is trying to empathize with them. And empathy is really the biggest thing that I think you can bring to the table. And being queer,
Beth Rudden (48:25)
Mm-hmm.
Autumn Patterson (48:42)
⁓ and being a part of the queer community actually helps me with that. It's not magic or anything like that. It's just, I think we have a unique history that helps us be more empathetic and more accepting because we've been so marginalized as a community.
Beth Rudden (48:54)
Mm-hmm.
Katie Smith (48:54)
That's right.
We know what it looks like.
Autumn Patterson (49:00)
We know what it looks like. We know what it looks like. and that translates to racism and that translates to these things. And that's some people get upset when, when we, when we queerlings say something like that. But the truth is, is there are parallels there. ⁓ Like oppression is oppression and it comes in many forms.
Katie Smith (49:06)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
You can have privilege
and still see oppression. It's complicated. It's messy. Yeah, ⁓ I'm queer, non-binary, neurodivergent. But I still have total privilege. So when I walk into spaces, I can see marginalized and I can feel my privilege at the same time.
Autumn Patterson (49:24)
That's right. That's right. It's it is and it's hard to see and it's hard to see.
Right. That's
right. Yeah. And it's got, I will tell you too, ⁓ while it's, it's helped me become more open-minded and broad, broad visioned about how I approach employment, how I approach my colleagues. It's also gotten me in trouble because now, now that I see it, you can't unsee it. And so when it happens, how do you approach that and how do you deal with that? And I've had good success with that.
Katie Smith (49:56)
You can't unsee it. ⁓
tricky.
Autumn Patterson (50:06)
And I've
had giant flame outs with that. Like there's, there's good and bad, right? It's how we learn. Yeah. That's right. That's right. So, ⁓ but yeah.
Katie Smith (50:09)
Yeah, this is how we learn. Yeah.
Beth Rudden (50:17)
Well, and
that got you all the way back to where I wanted you to go. That's how you also look for the team. anthropologists here, human groups are their own agents with their own sense making. And we tend to think in systems and not actually use the words human groups are not just components of the system.
they actually have their own agency. And so, you know, the queer folk have their own sense making that is rooted in empathy and based in empathy and, you know, a result of oppression. And so when you are building your well-performing team and interviewing, you're actually looking for a human who can help you with your sense making within that group, not as a component of the system.
And that's where I think people get it wrong when they refer to human groups as components of the system. It's so much more. And it's so much more of that you can't just like your journey. It just clicked when you said this, Autumn, you can't go from the individual to the general. You can't go from the individual to the group. But what you can do is start to understand
What is that? What is me as an individual in reference to this group that I'm either forming, creating or part of? Then you can understand that you have your own agency and that's the sense making that you're doing as a part of that group. And that's the syllopsis fallacy that you can't go from the small to the big, but you can go from big to the small if you are understanding it as
every single group is their own ecosystem. Everyone has their own feelings in this. And Katie is a non-binary person. I'm hoping this resonates because I think we do it wrong when we just say you're a component of the system. And I'm like, no, no, no. That's an individual group with their individual agency with their individual sense making.
Katie Smith (52:10)
Right here.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I love the sense-making part of that, Beth. That really resonates with me because I think that's why, like, DEI is not charity. It's strategy. It's strategy. Yeah.
Autumn Patterson (52:38)
Yeah, can we say that? Is that okay?
Beth Rudden (52:42)
No, it's an economic fucking imperative. And
it's also a mathematical theorem and it's a proof QED and all of the things. All right, so technical environments too. I wanna really draw this out Autumn because like, when I first met you, I was like, holy shit, you have the coding confidence of like in all of that story.
Tell me about like your coding confidence during your transition. Did that change on how people started to look at your code, ⁓ give you roles? you did you see that change? you and I have talked about glue work, I think before, like on the team, like the girl always does the glue work and, you know, does that. that, did you experience that? Because I thought you were just such a,
fucking amazing, confident, know, amalgamation of like the very few senior engineers that I had met in my life that are women, but also with like, you you've just got the, you've just got that, that surety that, that doesn't necessarily come easily to women in these situations because of the oppression thing.
Autumn Patterson (54:00)
Yeah, so in my journey, man, I'm gonna have to think this through for a second, but I can tell you the neurons are really firing as you're talking about that because like my glue, I was a lot more of like a glue individual contributor before I transitioned. And I would take on leadership roles outside of work.
and all of those things. And some of that I gained through privilege. Some of that I gained through curiosity. Like there were all these things that kind of came together. So when I did come out and then I had, I just kind of unlocked who I was, who I actually was as I was already, yeah. Well, and was already, so I was the glue as the boy on the team, as one of the boys on the team. Nobody bought that by the way.
