August 27, 2023 • 50 mins
Today we talk about mental health, burnout, therapy, productivity, relationships, and the big topics that make a life worth living.
Everything to do with software and nothing to do with software.
What is the point of being productive if we lose ourselves and hurt our relationships in the process? Sascha takes us through his journey from burnt-out software developer to a balanced life.
From his website: "Sascha Wolf is a Software Developer at 7mind. He is also a loving husband, father and avid roleplayer. He reads a lot, loves a good science fiction movie and likes to engage in thought-provoking conversations from game design to system architecture or the meaning of life."
Join us for out most heartwarming episode as of yet.
Links
Psychological Safety
Brené Brown
Team Topologies
Sascha Wolf Website
Sascha's Twitter
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello everyone, my name is Brooklyn Myers and I am
an Elixir newbie.
My goal is to help people adoptElixir and grow as developers
while doing the same myself.
I do that by documenting andsharing my own experience in the
Elixir industry.
It's been an incredible journeyso far and I look forward to
taking the next step with you.
So let's jump in to the Elixirnewbie podcast.
(00:24):
Hello everyone, welcome to theElixir newbie podcast.
Today I am joined by SashaWolfe, who is one of the hosts
of the Elixir Mix podcast, whichwas one of the podcasts that
inspired me to get intopodcasting and also to explore
more about Elixir.
(00:45):
He is also the author of theKonega library, which is an
opinionated way of dealing withbehaviors.
Sasha, I want to thank you somuch for being here.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
It's a pleasure to be here.
I mean, we had you recently onElixir Mix, so I am just
returning the favor.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Yeah, I feel like I have been circling around the
podcast.
We had Adi over here, and thenyou all had me over, and now we
are having you over, and I thinkthis is just what we are going
to do now.
Let's set up a rotatingschedule or something.
Actually, if you want, you canhost my podcast I will host
yours for one, we can do it forthree.
It will be great.
Last podcast, you and I got totalking about TTRPGs and
(01:31):
realized very quickly that wecould probably just talk forever
, regardless of the topicbecause we were just having such
a good time.
So I hope folks go over thereand check out that episode if
they want to see what this islike in reverse.
And so I was really excited tohave you on and get to talk more
(01:51):
about programming.
Maybe we will talk more aboutDungeons and Dragons, because if
I can warm that into aconversation, I always will.
And yeah, I'm really curious tohear kind of your story of how
you got into Elixir.
I'd love to know where did thatbegin?
Speaker 2 (02:13):
I'm going to start with where Elixir story begins,
but I'm also going to take astep back from that to kind of
talk about where, in general, mywhole career went through,
because I feel that it'sinteresting and also maybe a bit
exciting with you interestingfor some folks out there.
My journey with Elixir beganwhen I started at an agency and
(02:33):
they don't like the word agency,they don't like to describe
themselves as an agency, butthey were an agency and it was
an IoT, more heavy agency andthey were using Elixir.
Nowadays they actually aren'tanymore because of hiring
reasons but back then Elixir wasthe weapon of choice and I
started as like mid-level,barely out of junior-ish
(02:55):
back-end engineer there and wehad a whole slew of colleagues
that were a lot more experiencedwith Elixir.
And that was back then.
I don't remember the versionnumber, but it was before the
format existed, so it's been afew years.
And, yeah, I worked there forlike two-ish years and this
(03:15):
particular company I wasn't evenworking on an IT project.
It was a different thing, buthonestly, it doesn't really
matter and I had a veryluxurious experience, a very
privileged experience, ofworking with people that were a
lot more familiar with Elixirthan I am.
So I could literally at anymoment in time ask somebody
which knew more than I did andthat kind of kickstarted and
(03:37):
supercharged, honestly, myknowledge and my productivity
with Elixir.
Because back then, while thecommunity, while the tooling was
pretty decent, there was stilla lot more rough gadgets in the
edges than there are nowadays.
For example, like the configmodule didn't exist there, there
was still the mix config andthen you had the host to okay,
how do you do runtimeconfigurations?
(03:58):
That was difficult.
Releases were a lot morefinicky, not part of mix yet,
again, formatting.
So we had a whole slew ofdiscussions on how do you format
this right.
But the core of a language wasalready around and to be able to
work with colleagues that had alot more experience under that,
(04:19):
that was a super valuableexperience.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
There's a really huge learning jump you get when you
start to get to work with otherpeople.
I think that most folks shouldreally.
If you haven't already had atech job, focusing on getting
that tech job makes a lot ofsense as opposed to learning
independently, because the pacethat you learned when you're,
(04:44):
say, solo learning is so muchslower than when you get to
learn in the context of realworld problems, of having
knowledgeable people seeing howthey do things.
There's certain advantages youget when doing that.
I'm really curious, do youthink?
Because there's a certainadvantage you get from getting
(05:05):
into a language early, right,but there's also disadvantages
that come with that.
Do you think Elixir is easierto learn now or easier to learn
back then?
There's more features added toa language that increase what
you have to learn, but there'salso more resources.
So I'm curious, how do youthink that has changed since you
(05:25):
got into it?
Speaker 2 (05:28):
I think the honest answer is the classic senior
answer.
It depends.
If you come to Elixir with aclear idea okay, this is the
kind of stuff I wanna build withit.
For example, I wanna build aweb API or I wanna build web
applications in general, right,then I feel it's easier nowadays
(05:48):
because also Phoenix is a lotmore polished Again, the release
pipeline, getting things intoproductions, a lot more polished
.
I think even Phoenix allows youto generate a Docker file
nowadays.
There was still a host who werefinicky things back then.
I remember wrestling andwriting a whole bunch of Docker
files myself and it was nevereasy.
(06:08):
So if you have a clear idea ofwhat kind of technological
direction you wanna take insideof ecosystem at Elixir, I think
it's easier now.
