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Software Developer Adheli Tavares speaks about her experiences being a member of the LGBTQ+ community.

1. How would you describe your journey to becoming a proud member of the LGBTQ+ community?

Complicated and complex. It’s a process that is always ongoing. There’s confusion and doubts until you find yourself comfortable in your own skin. Therapy was an ally in my process, to understand that all those feelings of inadequacy were uncalled for.

2. Have you found any differences between living in Ireland and the attitude towards the LGBTQ+ community (or you personally) versus living in other parts of the world?

Definitely. I think the main reason is that people here don’t really care.  Although I have been targeted a few times with some not very nice words, I do feel a lot more comfortable walking hand in hand with my partner here than back home.

3. How have you found the attitudes of others towards members of the community in the tech world (globally and in Ireland)?

I have met mostly queer women in the tech industry. Because it’s still a male dominant world, the behaviour I encountered the most was “so you like women then you are one of the guys” which is wrong.  This shows another level of sexism and the old stereotypes around how lesbians must look and act like a man. I have accepted this behaviour previously, mostly to feel included and avoid the mean comments, most of them hidden behind “jokes”.

4. Have you found Zinkworks to be an open and accepting place? How so?

Yes, Zinkworks has been super cool to work with. I think it kind of goes back to the fact people don’t really care as long as you’re a good person and good employee!  Acceptance and respect go along with mental health, which is another thing that Zinkworks has been the best place for regarding support.

5. What further support is needed for the LGBTQ+ community in the workplace and socially?

The “removal” of the necessity of coming out is my big dream. It is good that English is a friendly non-binary language, which helps a lot. I can say that it has taken out a lot of stress when referring to my partner and the questioning when someone decides to label themselves. I think it’s very personal how one describes themselves, then for another person, even someone they do not know to question every little detail is demeaning.

6. What can allies of the community do to support members in their workplace?

First of all, respect their identity (gender/sexuality) and not let it be something that will create a pre-judgement of their work abilities. Let them be heard. If you have doubts about how to talk to someone, ask their name and their pronouns.

When people are asking questions we can differentiate between when someone has a genuine question because they are curious and want to understand, from someone that is just lazy and expect us to be their personal LGBTQ+ dictionary.

At the end of the day, I have been through so much, like working with international teams (before moving to Ireland), learning the quality side of development, managing teams, and laughing with teammates when everything went right. Crying when things went to space. Stayed until late to fix something, or left earlier because it was too tiring. And you, a non-LGBTQ+ person might think “that sounds like some of the stuff I have done” and that’s because we are just like you. People.

Thank you to Adheli for sharing her experiences.

If you need support as part of the LGBTQ+ community you can visit here.

To read more blogs from Zinkworks employees visit here.

Regardless of where we work—at home, in an office. We can all do a few simple things to our work environment to optimise our productivity. Below is a shortlist of the most effective things—none of which require purchasing any products or equipment. Anyone can use these tools to:

• Maintain alertness and focus longer.
• Improve posture and reduce pain (neck, back, pelvic floor, etc).
• Tap into specific states of mind (creativity, logic, etc.) for the sake of work.

1. Sit or stand ( Or Both )

It is best to arrange your desk and workspace so that you can work sitting for some time—10-30 minutes or so for most people, and then shift to work standing for 10-30 minutes, and then go back to sitting. Research also shows that it’s a good idea to take a 5-15 minute stroll after every 45 minutes of work. There is evidence that such a sit-stand approach can reduce neck and shoulder and back pain.

2. Effects of TIME of the day has on you

We are not the same person across the different hours of the day, at least not neurochemically. Let’s call the first part of your day (~0-8 hours after waking up)

“Phase 1.” During this phase, the chemicals norepinephrine, cortisol, and dopamine are elevated in your brain and body. Alertness can be further heightened by sunlight viewing, caffeine and fasting.

Phase 1 is ideal for analytic “hard” thinking and any work that you find particularly challenging. It isn’t just about getting the most important stuff out of the way; it is about leveraging your natural biology toward the best type of work for the biological state you are in.

“Phase 2”: is ~9-16 hours after waking. At this time, serotonin levels are relatively elevated, which lends itself to a somewhat more relaxed state of being—optimal for brainstorming and creative work.

“Phase 3”: ~17-24 hours after waking up is when you should be asleep or try to sleep. During this phase, do no hard thinking or work unless, of course, you must, keep your environment dark or very dim and the room temperature low (your body needs to drop in temperature by 1-3 degrees to fall asleep and stay asleep).

