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Axon Sprints for Justice

A fellow team member, someone who usually works on-site, recently explained her current home-bound working status: “I’m not working from home,” she said. “I am at home during a crisis, trying to work.”


Many of us in tech are now working from home (or “from anywhere”), and we are very aware of why it is needed, while also experiencing some of its shortcomings. Even when some of us did work remotely before the pandemic happened, we still had other opportunities to change our setting—sitting in a coffee shop or going to a co-working space. The difference between then and now is pretty stark.

Working from home requires a well-prepared routine and a place to work without disruption. In many cases, the pandemic has thrown many people into a household trying to find their own spaces to work, including those with children who have to attend school virtually and taking care of aging or at-risk family members. The transition is sudden and unexpected.
What has become clear is that working from home successfully takes time. It also requires grace and self-care to manage the added stress created by our new situations and find a new way to focus. We have to realize that in some cases, it is not just a work management crisis—it is an existential one.

The seven Cs of stress
The book The Seven Cs of Stress: A Burkean Approach, Stan A. Lindsay, Ph.D., offers a list of stresses we all experience. The list includes:

Corporal stress, or physical stresses that can range from higher heart rates to nausea

Community stress, or the discomfort of social interaction (or the lack thereof)

Cash stress, where one becomes concerned with losing employment or managing unexpected financial strains

Chrono stress, which involves concern over deadlines and time management

Competence stress, where one questions their ability to complete a job effectively

Confusion stress, which usually manifests as a lack of organization

Conscientious stress, or how one manages moral or ethical obligations

Staying in place during this pandemic, worrying about job security, and being responsible for our health and others’ health can trigger all seven simultaneously. Managing a couple of stressors is difficult enough. Fortunately, many workplaces are stepping in to help employees manage the stress in healthy ways while also managing work and maintaining work relationships.

Although each of us faces a different set of challenges, we all can answer the question, “What works best for me in my situation?” Once we understand this, it is crucial to stay intentional and deliberate.

Being intentional requires creating new boundaries. It is essential to address when and where you will work and prioritize each project based on the team’s needs.

Bridging the gap between self-care and work relationships can further relieve specific stresses and make self-care more manageable.

While we are spending more time at home than usual, many of us may feel isolated and disconnected from our coworkers. This disconnection can strain communication and create confusion. Here are a few ways to nurture team connections and maintain deadlines:

Develop strategies for staying connected using online group platforms, group text, or a quick daily stand up with a conference call (it doesn’t have to be a video call every time) and have a dialed agenda & outcomes.

Make frequent check-ins with project teams and owners to show your work and how you are continuing to help them.

Remind yourself that not all projects are a priority right now.

Intentionally build-in break times to your day, click here

Try to keep meetings on schedule or provide email/Quip/Slack updates if meetings must be canceled.

Encourage participation during remote meetings.

Since you cannot walk down the hall to discuss a project with someone, it’s good to plan ahead.

Check on everyone’s critical needs; they are probably struggling, too.

Openly reference and de-risk the use of workplace mental health platforms and benefits.

Over-communication is vital when working remotely. With on-site meetings, we can read faces and respond to visual cues. Emails, chat rooms, and conference calls don’t always offer the same opportunities. It’s important to provide the details needed to create more clarity.

With some mindful preparation between work routines, home life, self-care, a dash of humor, and more communication, the chaos that starts out as trying to work can transition to working successfully from home within a few weeks. You may find the skills you develop at home will benefit you just as much in the office when you finally return.

A fellow team member, someone who usually works on-site, recently explained her current home-bound working status: “I’m not working from home,” she said. “I am at home during a crisis, trying to work.”

Staying Mentally Healthy in our Crazy World

ARTICLE: Staying Mentally Healthy in our Crazy World

Tracy Kosa is a privacy engineer at Google, recently finished a post-doc at Stanford on predicting privacy regulation. Prior, Dr. Kosa ran the global privacy compliance program at Microsoft and served on the City of Seattle's Privacy Advisory Committee. We are excited to bring Dr. Kosa to Axon to share information about our AI ethics board works and to discuss Axon’s products, technology, and ultimately the impact we have on society. With that impact comes great ethical responsibility and Dr. Kosa will walk us through the ethical considerations integral to incorporate our daily work at Axon. 

What excites you about Axon, and why did you choose to be on their AI Ethics board?

The fact they wanted to do an ethics board before it was popular, the selection of diverse criteria of representatives, and the ability to talk openly about the work being done. I knew this was a company that cares about ethics; it wasn’t merely a good press story.


How has AI changed in the past five years? What do you predict will happen in the next 5 to 10 years?

The tech’s getting really good at image recognition, speech recognition, and translation. I’m guessing we’ll continue on that trajectory until we have it at high accuracy rates almost in real-time.


What is the biggest challenge in the AI space at the moment? 

Aside from untangling the ethical questions, it’s prediction. That’s what everybody’s really interested in - can the computer tell us what’s going to happen in situation ABC, etc.


What effect has AI made on the policing industry/ or society? 