But if you come to Elixir moreand honestly I think that this
is probably a very commonexperience when you start out as
an engineer, where you don'treally quite know yet what you
(06:28):
want to do I think it can beharder because while it's super
exciting to see all thedifferent new domains Elixir is
exploring, I mean among themmachine learning, right.
Also, nervs is really a sort ofpiece of engineering at this
point, so you can do a wholeslew of things with Elixir, but
(06:49):
again, then there's a wide swathof topics you could in theory
look into all, with a littleidiosyncrasies, with a little
differences, and I think thatcan feel overwhelming, honestly,
at least I mean, for example,me at this point.
I've been working with Elixirprofessionally for six years or
longer and I still haven't dealtwith all the machine learning
(07:12):
stuff.
Yet I have no clue.
I also really haven't dealtthat much with lifebooks, like I
know.
There are things I've playedaround with them one afternoon,
that's about it.
So even for me as somebody whohas been in this ecosystem for
quite a while, there are stilltopics I have no freaking clue
about.
And when you come to theecosystem as an UB and you don't
(07:33):
really have an idea yet whatyou want to do, I think that can
be quite overwhelming to thesame degree a similarly degree
like how, coming to a JavaScriptlife, like okay, which web
framework should I'm supposed touse?
Which single-page thingy?
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Oh, all of these change so quickly right, there's
a really common feeling I seeearly career devs experience
which is that, the feeling thatthere's something that you
should know.
You don't know what it is, butyou feel like everyone else
knows it and yeah, I knowexactly what you're saying.
Yeah, I think that is just acommon experience and, frankly,
(08:05):
I don't even know how much thatexperience goes away.
Like, I still feel like thatall the time, right, and so it's
.
I see my students experience it, I see other developers
experience it, and part of that,I think, stems from there is
just so much to learn in termsof you know, programming is hard
(08:27):
and there's so many differentareas you can go to.
So if you're not reallyconcrete about what it is you
want to learn, yeah, informationoverload is a very real thing.
I would say I don't think it's,and I'd be curious to hear your
thoughts.
I don't think it's as bad in,let's say, elixir as it is in
something like JavaScript, whereif you want to pick web
development, well, there's likefive major frameworks that you
(08:51):
can pick in that ecosystem andthere'll be a new one next
Friday, and so there's also justlike the paralysis of choice in
that ecosystem.
I think with Elixir I don't seequite as much of that paralysis
.
It seems like we've, I think,done a better job of unifying
for the most part, but there isstill a huge mountain to learn.
(09:12):
So you gave a really great talkand I'd love to hear more of
your thoughts about.
I think that the title was youKnow Nothing.
Is that right?
Yeah, I think this was-.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Yeah, yeah, it wasn't .
You know nothing, or do you, ordo you?
That was a question followingup.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah, and I think this kind of relates to what I
think was kind of the theme ofthat in some ways the experience
of not knowing things and howI've also seen some messaging
you put out around the like youare more than the sum of the
knowledge that you have, and Isee a lot of early career devs
(09:48):
get kind of discouraged bycompanies and people who make
them feel like that's what theyare Like if you don't know the
thing, you have no value, youhave no worth, and there could
be some, I think, very negativeexperiences, say in interviewing
for example.
So I'd love to hear what yourthoughts are with regards to
maintaining self-worth when notknowing things and just kind of
(10:11):
dealing with that feeling of,okay, I don't know things, but
that's okay.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, that is a very good question and, honestly, one
which I feel is a lifelongjourney working on.
I'm not going to take theopportunity to do what I said
earlier, to take a step back andfrom where I started with
Elixir and, in general, talkabout where I started with my
career, because I feel thatgives context to what you're
asking.
(10:36):
So I studied not reallycomputer science, I studied
scientific programming.
It's called.
It's like a dual studies coursewhere you both have like a
training and also studying andthat is like a very math heavy.
It's basically like computerscience, but with more math, and
I studied that.
I started doing that in 2010,like right out of school, got a
(11:00):
bit lucky with starting therebecause somebody else jumped off
, so I got kind of a head start.
But that was, all in all,pretty good for me because it
was more of not a traditionaluniversity experience, but you
actually had your day to day jobthere, right, but you also the
(11:24):
university stuff was also on thesame vicinity.
So like some days you haduniversity stuff, some days you
had work, and for me that waspretty good, because I also
mentioned that on Elixir makesand I've also mentioned it on
Twitter.
But I lived with ADHD and backthen I didn't knew, so this kind
of structured environment wasvery good for me.
(11:47):
Yeah, I finished in 2013, witha lot of support also from my
then girlfriend, now wife,writing my bachelor thesis.
I probably would have neverdone that if it weren't for her.
And then I started my first jobat also again like some some IT
agency house, and that wasworking as a software engineer
(12:08):
with Java for Volkswagen.
So I wasn't directly employedat Volkswagen, but like a
subcontractor basically, andyeah, that was just an in house
thing, building some softwarethat was used for building,
building builds betweendifferent departments not really
exciting stuff and but that wasmy first job out of university,
(12:28):
basically for two years, and Iinteresting tidbit while there
was a host of technical legacythere and also really horrific
technical legacy to this day,that was the team I've seen
using scrum the most efficiently, which is kind of unintuitive,
I would, you might think,because big cooperation, right,
(12:50):
I think, large amount of peopleworking together, but they
really had scrum down to a T, solittle tip that on that side.
And afterwards, because therewas more in the back end,
engineering, I switched to asuper small company, also closer
to home where I honestly didpretty much everything that.
We were like five engineers andthey are mostly built mobile
(13:14):
apps, but I also built some APIand APIs.
I even had some point doubledwith embedded development and I
had an opportunity to to checkout a whole slew of different
technologies.
But the thing is there, I mean,like you asked earlier, right,
like self worth.