3. Where your screen is and where you look ARE important

There’s a relationship between where we look and our level of alertness. When looking down toward the ground, neurons related to calm and sleepiness are activated. Looking up does the opposite. This might seem wild, but it makes sense based on the neural circuits that control looking up or down.

Standing and sitting up straight while looking at a screen or book that is elevated to slightly above eye level will generate maximal levels of alertness. To get your screen at or above eye level and not work while looking down at your screen may take a bit of configuring your workspace, but it’s worth it for the benefits to your mind and work.

4. Set your background sound

Some people like to work in silence, whereas others prefer background noise. Some kinds of background noise are particularly good for our work output. Working with white, pink, or brown noise in the background can be good for work bouts of up to 45 minutes but not for work bouts that last hours. So, use it from time to time. These are easy to find (and free) on YouTube or in various apps (search by “white, pink, or brown noise”).

Binaural beats are a neat science-supported tool to place the brain into a better state for learning. As the name suggests, binaural beats consist of one sound (frequency) being played in one ear and a different sound frequency in the other ear. It only works with headphones. Binaural beats (around 40 Hz) have been shown to increase certain aspects of cognition, including creativity and may reduce anxiety.

5. Room type can make a difference

There is an interesting effect of workspace optimization called the “Cathedral Effect,” in which thinking becomes “smaller”—more focused on analytic processing when we are in small visual fields. The opposite is also true. In short, working in high ceiling spaces elicits abstract thoughts and creativity, whereas working in low ceiling spaces promotes detailed work. Even relatively small differences (a two-foot discrepancy in ceiling height) have been shown to elicit such differences. The takeaway: consider using different locations: rooms, buildings, indoors or outdoors to help access specific brain states and the types of work they favour.

Very insightful blog post written by Release Manager,  Colm Nibbs

Click here to read more blogs from Zinkworks.

First, we are going to run a “dnsmasq” server in the same Kubernetes cluster as a pod. It will be associated with a configmap through which we can manipulate the DNS records. Other than that, the dnsmasq pod will be exposed via a clusterIP type Kubernetes service.

To run a “dnsmasq” server as a container, we can first create docker image using following Dockerfile.

As you may notice in the ENTRYPOINT of above, we are running “dnsmasq” in foreground (-d) as well as we pass a configuration file (-C) and a hosts (-H) file to it. During the build, these files do not necessarily need to exist in the docker image. However, during the runtime we will mount relevant configuration files to /var/dnsmasq/conf/dnsmasq.conf and /var/dnsmasq/hosts location accordingly. 

Now you can build the docker image with “docker build –t dnsmasq:latest ” command. You may push it to a docker image repository that is accessible by your Kubernetes cluster, afterwards

Now let us create a couple of configmaps to pass the dnsmasq.conf and hosts files to the running dnsmasq pod.

In below example, we are creating a fake DNS record, that resolves www.zinkworks.com to 10.100.1.1 address. Also, we will create a host’s file record that maps example.zinkworks.com to 10.100.1.2

You can create above configmaps in the namespace where you will run the dnsmasq pod, using “kubectl create –f“or “kubectl apply –f” commands. 

Next let us create a dnsmasq pod using the docker image built in step 1. We will also mount the configmaps created previously to /var/dnsmasq/conf/dnsmasq.conf and /var/dnsmasq/hosts as files. 

Above is an example pod definition to run the dnsmasq container with desired configurations. Notice how, dnsmasq-conf and dnsmasq-hosts configmaps are mounted as files to the pod. Also notice the “NET_ADMIN” capability given to the container. This will allow you to run the container with UDP port 53.  

You can create the pod by running “kubectl create –f” or “kubectl apply –f” commands on above pod definition. 

Once the dnsmasq pod is created, you can confirm if it is running fine by looking at the pod logs.

Here is an example output. In this case, it is assumed that dnsmsq pod is created in dnsmasq namespace. 

Finally, we will expose the dnsmasq pod via a kubernetes service. 

Notice how in the first nslookup command for www.zinkworks.com has returned the actual public IP instead of the fake one we provided to the dnsmasq container in dnsmasq.conf file. This is because this external DNS queries are handled by the coredns and they are by default forwarded to the nameservers specified in /etc/resolv.conf file. 

 Now in the subsequent nslookup commands we specify the service IP of the dnsmasq service which is 10.108.96.48. This ensures that the DNS query is processed by our dnsmasq container directly. As you notice in the second nslookup command for www.zinkworks.com, We have received the fake IP we configured in the dnsmasq container through the dnsmasq.conf file.  