Beth Rudden (54:41)
And like achievement.
Katie Smith (54:45)
Badger's achieved!
Beth Rudden (54:48)
Right, right, right. Well, in that.
There is a glue man in baseball, by the way. So there is a boy reference for that. But it's not as. Yeah, I mean.
Autumn Patterson (54:59)
Sure, sure.
The glue doesn't have to be gendered, but I was already stepping into those kinds of roles. ⁓ was, know, Scrum Master is a very gluey kind of position.
Katie Smith (55:10)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (55:10)
Mm-hmm.
Autumn Patterson (55:11)
And I will say back to the very, very first question, what's changing? What's ending and what's happening?
Beth Rudden (55:16)
Yes, yes,
yes.
Autumn Patterson (55:18)
I I left so much on the table. I built a really great life for myself and I don't have any of that now. Like I don't, like it's all gone. I don't have a car right now. That's where I'm at. But in the process of that, I've learned how to be myself. know, believe it or not, it is worth it. It is absolutely worthless. Worthless, it's absolutely worthless.
Katie Smith (55:27)
I hear him.
Hmm, worth it.
I believe you. I believe you, of course, because you are your authentic
Beth Rudden (55:40)
Priceless, priceless.
Autumn Patterson (55:44)
worth it. It's priceless. It really is. And,
Katie Smith (55:44)
self. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Autumn Patterson (55:47)
and, and I'm, I'm to the point now, what's beginning for me is I'm building a new life is, is I get to do that now. And I get to do it in a way where I feel like I'm a part of the life I get to have. That was the thing is I was, I built this perfect life. That was really great, pretty cushy. And I could look in on that.
Beth Rudden (56:06)
Mm-hmm.
Katie Smith (56:09)
Perfect.
Autumn Patterson (56:10)
Yeah, I could look in on that and I love, there's so many things I loved about that, especially the people. I still love all those same people. ⁓ But ⁓ now, now I don't have to be on the outside looking in anymore. And that's powerful. And part of that experience for me is being able to take all of those learnings and then actually fricking be a leader, like a real leader where I can be egoless, show up, be confident.
Katie Smith (56:24)
Hmm.
Beth Rudden (56:26)
Mmm.
Autumn Patterson (56:38)
and know that I can come and do well with it in whatever I do, whether it's in engineering or politics or however I'm showing up.
Beth Rudden (56:49)
Hmm.
I see you.
Autumn Patterson (56:53)
Thanks.
Katie Smith (56:54)
you
are seeing.
Autumn Patterson (56:55)
Thanks.
Beth Rudden (56:55)
many years ⁓ have you lived transitioned?
Autumn Patterson (56:58)
Yeah, let's see. believe it's I'm coming up on year nine of social transition.
Beth Rudden (57:03)
Yeah,
yeah. that's, ⁓ I heard this instead of asking people how old they are, you ask them, how long have you lived?
Autumn Patterson (57:12)
How long have I lived? Yeah.
Beth Rudden (57:14)
I
love that. It's just that reframe. it's just like, Autumn, even in the probably three or four years that you and I have known each other, I definitely, you've been becoming this leader that we need in the technical realm. And one of the reasons that I wanted to do this is I think that what's
What's ending is the plethora of good technical leaders. And what's beginning is that good technical leaders need the space time energy wherewithal sponsorship to create more because we do not have enough at all in this world right now. It is super rare to find.
Autumn Patterson (58:03)
Yeah, it is difficult to find, I agree with that. Like even people that I want to hire into leadership underneath me, it's difficult to find. It's, yeah.
Katie Smith (58:03)
I agree.
It's tricky right now.
And you know, maybe it's not the, it might be a second ⁓ podcast with you, but I would love to know, you know, as we wrap up, is there like one thing that like, you know, as a non-technical CEO or the non-technical people that work with you, like what is the one thing you wish we knew that can support you?
Autumn Patterson (58:32)
⁓ yeah. What we do is not magic. I know that's, I got Beth on that one. Yes he is. But that magical thinking is a lot of what is destructive. Large companies, small companies.
Beth Rudden (58:36)
Haha
It is too.
Hahaha!
But it's also the life force of the team. All the team ever needs to do anything is belief that they can. And so, yeah, I agree. Yeah, I agree. That is different. You're right.
Autumn Patterson (59:03)
That's different. Yeah. so
what I mean by magical thinking is ⁓ like, okay, so here's some ways that that kind of falls apart. me, because I'm an engineer, I always am more negative than positive. Let me tell you about all the ways this flows up. But, know, so when you have this kind of magical thinking, if you can't...