That was also super stressfulbecause I mean, I was often the
(13:36):
only engineer responsible for acertain part of a project and
there was not a lot of guidanceat that place, which on one at
one one side is like kind ofcool to try things out.
But it's also like you kind ofwork and to avoid, so to speak,
right, like, is this the thingyou're doing?
Does that even make sense?
So I was, I work at, reallystressed out of that place, like
(13:59):
sometimes I even stayed at theuntil 10pm because a thing was
not working and that was reallyreally difficult on my mental
health.
And then I switched becausethat party.
Because of that reason, Iswitched to that agency I
mentioned earlier, right, whereI then first picked up a Dixie
because I realized, okay, this,super big companies not for me.
Super small companies also notfor me.
(14:19):
I would like a thing in betweenand I for me personally, the
sweet spot has been like 100people ish, not more than that,
and that was like the companyalso learning Lixie rat.
That was like work life balancewas a host to better, but it
was still not perfect because Ihad the tendency to I always
(14:42):
wanted to learn more.
So I picked up try to pick up acertificate for because we were
using as Azure's our cloudprovider and the company was
basically sponsoring Azuretraining and I tried to pick up
that like the certificate, andthey're sort of next to my work,
next to being with my wifewhich we just got our first kid
(15:04):
right, like I tried to juggleall of that at the same time and
then I hit my first burnout andkind of went into therapy and
all of that and that kind ofreally forced me to reevaluate
what the fuck am I doing here,like why am I trying so hard to
(15:26):
impress people?
Why am I trying to do so much?
And throughout therapy I workedout that, while the society we
work in, we live in, is reallymuch like a very performance
driven society, I mean that justbecause you are my performer
might not perform doesn'tnecessarily mean that you don't
(15:48):
have any level of self worth.
And throughout my therapy, butalso throughout the things I
take away from that and likewhat's my life as a parent, you
know, I realized that there ismore to me than just the ability
to write good code or just theability to work with technology
competently, but friends andfamily, they are a whole slew of
(16:11):
different qualities about methat people value, and at that I
mean at that agency, I also wasvery much involved in
organizing meetups and like justbeing also a teacher for other
folks.
I'm pretty good at explainingstuff, so there's a whole slew
of other things I could I couldstart to see as being valuable,
(16:37):
even again reflect in thecontext of productivity.
But beyond that, right like whatpeople, people like to be
around me in general.
So, and that is not necessarilysomething that makes me write
better code or I don't know,makes me wrangle of engine x
better in one way or another,but that makes that, I feel,
makes me an enjoyable humanbeing to be around.
(16:59):
And at the end of the day, thatmeans you as humans are social
creatures and that is whatmatters, I feel, like the
connections and therelationships we make along the
way, and not necessarily theamount of code we can write over
quality of code we can write,and it's a bit sad that it took
me basically a burnout, but Itook that also as an opportunity
(17:26):
to say maybe for example, Imean the talk you mentioned it's
on my website maybe I can, Ican talk about this and somebody
else doesn't have to go throughthe same hardship that I did,
if I, if I kind of, can comefrom an angle of an experienced
engineer and tell people youknow what, the technology you
know, that is not really asimportant.
There's some of everything likewhat kind of person you are and
(17:50):
if you are, if you're enjoyableto be around, that is allows
you more important than thelevel of technology and the
level of competence you have.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
When having that, I think, internal strength, to
feel that that kind of selfworth.
It really helps in the momentsin career where maybe you feel
like something is a struggle oryou're having a hard time
accomplishing a particular task.
I completely agree.
I think there is this societalpressure that your productivity
is your worth.
I have not resolved thatproblem for myself, to be
(18:25):
completely honest.
So we're very, very much protherapy.
On the election of the podcast,I take therapy as well and you
know I don't think I've hitquite the same place of feeling
resolved with it.
I think I may be mid thatjourney in terms of still
(18:47):
feeling that pressure to, youknow, produce as much as
possible, and I do think it atleast comes from a place of.
It's really not about likesatisfying other people, but I
do think there's an element oflike pushing yourself harder
than is healthy and things likethat that I've been trying to
work on lately, because I thinkI'm you know, burnout and me are
(19:10):
familiar friends.
Sorry to hear that.
I think it's better to like beas open about these things as
possible, because there are alot of folks who experience
these things, and I actually dida little bit of coaching with
someone who had never even heardthe term burnout and they
(19:34):
genuinely thought, even thoughthey were tired all the time,
exhausted, unable to just likebuild up steam in their life,
they just thought, oh well, I'mjust lazy or there's something
wrong with me.
Or and we did a lot ofconversation around like no,
like it's not wrong of you to beexhausted because you have like
three kids and financialstruggles and have been going
(19:59):
through these experiences atwork, and like that's normal,
that's a normal thing, there'snothing wrong with you for
experiencing that.
So that's part of what I hope tokind of normalize and I hope to
hit a more stable place incareer.
Right now I'm not sure how todo that with the amount that I'm
putting on my plate, but I dohope to kind of get to a place
(20:23):
of a little bit more morebalance there, because I see how
it impacts the other aspects oflife that do matter.
And the thing is, if you putall of your energy into work or
one thing, you don't have anyenergy left for the other things
that matter, like you said,like being enjoyable to be
around with your friends andspending time with the people
(20:43):
that matter, and I think that'sone of the benefits that can
come with having a kid.
From what I see from parents soI'm not a parent, but what I
see from the people who I knoware parents is that there's
nothing that will force you toreprioritize your life more than
a kid.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Yeah, I agree 100%.
I mean I have two kids I have.
My son is seven years old andmy daughter is three years old,
and I mean you mentioned earlierthat you are not quite there
yet.
In the same level of resolvethis, honestly, I'm also not
there.
(21:21):
The big change for me back thenwas to realize that work is not
as important as I made it out tobe, because I was putting in a
lot of extra hours and peoplewould have liked to have put me
even put me, let me put in evenmore hours right.
