Brioche Bake-Off!!!!

Today was brioche bake-off day. Here are the contestants:

The person who made the third one arrived late, so we had already started with the first two. Then we did a second round of voting including the third one (with new people).

And the winner was..... the third one. Which I did not bake. In fact, I ended up coming last (mine was the broken burnt-looking one on the right).

No, I did not tank the competition on purpose! I tried my best!

However, there is a slight consolation prize. The person who ended up baking the winning brioche works in the team that I'd like to work in someday. So it was a good networking opportunity, and I have something else that I can share with him. =) I found out he's a really keen baker, and when he was trying to win over his now-wife, he would always bake her things. They're both really good cooks, actually.

As a consolation to my bruised ego, I made a strawberry cheesecake, and someone on my team said that it was the best one he'd ever tasted. =)

I feel in love with speculoos while we were in France, and so when I saw this recipe for a strawberry cheesecake using a speculoos crust, I felt compelled to make it. We did it to raise money for a team social event as a way to boost the morale of the floor.

I've been trying to think of other ways to boost morale, and I realised that a lot of people really light up when they have the chance to talk about something they're passionate about. I also realised that there are a whole heap of really interesting people on the floor, but nobody ever really takes the time to get to know someone unless they work directly with them. So I'm going to publish some interviews of the people on my floor, which will hopefully cheer people up. In the worst case, at least I'll get to know more people. I also need to brush up on my interview skills (of which I have none). My first interview was a bit of a disaster, but the next person I'm interviewing has such a cool history.

Next Step?

At the last 440 dinner, I confessed my grand plan for quitting my team. I figured after the effort I put into making that James Bond parody movie for the dev who left (who I will now nickname Sean), I feel like there is a lot of pressure on me to make my own farewell quite memorable. Especially as a lot of the farewell speeches since then have had some variation of, "Well, I didn't make you a movie, but here are some kind words about you." I haven't really been motivated to write another movie, and my trial subscription for Adobe Premiere has run out, so I thought maybe I'd write a parody song instead. I've been playing around with the Faith Hill song "Breathe (YouTube link)", and have a fair chunk of it written. The only problem is that I don't sing. Or play the guitar like Santana (YouTube link).

So I told the other 440ers that I needed to learn to sing and play the guitar before quitting my team. Uni Paul replied, "Aren't you just creating more obstacles for yourself to avoid quitting?"

There's a little game going on between me and Michael in the office at the moment. I told him that I've always wanted to be a detective. Unrelated to that, he started behaving differently in the office, and when I asked him about it, he said that I should use my detective skills to find out. So over a couple of weeks, I would make guesses and he would give me new clues. I felt like I wasn't really making any progress, and I figured a detective would interview witnesses, so I thought maybe I should do the same. So I asked one of Michael's co-workers if they knew what was behind the change in behaviour, and he told me he had also asked Michael, and gave the response that Michael told him (which I later found out to be incorrect, so I'm back to square one point five).

During that conversation, he said to me that he believes that Michael is bored at work, and is far too smart to be working where he is. I took a look at his LinkedIn profile, and it's pretty damn impressive. I was also tempted to stalk his Github contribution activity, but I asked Grad Daniel, and he said that's borderline stalker behaviour, so I thought that wouldn't be a good idea.

As I was sitting there trying to think of ways to confirm what I'd just been told, it hit me. All the bake-offs, my random food generator behaviour, the little games / things I do around the office. Am I also bored? To be honest, the thing that I am working on now is making me incredibly miserable. I dread going in to work as it is what I have to look forward to. I spent 3 days writing unit tests for it, and got most of them passing yesterday, however, there are a couple that won't pass because I uncovered a bug in the API. One of many that I've encountered so far, and it's just so disheartening. I've resolved myself to just putting my head down, ignoring all distractions and getting it done, so that I can move on to something else, but I'm starting to see that the distractions are what has been keeping me sane over the past couple of weeks, and I don't know how long I can continue this.

Which brings me to the bombshell: Sean is back. He has joined another team in the same company, a couple of floors away, but he came down and visited my team on Tuesday, which was nice. Unfortunately, I had my head down trying to finish this piece of work, so I didn't really say much to him other than, "Welcome back". I was away on training today, but last night, a teammate sent me an SMS saying that we had a compliance module due today, and I didn't remember doing it, so I went into the office before training to get it done (turns out past me had done it back in May). As I was there, I saw an email from Sean saying, "Sorry we didn't get to chat the other day, how about we meet for coffee when you're back?"