Any other query that dnsmasq service cannot answer will be sent to the next nameserver in the chain. In our case it is 8.8.8.8 

Now as you noticed in step 2 above, all external DNS queries are by default not forwarded to our dnsmasq container, unless we specify the nameserver in our query. This is not convenient. Therefore, next we look at how we can configure the coredns to forward all our external DNS queries to dnsmasq container by default. 

First, we open the coredns configmap in edit mode by running the following command. 

$ kubectl edit configmap –namespace kube-system coredns 

This will open a similar configuration as shown below on your editor. 

The highlighted “forward” section in above configuration should now be modified to forward the external DNS queries to our dnsmasq container. 

After the modification the configmap should appear as shown below. 

Next save and exit from the editor so that above change is now reflected to coredns configmap. 

Finally, you can restart the coredns pods in kube-system namespace by deleting them. This will ensure that our modified configuration is loaded into the new instances of coredns pods that will come up after deleting the old replicas. 

 Here is the command to delete the current coredns pods. 

 $ kubectl delete pods –namespace kube-system –force –grace-period=0 $(kubectl get pods –namespace kube-system | grep coredns | awk -F ‘ ‘ ‘{print $1}’) 

 Now, let us run the same nslookup command on www.zinkworks.com from our ubuntu-debugger container to see if we are getting the expected response. 

 As expected, the queries for www.zinkworks.com and example.zinkworks.com return the fake IPs we configured in dnsmasq.conf and hosts file in dnsmasq pod. 

To find out more about careers at Zinkworks click here.

What is Continuous Improvement?

Continuous Improvement is often an abstract and vague term to describe better ways of working. Within the context of business and technology, Continuous Improvement seeks to enhance every aspect of value in a team’s processes and products. By reducing waste, reducing burden, and increasing consistency, teams boost the value they produce towards their stakeholders. It is impossible to remove all waste, burden and inconsistency completely from the team’s work, but teams should work to minimize each one incrementally. This incremental change is what we refer to as Continuous Improvement. Let’s look at Continuous Improvement and how we can utilize its main driver – the “Retrospective”.

Continuous Improvement Lifecycle

Continuous Improvement in Sport

Let’s step back for a minute and look at Continuous Improvement in the world of sport. In 2002, Sir Dave Brailsford joined as head of the British Cycling team. Before Sir Dave’s leadership, British Cycling had won just one gold medal in almost 80 years. In the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Sir Dave led the British track cycling team to 7 out of 10 gold medals! After achieving this staggering result, he turned his focus towards “Team Sky” – Britain’s first-ever pro cycling team. He led Team Sky to 6 out of the last 9 Tour De France events, an impressive feat to say the least.

How did Sir Dave achieve this? Sir Dave held an MBA and used methods of Continuous Improvement when coaching his teams. He looked for small things to improve in how the team worked together, referring to these improvements as “marginal gains”.

“Forget about perfection; focus on progression and compound the improvements.” – Sir Dave Brailsford

The team hired a wind tunnel to understand and experiment with aerodynamics. They painted their truck’s floor white to detect and reduce dirt on the bikes. They even brought their own mattresses and pillows to each hotel to get a good night’s sleep! By regular retrospection, the team encouraged ownership and, eventually, everyone started to come up with their ideas for improvements which, in the end, led to their huge success. This is the power of Continuous Improvement. “Marginal gains” made frequently in the short term encourages growth and prosperity in the long term.

Continuous Improvement is an Engine

Think of Continuous Improvement as an engine. The purpose of an engine is to drive something forward in a given direction. Continuous Improvement should be the engine that drives your team forward to deliver more and more value each iteration.

All engines need fuel. Without fuel, the engine slows down and stops. If Continuous Improvement is your team’s engine, then the Retrospective (henceforth referred to as the ‘Retro’) is your team’s fuel. Like an engine without fuel, Continuous Improvement without Retros slows down and stops. A car that does not move forward becomes a stagnant, empty shell that is only nice to look at (many people own such cars!). We do not want to be stagnant teams, empty shells with nothing to drive us forward. We want to be innovative and come up with creative solutions to our own problems.

Forward progress gives us satisfaction in our jobs and without that sense of progress, we become scattered and burnt out. But to achieve progress and forward motion, we need fuel. We need Retros to provide fuel to our engine.