And I realized that this, thatwork in general, is something
(21:46):
you have.
You have a contract and insideof your contract that probably
states that you're employed for30 hours, 40 hours a week, so on
and so forth.
And I kind of started, afterthe whole experience, to make a
point of I'm gonna stick aroundfor this time.
I started to do time trackingfor myself to kind of get an
handle on like how much time doI spend at work?
And if I spend like one weekmore which sometimes happens and
(22:08):
it is okay then I spent lessthe next week and that kind of
really got very religious aboutspending not too much time at
work these days.
Honestly, I still keep track ofthat.
But also, if I spend a littleless time at work one week, I'll
still get my stuff done.
Who cares right?
So I'm really.
(22:29):
I basically changed myperspective from okay I need to
be a productive person back to Ineed to uphold the contractual
obligations I have with myemployer.
That still means I try to dogood work, but not more than
that.
You know, like there's more tolife than work.
Thing is, I mean.
(22:50):
That is why I feel like I'm apretty healthy place right now.
But to kind of give a spoiler, Ihad a second burnout risk and
that was not because of work orpartially because of work.
That was also because of mywhole living situation and being
(23:11):
a parent.
Honestly, I'm at the currentplace I'm working at.
I used to have a peopleleadership role the very first
time in my career and that is avery personal experience.
But I realized that this is notfor me, because I need the
(23:31):
structure that engineering workbrings to your day to day.
I mean, for example, I'm a verybig fan of doing test-driven
development and you have all ofthese very small, very tight
feedback loops and I need that.
And back then I realizedalready that this is something
I'm missing and that, while Ienjoy working with people and
also teaching people andcoaching people and mentoring
(23:53):
people, I was really, reallymissing those feedback loops and
I couldn't quite articulate why.
And that is also then where I,at that point, I realized, oh
wait, a moment, I live with ADHD, because I had the suspicions
about my son for a while andthen I looked into it and
realized you know what thatsounds like me exactly?
So, yeah, and that explained awhole slew of things.
(24:18):
But that also explained a wholeslew of difficulties I had in
my private life.
And to cut this long story short, because otherwise the podcast
would get way too long, butthere is well, like I said
earlier, that there is more tolife than just work.
(24:39):
Also, when it comes toself-worth and being able to let
go of expectations, there comes, there's more to that than just
work.
Again, I'm struggling still andI'm still working on wrangling
with expectations I have towardsmyself as a parent, as a
(25:01):
partner, as somebody that wantsto build a family, you know,
because I realized that some ofthose expectations I cannot
fulfill because I'm never adivergent, and that is something
that kind of contributedtowards the second level of
burnout, because I wasoverwhelmed at work with this
new role.
I realized that I couldn't,that there's some things in my
(25:24):
private life I couldn't fulfilland I really, really tried to
and I didn't understand why.
So, coming back to the verybeginning and what I said, this
is a lifelong journey.
This is a lifelong journeywhere we, as people, need to,
(25:45):
should be more compassionatetowards one's self and realize
that there might be someexpectations we might hold and
that, honestly, for good reasons, and we still think that as an
ideal we would want to achieve.
But sometimes life, life isdifferent.
You know, sometimes life isdifferent and sometimes life
tells you that this is notsomething you can achieve, at
(26:08):
least not in that fashion, andthat is not easy to deal with.
And the only thing, honestly,the only thing that has helped
me there is being compassionatewith myself, like looking at
what I've been achieving so farand career-wise I'm in a pretty
good place.
But also my kids, they love me,they enjoy spending time with
(26:32):
me.
I enjoy spending time with them.
While there is a whole slew oflittle things I could beat
myself up over, all in all,looking at the full picture, my
life is pretty decent.
There are still some big topicsto work on and, again, I'm also
still in therapy or rather,again in therapy but what I've
(26:55):
realized is that it's veryhealthy to also not only
challenge the expectations wehave at work, but also to
challenge the expectations wehave towards ourselves beyond
work.
I think it makes a ton of sense.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
I really appreciate you sharing that story and I
think that the pressure we puton ourselves to be the ideal can
be crushing, right, and Shelfarseems to draw a lot of people
who are not really in the rightposition to be the people who
(27:27):
aspire to some form of ideal.
Right, we have a lot of peoplewho are very self-improvement
focused, very productivityfocused, very.
We want to have goodrelationships, we want to have a
good relationship with family,and so I think the demand put on
ourselves can be, you know,massive, and so instead of
looking at, okay, what's the onething that you can work on
(27:49):
that's gonna make you a betterversion of yourself tomorrow,
it's like how far am I fromperfect?
Right, that is a crushingthought.
And, yeah, then you add familyinto the mix and it's a whole
can of worms, especially if youknow we all have, whether it's
(28:11):
neurodivergence or you know,trauma, or you know everyone is
working with something right,and so everyone is working on
improving something aboutthemselves, and that can cause
tension, struggles, difficulties.
So I'm really happy to hearthat you are.
I think it seems like you havea very healthy mindset about
(28:36):
those things, and so I reallyappreciate you sharing that
experience and also, I think, alot of folks in tech.
I've met a lot of people whostruggle with negative self-talk
, which I think is part of whatyou're talking about here.
Is that compassion towardsyourself, right?
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Yes, yes, very much.
That is a big part of also beingable to manage my mental health
.
It's not, again, not perfect,but who is right?
But that is changing thenarrative right.
That can be small things, likewhen you make a mistake, maybe
at coding.
(29:14):
Often people reach for alanguage like oh, I'm so stupid,
right, I'm such an idiot.
And that in itself is alreadyduty-meaning yourself right.
And what I found personallyvery useful.
There are two major things Iwould say.
One is a little hack.
(29:36):
At this point I'm very muchingrained.