Both positive and negative because it helped shine a bright light on the systemic issues with law enforcement practices and policies.


What led to Axon’s decision to ban facial recognition in body cameras?

The training data isn’t there. Imagine a situation where you’ve got a massively disproportionate group of people in the prison system, or those who have mug shots. That’s us in the United States. Now imagine using that same data for training models to pick out people. Now imagine using that for ‘predictive’ purposes. That’s where we’ll end up if we don’t stop now and correct the ‘garbage in / garbage out’ problem. 


What are the most critical changes that we must make to face the future effectively?

Nobody’s going to like this, but we need to reprioritize the human being. We’ve built a complex worldwide infrastructure with automated models on top of automated models. Honestly, nobody knows what can or could happen as we continue to tack things on the top/sides of it.

 Additionally, product and software teams absolutely must be diverse — in background, thinking, gender, and age. Putting an actual representation of today’s human population into the development of products changes everything each step of the way. 


What are the best resources for people who want to dive deeper?

Start with the civil society organizations that I mentioned in the recent Axon webinar for employees, but mostly I encourage you to contribute to the great work done in this space (as opposed to the litany of problems and tragedies). 

 Also, I developed a free short course with some excellent professors from Seattle University that's available online here.

Other non-profits / Civil Society Organizations / Conferences I recommend you look into:

"AI Ethics is a big issue, one that can absolutely be contributed to by individuals. We've learned that at a root level, there are 3 questions we all need to be asking when thinking about technology ethics: 1. Who's part of the story? 2. Who's not part of the story? 3. Who benefits?"

ARTICLE: How AI Ethics Can Help Reprioritize Humanity]

7 Questions for Tracy Kosa, the Ombudsman of Axon’s AI Ethics Board

How AI Ethics Can Help Reprioritize Humanity

My favorite thing about Axon is our mission. We have the unique opportunity to help solve some of society's most challenging problems through technology and innovation.  

The gravity of our mission can weigh heavily, but the positive impact we can have by creating effective public safety technology is what motivates our teams, and what brings us in to work every day. And because we take our mission so seriously, we think it's important to find different ways to keep things fun and light amidst the grind. 

Earlier this year, we held our annual company meeting (pre-global pandemic). It's a time for our teams to reconnect, meet new faces, reflect on our progress, and look to the future. Not to mention, it's a time for us to dress up in costumes and engage in competitive rock-paper-scissors battles. Check out Episode 4 of “The Ride” below. 

And if you need to catch up on past episodes:

THE RIDE: Inside Axon, Episode 4

Check out Episode 4 of “The Ride: Inside Axon” to learn how each person on our team plays an important part in achieving our goal of getting everyone home safe.

The Ride: Inside Axon Episode 3

ARTICLE: The Ride Episode 4

My favorite thing about Axon is our mission. We have the unique opportunity to help solve some of society's most challenging problems through technology and innovation.

The Ride Episode 4

Self-care isn’t selfish. In a world as tumultuous as 2020, we would go so far as to say it’s a priority for everyone. Good self-care can help someone align better with their purpose and instill emotional confidence that acts as a buoy during everyday work and life. It can also help people tackle anxiety, understand their mental health, and care for their cognitive wellness. Data suggests that mental health challenges impact 1:5 Americans. We now know there are positive, long-lasting impacts to nourishing your mental wellbeing, and Axon is committed to exploring ways to provide employees the space to do so.

As with many companies, we’ve been quick to offer equity, commuter benefits, and gym classes, but our focus this year has shifted to mental health too, which may be the best benefit we can provide employees and their dependents. More than ever, we believe that investing in our employees and their dependent’s full-self development is an extension of our mission and vision.

Beginning August 11th we are offering all Axon employees and their dependents, a 24/7 on-demand therapist, coach, or psychotherapist via the Ginger platform. In this way, they can access help when they need it, privately with licensed professionals. 

All Axon employees now have access to:

Real-time behavioral health coaching within seconds

Virtual therapy & psychiatry sessions within hours that have been clinically proven to reduce symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression

Personalized skill-building activities curated by your coach

Founded nearly a decade ago as a spin-out from the MIT Media Lab, Ginger says that customers include CBS, Netflix, Pinterest, Sephora, Twilio, Yelp and BuzzFeed, and it’s now active in 25 countries outside the U.S., including major markets like the U.K., Japan, Australia, Canada and India. (via Techcrunch, Sept 2019)

The way forward from today is with a growth mindset toward work and life since many of our secure work-patterns have been upended. We are proud to be a company living through today’s disruptions with an open mind and a strong belief that when we can do more, we do better. We strive to be as innovative for our workforce as we are for our customers and continue to look for the most accessible ways to support our Axon family. 

"More than ever, we believe that investing in our employees and their dependent’s full-self development is an extension of our mission and vision."

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Axon Sprints for Justice

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Staying Mentally Healthy in our Crazy World

How AI Ethics Can Help Reprioritize Humanity

The Ride Episode 4

Protecting Employees’ Mental Health with Ginger