What is a Retro?

The Retro is a team meeting where space is created for everyone to learn and brainstorm ideas. It is important that the whole team contributes towards the Retro. A Retro in which only part of the team speaks up is not a good Retro. For example, it is common for the loudest person on the team to speak the most in Retros. Or maybe people do not want to speak up because the most experienced person will argue them down. But the Retro is one of the few places where all members of the team come together as equals. The Retro facilitator should work to ensure all members contribute and have their voices heard.

If the Retro is the fuel to your team’s engine, then it needs to be topped up frequently. Therefore, Retros should be scheduled regularly. They should be monthly at a minimum, but ideally more often. In between Retros, the team can test their experiment ideas and gather feedback for the next Retro. The Retro should also close out your team’s iteration period. For example, if your team works in cycles of two weeks, the Retro should be the last event of the cycle. By taking a Retro at the end of the cycle, it provides the team with the opportunity to plan for the next cycle. If your team has no cycle time, then pick one – teams always work best with defined timelines.

Retros provide the opportunity for the team to give feedback about themselves, their processes, and their product. Whether you have been part of the team for a day or a decade, your opinion is equally valid in your team’s Retro.

If you are new to the team, this is your opportunity to speak up about the things you find difficult and frustrating. Are you happy with the onboarding process? Are you invited to pair program on tasks? Do you understand your objectives as part of the larger team? As a new team member, it is up to both you and the team to make sure you are integrated and valuable to the people around you. If something is difficult as a new member, then have the courage to speak up and be honest in your team’s Retro.

If you have been with your team for a longer period, you likely have valuable insights into the biggest problems you and your team face. Is the team’s quality sufficient? Is there enough innovation and experiments happening in the team? Are you excited, bored, or burnt out with your work? With experience comes more expectations, but that does not mean you should expect to be stressed or under pressure all the time. Use the team’s Retro to voice your concerns with your teammates. They just might surprise you!

“What experiment do we want to run next?”

This is the question the team should work to answer in their Retro. Simply having a meeting called “Team Retro” will not achieve improvements without a solid outcome and plan for what happens afterwards. The real work is done between Retros where the chosen experiments are tried and tested. The Retro allows the team to learn about problems, identify solutions and pick an experiment going forward using methods like the 3 questions: “What went well? What did not go well? What should we improve?”

Think back to the experiments Sir Dave ran with his teams. White paint, mattresses, hand washing. These are not particularly profound ideas. I am sure there were many experiments and ideas Sir Dave’s team tried which came to no avail. However, each time they tested something out, whether it succeeded or failed, the team learned something new. There was no single experiment that won gold for the team. Each success built on the last until, eventually, enough 1% marginal gains were made to achieve the gold.

A good Retro experiment will like the British cycling team’s experiments – short, actionable, and valuable.

It needs to be short so the team can commit to it on top of their other work. “Pair program on critical tasks” is better than “Re-architect our software to support faster deployment”.

It needs to be actionable so the team do not jump through hoops to complete it. “Order our stand-up tasks by priority instead of person” is better than “Suggest a new tool for ticket tracking to the organisation”.

And it needs to be valuable so that the team can add it to their ways of working. “Scrum Master to close stand-up after 15 minutes” is more valuable than “Create unit tests for this deprecated piece of code”.

Benefits of Retros

Agency is a psychological term that means ‘I can act on my behalf. A team with a sense of agency can act independently to control and change their surroundings. By raising their problems in the Retro, the team empowers themselves to come up with their own solutions. They develop ownership over their environment and push for change where change is needed.

“How do you feel?” “…Fine, and you?”

This is a common response when you throw the ‘f’ word at someone (feelings). While we don’t like to share our feelings with other people, it can be a valuable piece of feedback for a team to understand each other’s moods. In my team, we start off the Retro with a quick word from everyone on their mood in the past few weeks. We have yet to hear the word ‘fine’. Usually we hear ‘stressed’, ‘anxious’, ‘messy’ or ‘productive’, ‘fun’ and ‘exciting’.

Each answer gives a good insight into how the team’s mood is. A positive overall answer indicates the team is doing something well and should continue to do so. A negative reaction indicates something needs to change and the retro should then focus on alleviating those negative points going forward.

Any good team understands the need to innovate. Teams can only make Continuous Improvements if they have created the environment to brainstorm and innovate. Their Retro facilitates such an environment where ideas, both good and bad, are welcome. Without creative ideas, we cannot innovate. Without innovation, we cannot discover those marginal gains Sir Dave talked about. The Retro provides the space to identify these 1% improvements we can bring to the team. If each Retro facilitates just a 1% improvement to your team, imagine the massive changes that could happen over a year.