It's like I would ask myselfhow would I react if somebody
else made that mistake?
And most of the time the answeris you know what shit happens.
Did you learn something from it?
Yes, good, nick, rinse andrepeat.
That is, in general, like errorculture at companies can be
(29:57):
very helpful there if you have ahealthy error, mistake culture,
like when stuff goes bad andpeople don't ask who's at fault,
but how do we fix it right andwhat can we learn from it.
But you can apply the samelayer of thinking to yourself.
Like you make a mistake, well,you're not stupid, you didn't
know better.
But what can you do to fix this?
What can you do to improve upon.
(30:19):
It can be something as small asoh, something it could change.
You made broke production.
It was just the day beforeyesterday I broke our staging
system unexpectedly because Imerged some stuff together.
There was a merge conflict inthat particular part where I
subgraphed my query inside oflike just a big string and
(30:41):
basically I merged that query inthe wrong way, so that
particular part of theapplication just broke.
Yeah, what did I do?
I mean, I fixed it prettyquickly.
I wrote some regression tests,but I didn't at some any point
try to beat myself up over itbecause, yeah, that shit happens
.
I wrote some regression tests.
Now this thing can't happenagain.
Right, I learned something fromit, because I assumed that this
(31:02):
particular part of theapplication didn't need those
regression tests because it'sjust strings, right, like I mean
, like I'm gonna change stringsonly in expected ways, but turns
out like merge conflicts canhappen and things can break
unexpectedly.
Yeah, that is the one part.
So trying to ask yourself, howwould you react when other
people made that mistake?
How would you be so hard onthem as you are towards yourself
(31:26):
?
And sometimes the answer tothat is yes, but I think then
there's a whole slew of otherthings you might want to unpack
as a person.
And the second thing is andthat might sound cheesy, but
mindfulness.
Honestly I was back then when Ihad my very first burnout.
One thing I did started to pickup was meditation, and my
(31:46):
meditation practice these daysis a bit wonky, honestly, and I
want to pick it up again, butthat has been a very it's a very
big help, very helpful in beingable to step away from negative
thoughts and being able to takea big of more of a holistic
view on where I'm standing,because, at the end of the day,
(32:09):
mindfulness and meditation isabout being in the moment and,
at least for me, burnout anddepression were very much
related to not being in themoment but being stuck in my own
head.
So, yeah, those are the twothings that has been really much
helping me to be morecompassionate towards myself.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
Mindfulness does not sound cheesy in any way.
I think it has tremendousimpact.
I have also been, I think,slacking on my meditation as of
late, but I'm very inspired byfolks like Renee Brown, tar
(32:52):
Brock, the RAIN method if anyonehas not encountered that, I
think is a really good tool forif you're ever having really
strong emotion for allowing that.
Recognize, allow, inspect,nurture, I believe, is the
acronym.
So it's a mindfulness processyou can go through to allow
(33:14):
yourself to experience things,because I think one of the
things that tends to make thosetypes of experiences worse is
one the I think there's a termfor it, but I can't remember
this kind of spiral, thinking oflike you feel bad about feeling
bad, right, and so that kind oflike you already feel bad, that
something bad happened.
You had an issue that happenedin production that doesn't feel
(33:36):
good on its own, but then youadd on to that and you're like,
oh, I am bad for making thathappen, right?
I've even seen people do thetriple, where they're like, oh,
I shouldn't tell myself that Ifeel bad about feeling bad.
It's like it's this endlessspiral of a negative talk.
So that can really, I think,exacerbate that issue.
(33:56):
I feel like I started thissentence by saying one, and then
I'm not sure what my two was,which I do often.
I can't very much think, yep,sometimes you get lost in the
middle of the thought.
But yeah, anyway, the core ofwhat I wanna say was that
mindfulness, I think, is afantastic practice and you see,
it affect your interactions withpeople, right, like I've had to
(34:20):
more and more start to accept Ineed to do the things that help
me take care of myself, becauseultimately it doesn't actually
make you more productive to stayup late, work super hard,
neglect your relationships,neglect your physical health.
Those things make you feelproductive for a day and then
the next day you pay for it, orthe next week or the next month,
(34:41):
or With interest.
Yeah, it usually makes things alot more With a very big
interest.
Yeah, despite knowing this, Ido still engage in some of that.
But that's something that I'mreally trying to get on lockdown
right now, because I see it andI think, especially in teaching
and maybe you've had thisexperience yourself if you're
not your best, you are lesspatient, you're less able to
(35:08):
kind of navigate the socialsituations of teaching well and
like it makes you worse, and I'msure the same is true in just
regular development life as well, but particularly in teaching,
where a lot of the job is social, I find it has a major impact
Whether or not I have sleptenough exercised and I'm just
feeling good in general.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Yeah, I'm not that, that's not about teaching
happening my life, but I canvery much say that the parenting
is like teaching on steroids.
So, yeah, they're very muchthere I can.
There was a period in Time,like at the end of last year,
where I quite like secondburnout and everything, where I
(35:49):
couldn't even Engage really withmy kids anymore because I was
just so beat from the day-to-daystress and that it is just not
enjoyable for anybody and it'skind of Sad sometimes that it
has to get to that point for youto realize that something has
to change right, which is againlike a minute was said earlier.
(36:10):
You're grateful for me talkingabout this, but I that is
exactly the reason I'm talkingabout Experiences like this,
because maybe at least oneperson hears this and takes a
corrective turn in their lifeand figures out Okay, maybe I
don't have to let it get to thatpoint, right, and then then the
world is a tiny bit better thanbefore.
(36:31):
And If we don't talk aboutexperiences like that, then
there, how would other peopleknow and understand that this is
not just them and this is notjust an experience they are
having, but even people thatmight look like super Successful
and productive and experiencefrom the outside, which I would
(36:52):
expect.