Sean's current boss is my former boss, and I heard from Albert that they're looking to hire developers. A part of me is super excited. I would love to work with Sean again, as every day had some surprise in store, and I learned so much from him. He's the kind of developer who is genuinely enthusiastic about what he does, and his energy is so contagious that I couldn't help being enthusiastic about improving my own skills when he was around.

Another part of me feels like maybe I've outgrown him. I'll admit that I struggled when he was gone. Like someone who is learning to walk unassisted after relying on crutches for so long, I kept walking over to his desk, only to remember that he wasn't there anymore. But over time, I learned to cope. It started out with a simple, WWSD? - What Would Sean Do? I had so many imaginary conversations with Sean when puzzling out ideas, which was a really helpful method for trying to think about potential design flaws. I'm pretty sure the people on my team were sick of hearing, "If Sean was still here, he'd say ________".

I haven't replied to Sean's email yet, of course I'm going to catch up with him, but I kinda don't know what we'd talk about, and if he wants to talk to me about leaving my team, I want to prepare myself. My old boss knows how much I admire Sean. In fact, as soon as I heard the news that he was returning, the first thing I did was message my old boss to confirm whether it was true or not.

As a side note, I didn't want to leave another unsolved case up in the air, so I simply asked Michael why someone as talented as him would stay. He replied that he and his wife had just had a child. If he didn't need a reliable form of income, he'd probably have left already. Not really an issue for me at the moment. I told him that I feared tricking someone into hiring me, only to find out I didn't have the required skills, and letting my new team down. At least I know that I'm capable of doing my current job. I occasionally see Michael in the kitchen reading things like Taoist monk scriptures or The Three Musketeers, so when he said to me he was going to give me some advice from a wise man, I was expecting a koan or something like that.

Instead, he said, "If you only do what you can do, you'll never be better than what you are." I was pondering those words when he added, "As said by Master Shifu, from Kung Fu Panda 3." I burst out laughing, and the thoughtful moment was gone. I guess I probably should reflect on it though, and decide if I really am ready to move on.

On the plus side, I realised that someone I did my mentor training with is in a band, and he said he'd be happy to play the guitar for me, so all I need to do now is learn to sing...

Reputation

Reputation has never really been something I've spent a lot of time thinking about. Despite everything, I still live in this naïve world where I believe people should be treated according to their merits, even though deep down I know that it's an unrealistic view of the world.

The only thing I've ever been really cautious about is my reputation in the gaming world. Not really the gaming world at large, but I've never wanted to be treated differently because of my gender. And I really don't want people to think that I am treated nicely just because I'm a female. But now that I'm not really playing MMOs with randoms, that's not so much of an issue.

I can't even believe that I'm writing this. A while ago, we had a meeting with senior manager. He asked  something, and liked my response, and overall, the meeting went really well. The manager seemed to get along really well with me, and he was happy with what I had done. Afterwards, there was an issue that we needed to bring up with the manager. Because of how well he reacted to my response, one of my co-workers said, "Hey Fodder, you should tell him." I asked why, and the response was that the news would be better coming from me. Then someone started to say, "You're the lucky one who gets to suck his..." The stunned glares from the rest of the team stopped that sentence from being finished, but there aren't many ways in which that sentence could have ended which made sense in the context.

I think I must have had a mini-BSOD or something, I couldn't think of anything to say. I was just in shock. I vaguely remember someone stopping the conversation, and telling me that it still made sense for me to talk to the manager about the issue, so I did. But my brain was just in panic-mode. I feel like I've tried so hard to be seen as an equal to my peers on the team, but what if I'm not? My previous boss told me that the last manager of my area (the person who hired me) was really keen on improving the gender stats on the team, and a part of me has always wondered if that's the only reason I'm here. I am under no illusions that I'm definitely the weakest developer on my team, but I feel like I do try, which is why I was so willing to do the Java exams, even though none of the other developers on my team have those certifications.