What Next?

First things first – set up regular Retros with your team if you are not already doing so. Within each Retro, focus on a particular area the team would like to improve. This could be quality, bugs, meetings, processes, teamwork or anything else the team thinks is a priority. For each Retro, focus on answering the question: “What experiment do we want to run next?” Once the team picks an experiment to focus on, plan it into the next iteration and track whether it succeeds or fails.

Remember, the team’s retro does not have to be a complicated or lengthy meeting. However, it does need to be taken regularly to yield those marginal gains and fuel your team’s Continuous Improvement.

You can find more of David at www.dcaulfield.com.

To find out about our open positions and how you can join the Zinkworks team visit our careers page.

Senior Associate Berchris describes his experience furthering his education through the further education programme here at Zinkworks:

“Before I joined Zinkworks I was always interested in doing a master’s degree in my field but found it hard to get the time and support to do so knowing the costs would also be high. At the time of joining Zinkworks, the company did not have any further education program in place, however, once I decided to pursue the course, I asked the company for support with this. I didn’t know what to expect as there was nothing established in terms of support for people returning to education within the company, I was surprised and happy to find out that Zinkworks were happy to give all the support required, including financial support. I was very excited about this as it showed how the company care for its employees as I was only with Zinkworks for a little more than a year at this time, I found their attitude so amazing!

A few weeks later I started the MSc. In Software Engineer course in the Technological University of the Shannon. Doing this course and working at the same time has been a real challenge for me especially as I need time to spend with my family also. I must say that it would have been harder without the support of Zinkworks. They have been very flexible when I would need some time off for study or exams or when I would need to attend classes. I am very close to the end of the course now; I have finished all the subjects and I am about to deliver the final project. I’m relieved and happy to be completing the course, I am also very grateful to work in a company that is always willing to support their employees in their path to progress their career through learning. Thank you Zinkworks for all your help so far.”

Since Berchris started his further education endeavour Zinkworks has employed an extensive employee-driven education programme as development and learning is at the core of Zinkworks values.

If joining the Zinkworks team and our further education programme is of interest to you, contact us to find out more.

To find out more from Berchris and read some of his work visit his Github and Medium.com accounts.

Here is what Scrum Master Declan McDaid has to say about his experience changing his career path to join the tech world after 14 years –

“I started my career as a Concrete finisher after I completed my Leaving Certificate and having worked 14 years in the building industry Ireland suffered a recession. As a result, I was made redundant, soon after I started working in a bookmaker’s shop. While working in the bookmakers I somehow became the IT guy for the company (turn it off and turn it on again). I really liked the troubleshooting and with some persuading from my wife, I decided to pursue a career in IT.

In 2012, I looked at a few different courses and settled for a level 6 in IT support in LYIT. The reason for choosing this course was that it was 18 months with a 6-months work placement in the middle. Due to not being in education for 16 years I thought this would be the best fit for me. During the last semester,  LYIT was offering a level 9 DevOps course for the first time. I applied for a place on this and was successful. Having not heard of DevOps until this I was curious to learn more.

The course enforced DevOps and the agile methodology, work placement was a mandatory part of the course. On completion of my work placement, I was offered a development role with the company.  After 1 year with that team, I joined a new team working with data integration team that was tasked with making data available from microservices to the current mainframe system. While I was happy doing data integration work, I still had a keen interest in a career in DevOps.

I heard about (Neueda Technologies Athlone) Zinkworks through a current Zinkworks employee and they were recruiting engineers. I applied through the website. The recruitment process was a pleasant experience. I was successful with the interview and was offered a role. I was still apprehensive about leaving TCS but thankfully Orlagh reassured me about it being a good place to work and after 6 or so months here I’d have to say it has been the right choice.

I am currently a Scrum Master for a team working on deploying applications on AWS with the latest technologies. Aileen organised Scrum Master training for me a few weeks after joining which I completed, and I am now a certified Scrum Master with the Scrum Alliance. After 6 or so months here I’d have to say it has been the right choice. It has been an educational and enjoyable experience (can’t wait for the next company outing) to date, to make it even better I am now the proud owner of a Mac book which I won from Zinkworks on a draw which was held for all employees who have had a referral in 2021.”

Visit our careers page if joining the Zinkworks team is of interest to you!