I mean, like I've been I'm nolexical mix for a while now.
So I would presume the peoplelooking at that podcast
Especially from a more earlygreat perspective might look at
Adi and and me and Alan as likethese Super experience engineers
, which kind of they shouldfigure it out.
And I'm here to tell you, well,no, we don't.
(37:13):
We're also just human people,but we've been on this planet
for a little while longer.
So, yeah, yeah, if you reallywant to to, if you want to
retain your ability to do a goodjob, then self-care is
non-optional, and that issomething you just said and I
definitely 100% agree with thatthe.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
That transparency I really appreciate and You're
completely right, talking aboutyour experience is the best way,
for I think it's it's mutuallybeneficial, right you get to
share your experience with otherpeople who can maybe learn and
benefit from that.
But I also think there'ssomething I have always
appreciated, which is theaccountability of Knowing.
(38:02):
I have to describe things.
Knowing I have to say certainthings like if I am I did this
with my manager recentlyactually, who's absolutely
phenomenal.
I Love my manager.
He is just an absolute wonderis is really like everything
that a manager should embody.
(38:22):
And I had to have a conversationwith him and say, hey, I'm not
sleeping.
Well, I'm overworking myself, Iam overstressed and like having
that, you know, like especiallyleading up to elixir comp and
got a lot of stuff on the plateand it's just managing that has
been frankly, very difficult andand knowing that I have to have
(38:42):
that conversation helpsencourage me to do the things
that will make me feel better.
Right, it's the Shining thelight on things can often make
them better, but if you justrepress and ignore and don't
talk about that's how problemsget worse.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Yeah, there's also been my, my experience and I I
mean I said, sadly, therapy isnot something that is easily
available to anyone.
But I've said in the past, Ifeel that everybody could
probably benefit from at leastsome therapy.
But even even if you can't, theExperience to talk to people
that truly listen, that yourmanager sounds like somebody
(39:22):
that truly listens right, thatcan be liberating in itself and
that is an experience that I Ifeel in today's society, and
especially in like the waysocial media is working right
there is, there is not a lot ofthat going around in general.
I Also, like I mean me as aEuropean looking into the inside
(39:43):
from the United, the culture ofthe United States, I feel
there's a whole still also goingon there with, like people not
necessarily talking about howthey feel, and I have opinions
on the question hey, how are you?
Because usually people don'twant to hear the real answer.
So it's refreshing when you endup talking and engaging with
(40:06):
somebody that truly listens andthat truly cares and that is a
Therapist, at the very least isthat.
But even even if figure againyou don't have access to a
therapist, a friend can be thator a Great manager can be that
I'm gonna see not sure what kindof point I'm trying to make.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
I think I love how this conversation is turned into
.
One of that, I think, hasEverything to do with software
and nothing to do with softwareat the same time, because I
think you and I have probablythought a lot about mental
health Quite a bit, so I'mreally glad this conversation
has gone in that direction.
I also want to say like, yeah,therapy is, is not accessible
for everyone, right, it'sexclusively acceptable to the
(40:47):
part of the population whoprobably not to devalue your
experience, my experience, otherpeople's experience but it's
exclusively available to theportion of the population who
probably needs it the least.
In a way, maybe that's a bit ofa hot take, but I think the
people who probably need thattype of like Mental health help
(41:07):
the most are those who are innot a great financial situation,
who can't afford it, whoProbably have very difficult,
complex relationships, you know,and or or Maybe even abusive
relationships, or like peoplewho are in a position where
Everything around them isworking against them.
(41:28):
Getting help and seeking helpare the ones who have the
hardest time accessing therapyand who really needed the most.
So Society I really think wehaven't figured that out
Absolutely.
The North American culture isone of this.
This like independent, pullyourself up by the bootstrap but
simultaneously, the only peoplewho can are the ones who are
(41:50):
already born with certainadvantages.
I'm part of the problem, like Iam one of those people born
with certain advantages.
I had some financial help toget into programming, I had two
parents who helped Support and,like I'm not part of the problem
, just more I can talk aboutthese things only because I've
(42:12):
had Certain privileges that haveallowed me to gain advantages.
And yeah, we really have not, Ithink, figured that out In any
real way.
So I hope that eventuallysociety and culture shifts
towards one of Caring aboutpeople, empathy towards people,
and for those of you who mightbe in a situation of kind of
(42:33):
needing Someone who will listen,needing Maybe therapy, but but
can't necessarily afford that,that's not necessarily a viable
option right now I Think one ofthe things you can do Is you can
also be that person for thepeople around you.
There's a phenomenal amount of IThink I don't know how to
(42:58):
describe the word, but I'm gonnasay help for yourself that you
get by helping other people.
So even if you have, you know,people surrounding you who maybe
aren't the type to listen oryou can't afford a therapist, or
it's just not viable for foryour, for whatever reason.
Being able to be kinder to thepeople around you, supporting
(43:20):
them, can be a great way.
It's not like I could pro quo,like reciprocal, businessy kind
of a thing, but I find that youtend to get from the world what
you put out into the world, andso, even if you can't receive
that yet, you can at the veryleast start giving that, and
over time I think that that willeventually find its way back to
(43:40):
you.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
Yeah, I agree 100%, and I think this is also a point
where we can kind of segue into, like technology, because when
you were in Elixir Mix, wetalked about the benefits of
teaching and helping people outbecause there's a whole slew of
things even experience ofengineers can learn from
(44:01):
teaching other people and fromhelping other people, and the
same holds true even if you'renot an experienced engineer.
Right, like you can help otherpeople picking up coding, or you
can help other people work withtechnology that you already
have a bit of a handle on andthat in itself can be first of
all, like just a nice experiencehelping people, like honesty.
Helping makes me feel all warmand fuzzy inside, but at the
(44:25):
same time you might learn athing or two, and that it's like
a kind of a double deal there.