Katie Smith (59:22)
used to this it's all fine
Autumn Patterson (59:33)
If you hire an incompetent technical leader into that space, then you're just like, why isn't this working? And you don't have any answers. Not good answers at least that can, that can, and maybe that person actually is competent, but is, is like just not connecting. And how do you tell the difference? If it's all magic, there's no real way to tell any difference. And vice versa. Like you may have a very, very competent technical leader.
Beth Rudden (59:37)
Yes.
Katie Smith (59:50)
Uh-huh.
Autumn Patterson (1:00:00)
But you, it just, it all looks like magic. So you're like, well, why can't you just do it tomorrow? Like this is super important for the company. Why can't, why can't you just fill in the blank? Right. And, and so, and we get asked that a lot by the way is, can't you just, ⁓ and, and, ⁓ no, a lot of times, no, can't. But what we can do, yeah, what we can do is this 25 point plan that'll get you there. You know,
Katie Smith (1:00:17)
mmm
The answer is no.
Autumn Patterson (1:00:29)
There's, think we've talked a lot about.
Katie Smith (1:00:32)
And then if you
want to make God laugh, have a plan. But it's all okay. You know, we like plans,
Autumn Patterson (1:00:35)
Right, yeah.
Beth Rudden (1:00:36)
Well,
but that 25 point plan, if you know that your team needs a half a day per point, it's not 14 days later. It's not 12 and 1 half days later. It's not, well, if we added more engineers, you could do that in two days. And that's the whole, but yeah.
Katie Smith (1:00:48)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sort of just kidding. ⁓
Autumn Patterson (1:00:50)
Right.
Right. Yeah.
Katie Smith (1:00:58)
That's when agile
works.
Autumn Patterson (1:01:00)
If, if I was going to say, if you let your technical leader build out an ethos of, of, of, of systematic, predictability, like agile, ⁓ but you have to let them do that. And then you have to be curious enough to understand at least the high level mechanics and statistics that come out of that.
Beth Rudden (1:01:12)
There you go.
Katie Smith (1:01:18)
Mm-hmm.
Mm.
Autumn Patterson (1:01:25)
or at least by software that does help you do that. If you don't, if it's not making any sense.
Katie Smith (1:01:25)
Thank you.
Beth Rudden (1:01:33)
There is no software that will actually put the data in the system. The human beings have to put the data in the system and have to understand. There's no software anywhere that will define story points for you. have to actually create the... There's so much creativity. We probably need to have another entire session. ⁓
Autumn Patterson (1:01:40)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Katie Smith (1:01:56)
Yeah.
Autumn Patterson (1:01:59)
It's right
Beth Rudden (1:01:59)
Adam,
Autumn Patterson (1:01:59)
there.
Beth Rudden (1:01:59)
this has been just joyous for me. Thank you so much for, ⁓ thank you so much for being here.
Autumn Patterson (1:02:03)
So sure, it's gonna be fun.
Katie Smith (1:02:06)
One
of the things that you said that I deeply resonated with is just like, you have to be curious. I feel like that's the one takeaway that I wish like every visit. Like, no, you don't have the answer. Just be okay with maybe you don't have the answer. Just like be curious. Autumn, would you like anyone to be able to find you or do you want to lift up anything that you're working on right now? It's totally up to you. It's up to you if you want to like do any shout outs.
Autumn Patterson (1:02:30)
Yeah, man, do I want people to find me? Well, let's see. I do really heady stuff on Quora. Good luck. I'm not going to tell you how to find me on there, but if you do, have fun with that.
Beth Rudden (1:02:40)
You
Katie Smith (1:02:43)
Okay, We
know people like these Easter egg hunts, there you go, everyone.
Autumn Patterson (1:02:47)
I'll let you hunt for that. you can always find me on LinkedIn. ⁓ I like to engage people on LinkedIn ⁓ professionally. That's a joy of mine. ⁓ So yeah, those are two quick ways ⁓ you can find me.
Katie Smith (1:03:03)
Amazing. Thank you so much for today.
Beth Rudden (1:03:28)
Thank you so much for tuning in. And We Feel Fine is sponsored by Bast.ai. We are pioneering full stack explainable AI, a complete alternative to that black box AI that uses so much compute. Please like, subscribe, restack, do all the things we would love to hear from you. Thank you for tuning in.
Katie Smith (1:03:47)
This podcast is also brought to you by Humma.ai Inc, a California benefit corporation creating empathetic AI made by and for community. Please subscribe. It really matters. Join us on Substack,
All right, and done.
Beth Rudden (1:04:03)
awesome.