To be honest, the whole thing made me quite sullen for a while. I've always been so good at flying under the radar, and so I retreated to what I felt comfortable with. I barely contributed to meetings, and just did what I was told, but I put on my "customer service face" so that nobody would know anything was wrong - in particular the senior manager, as we really needed his buy-in.

I didn't want to tell anyone on my team, as I didn't want them to know how much it had affected me. I also think that this is the kind of thing that you can report to HR and get someone fired over, and I didn't want to be that person. Perhaps the comment wasn't really intended to be serious, and reflecting on it, I think it was intended as a joke. I thought about Adria Richards and the whole Donglegate incident, and how she caught so much flak for choosing to publicly shame two people for making a joke, rather than confronting them.

My boss recommended this book to me: Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When the Stakes Are High. So I read the book, and decided to have a conversation and understand why that person would make such a comment. Then I built up the courage and had the conversation. I began similarly to how I started this blog post - explaining my background and how important it was to me not to be treated differently based on my gender. I did not apologise for being this way, which is something the book made it very clear was a wrong move as it minimised the impact of the conversation. Then I asked why the comment was made. It turns out that the person didn't even remember making the comment at all, but agreed that it was in poor taste, and nothing malicious was meant by it.

It's kinda bad how caring so much about a particular aspect of my reputation turned a stupid comment into such a big deal. I'm trying not to let my reputation get in the way of things in the future. Did I handle it correctly? I'm not really sure. However, I do feel better at work, and the person has not made any comments like that since (and now that I know there was nothing malicious behind the comment, I believe we still get along well, and I don't think they feel like they have to walk on eggshells around me, which is something I was concerned about after having that conversation).

As a side note, I am secretly proud of this other reputation that I have in the office (from Grad Daniel):

In one of my favourite movies, the main character likes to do little things that make the people around them happy, such as creating a fake letter to make a woman think that her husband was having regrets about leaving her for another woman. I really enjoy doing that at work, though it's becoming harder and harder to leave anonymous gifts.

Brioche, Take 2: The Return of the Happy French Man

The brioche bake-off is coming up soon, and even though I've got a bit more bread experience under my belt this time, after watching Yakitate Japan again, I have learned that it is not good to become complacent. Especially as we have a new contender in the office baking competition game. He's not French, but he hand grinds his coffee every morning, and seems to be one of those people who really enjoys fine dining. Plus, my last attempt was a disaster.

Somewhat inspired by Azuma's petalite board, which he uses to make Japan #44, I thought I'd give baking with a pizza stone a try. I also felt like I had the happy French man watching over my shoulder, and I was really cautious of adding too much flour to my dough. Lastly, I tried the tangzhong method to help get that soft bread feeling (not going to tell Michael though, as I don't know how he would respond to me adding an Asian touch to this famous French bread). I made them into mini buns this time, as I want to make chicken soup to take to work, and this would be something nice to add.

Plus, this way they almost look like the one we had in Paris.

So the first two, I baked on a pizza stone, for the same time as directed by the happy French man. 20 minutes, which was supposed to be at 200 degrees Celcius, but I read that you're meant to heat your pizza stone up much hotter than that before using it, so I did. But the oven was still at around 220 degrees by the time I put the bread in, and so it ended up a bit burnt.

However, MrFodder cut it open, and it released a heap of steam.

Despite being charred on the outside, the bread inside was quite soft and you could pull out chunks easily with a fork.

So we ended up eating it just leaving the outer shell.

For the next two, inspired by Azuma's SUPER VAPOUR ACTION butter rolls, I decided to cook it for less time at the higher heat. 220 degrees for 10 minutes.

This one was amazingly soft, and I really liked the colour. And still had that soft interior.

Next, I tried even higher, 235 degrees (which is the highest our oven can do), for 7 minutes.

Unfortunately, it wasn't cooked on the inside.

So I tried the same for 8 minutes, and it ended up a bit black on top, but was still soft on the inside, and cooked through. Not as good as the 220 - 10 one though.

Lastly I tried without the pizza stone.

The one on the left (cut in half) is the bottom of the non-pizza stone one, the one on the right is the pizza stone one. Interestingly, the non-pizza stone one browned a bit more, but personally, I prefer the softness of the pizza stone version.

Michael dropped a bomb - he has been practicing one-handed baking. I don't know what kind of advantage that gives, but given that he was the one who suggested brioche, I feel like he has the home team advantage this time.