Right, like you get, you gettwo things for free not for free
, but you get two things forprice of one.
So to add to what you just said, brooke, is that of course,
(44:47):
you're not obligated to helpother people out, but when you
are not in such a privilegedposition as yeah, honestly,
broken me are, then maybe, justmaybe, getting in touch with
folks and helping each other andbe it.
(45:08):
Learning to JavaScript, rightBe it learning Elixir is this
time that makes your personallife a tiny bit better and also
you as an engineer a tiny bitbetter at the same time.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
This has been by far the most heartwarming episode I
think I've ever gotten thechance to record.
This didn't even feel like therecording.
To be honest, I feel like youand I could have just had this
conversation and there happenedto be recording happening.
It pains me to say we arereaching the end of the time
(45:39):
that we have available for thisparticular chat, but I really
hope that we get to keepcontinuing this conversation
because I've had an absoluteblast talking to you and I hope
you've enjoyed this as well.
Speaker 2 (45:52):
Definitely, and there are a few topics I definitely
would like to pitch here at theend.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
But maybe we can pick it up another time.
I would love to do a part two,if you're interested in that.
We can definitely talk moreoffline about the specifics, but
I do want to ask is thereanything that you would like to
shout out to or just kind ofpoint people in the direction of
, before we end our episode here?
Speaker 2 (46:20):
Yeah, I can maybe use it as a spoiler of what I would
like to also get into, becausewe I mean, as I said just said a
very heartwarming chat alsoabout mental health, about to
certainly be true to yourselfand being accepting and
compassionate towards yourself,and I also talked about error
culture and there is a thing asa concept called psychological
(46:42):
safety.
There's something, if you lookat up there as a host of talks I
also gave a little lightningtalk on that, I think, at some
point and something in anutshell, the teams that are
most performing.
The one thing thatdifferentiates them from other
teams that are also performingis a little tidbit called
(47:04):
psychological safety, andpsychological safety is the
ability to somewhat be true toyourself but also to feel
comfortable making mistakes inthe team, and if so, basically
everything I talked aboutearlier, everything you did talk
about earlier, contributestoward making a more
psychological safe environment,first of all for yourself.
But if you end up being able tohave a team that kind of
(47:27):
believes in those values, thenyou can come to a point also
where you as a team and as asoftware developer can really
start shipping stuff and reallyget productive, because you know
other people have your back anda lot of the good work has been
done by Brinne Brown, which youmentioned earlier.
I'm also a big fan of her work.
But there's also, interestingly, the very much an overlap into
(47:49):
that and like the whole DevOpsspace and DDD community and like
it's like tangentially related.
But I would like to do a shoutout here for a book I've been
reading a while ago that iscalled Team Topologies and it
doesn't really explicitly talkabout psychological safety and
the likes, but it talks abouthow people interact with each
(48:10):
other and how that kind ofcontributes toward building
technological systems.
And that is a big interest anda big, big, big, big of a pet
subject for me, likeunderstanding how sociology and
technology intersect and how weas people build software for
(48:35):
people.
So you really can't removepeople from the equation when
doing technology.
So yeah, that would be my shoutout.
Speaker 1 (48:43):
I'll definitely have to give that a look through
because I'm very curious tolearn more about applying this
to kind of team management.
I think even just you speakingabout that.
I definitely see that atDockyard, so I'm really curious
to kind of learn more of thehard knowledge on that, as
opposed to kind of the softertheory or feeling I currently
have.
I want to give you a huge thankyou for being here and talking
(49:05):
with me today and I will includethat.
I will say I will include thelink to that book in the show
notes for anyone who'sinterested in checking that out
as well.
That is going to be it for thisepisode of the Elixir Newbie
podcast.
I want to thank all of you somuch for listening.
I hope you elixir newbies outthere enjoyed this episode and
learned a lot and grew a lot.
I feel like this was a verygrowing episode, as always.
(49:30):
I definitely know that I did.
If you want to chat, you cansend me a message.
I'm at Brooklyn J Meyers onTwitter.
Dockyard Academy is launchingits next cohort in November, so
if that's something you'reinterested, you can also see
more information in these shownotes there.
And, sasha, I just want tothank you again.
Thanks so much for being here.
(49:51):
It was a pleasure to be here.
Thank you for being here.
Hello everyone, my name is Brooklyn Myers and I am
an Elixir newbie.
My goal is to help people adoptElixir and grow as developers
while doing the same myself.
I do that by documenting andsharing my own experience in the
Elixir industry.
It's been an incredible journeyso far and I look forward to
taking the next step with you.
So let's jump in to the Elixirnewbie podcast.
(00:24):
Hello everyone, welcome to theElixir newbie podcast.
Today I am joined by SashaWolfe, who is one of the hosts
of the Elixir Mix podcast, whichwas one of the podcasts that
inspired me to get intopodcasting and also to explore
more about Elixir.
(00:45):
He is also the author of theKonega library, which is an
opinionated way of dealing withbehaviors.
Sasha, I want to thank you somuch for being here.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
It's a pleasure to be here.
I mean, we had you recently onElixir Mix, so I am just
returning the favor.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Yeah, I feel like I have been circling around the
podcast.
We had Adi over here, and thenyou all had me over, and now we
are having you over, and I thinkthis is just what we are going
to do now.
Let's set up a rotatingschedule or something.
Actually, if you want, you canhost my podcast I will host
yours for one, we can do it forthree.
It will be great.
Last podcast, you and I got totalking about TTRPGs and
(01:31):
realized very quickly that wecould probably just talk forever
, regardless of the topicbecause we were just having such
a good time.
So I hope folks go over thereand check out that episode if
they want to see what this islike in reverse.
And so I was really excited tohave you on and get to talk more
(01:51):
about programming.
Maybe we will talk more aboutDungeons and Dragons, because if
I can warm that into aconversation, I always will.
And yeah, I'm really curious tohear kind of your story of how
you got into Elixir.
I'd love to know where did thatbegin?
Speaker 2 (02:13):
I'm going to start with where Elixir story begins,
but I'm also going to take astep back from that to kind of
talk about where, in general, mywhole career went through,
because I feel that it'sinteresting and also maybe a bit
exciting with you interestingfor some folks out there.
My journey with Elixir beganwhen I started at an agency and
(02:33):
they don't like the word agency,they don't like to describe
themselves as an agency, butthey were an agency and it was
an IoT, more heavy agency andthey were using Elixir.
Nowadays they actually aren'tanymore because of hiring
reasons but back then Elixir wasthe weapon of choice and I
started as like mid-level,barely out of junior-ish
(02:55):
back-end engineer there and wehad a whole slew of colleagues
that were a lot more experiencedwith Elixir.
And that was back then.
I don't remember the versionnumber, but it was before the
format existed, so it's been afew years.
And, yeah, I worked there forlike two-ish years and this
(03:15):
particular company I wasn't evenworking on an IT project.
It was a different thing, buthonestly, it doesn't really
matter and I had a veryluxurious experience, a very
privileged experience, ofworking with people that were a
lot more familiar with Elixirthan I am.
So I could literally at anymoment in time ask somebody
which knew more than I did andthat kind of kickstarted and
(03:37):
supercharged, honestly, myknowledge and my productivity
with Elixir.
Because back then, while thecommunity, while the tooling was
pretty decent, there was stilla lot more rough gadgets in the
edges than there are nowadays.
For example, like the configmodule didn't exist there, there
was still the mix config andthen you had the host to okay,
how do you do runtimeconfigurations?
(03:58):
That was difficult.
Releases were a lot morefinicky, not part of mix yet,
again, formatting.
So we had a whole slew ofdiscussions on how do you format
this right.
But the core of a language wasalready around and to be able to
work with colleagues that had alot more experience under that,
(04:19):
that was a super valuableexperience.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
There's a really huge learning jump you get when you
start to get to work with otherpeople.
I think that most folks shouldreally.
If you haven't already had atech job, focusing on getting
that tech job makes a lot ofsense as opposed to learning
independently, because the pacethat you learned when you're,
(04:44):
say, solo learning is so muchslower than when you get to
learn in the context of realworld problems, of having
knowledgeable people seeing howthey do things.
There's certain advantages youget when doing that.
I'm really curious, do youthink?
Because there's a certainadvantage you get from getting
(05:05):
into a language early, right,but there's also disadvantages
that come with that.
Do you think Elixir is easierto learn now or easier to learn
back then?
There's more features added toa language that increase what
you have to learn, but there'salso more resources.
So I'm curious, how do youthink that has changed since you
(05:25):
got into it?
Speaker 2 (05:28):
I think the honest answer is the classic senior
answer.
It depends.
If you come to Elixir with aclear idea okay, this is the
kind of stuff I wanna build withit.
For example, I wanna build aweb API or I wanna build web
applications in general, right,then I feel it's easier nowadays
(05:48):
because also Phoenix is a lotmore polished Again, the release
pipeline, getting things intoproductions, a lot more polished
.
I think even Phoenix allows youto generate a Docker file
nowadays.
There was still a host who werefinicky things back then.
I remember wrestling andwriting a whole bunch of Docker
files myself and it was nevereasy.
(06:08):
So if you have a clear idea ofwhat kind of technological
direction you wanna take insideof ecosystem at Elixir, I think
it's easier now.
But if you come to Elixir moreand honestly I think that this
is probably a very commonexperience when you start out as
an engineer, where you don'treally quite know yet what you
(06:28):
want to do I think it can beharder because while it's super
exciting to see all thedifferent new domains Elixir is
exploring, I mean among themmachine learning, right.
Also, nervs is really a sort ofpiece of engineering at this
point, so you can do a wholeslew of things with Elixir, but
(06:49):
again, then there's a wide swathof topics you could in theory
look into all, with a littleidiosyncrasies, with a little
differences, and I think thatcan feel overwhelming, honestly,
at least I mean, for example,me at this point.
I've been working with Elixirprofessionally for six years or
longer and I still haven't dealtwith all the machine learning
(07:12):
stuff.
Yet I have no clue.
I also really haven't dealtthat much with lifebooks, like I
know.
There are things I've playedaround with them one afternoon,
that's about it.
So even for me as somebody whohas been in this ecosystem for
quite a while, there are stilltopics I have no freaking clue
about.
And when you come to theecosystem as an UB and you don't
(07:33):
really have an idea yet whatyou want to do, I think that can
be quite overwhelming to thesame degree a similarly degree
like how, coming to a JavaScriptlife, like okay, which web
framework should I'm supposed touse?
Which single-page thingy?
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Oh, all of these change so quickly right, there's
a really common feeling I seeearly career devs experience
which is that, the feeling thatthere's something that you
should know.
You don't know what it is, butyou feel like everyone else
knows it and yeah, I knowexactly what you're saying.
Yeah, I think that is just acommon experience and, frankly,
(08:05):
I don't even know how much thatexperience goes away.
Like, I still feel like thatall the time, right, and so it's
.
I see my students experience it, I see other developers
experience it, and part of that,I think, stems from there is
just so much to learn in termsof you know, programming is hard
(08:27):
and there's so many differentareas you can go to.
So if you're not reallyconcrete about what it is you
want to learn, yeah, informationoverload is a very real thing.
I would say I don't think it's,and I'd be curious to hear your
thoughts.
I don't think it's as bad in,let's say, elixir as it is in
something like JavaScript, whereif you want to pick web
development, well, there's likefive major frameworks that you
(08:51):
can pick in that ecosystem andthere'll be a new one next
Friday, and so there's also justlike the paralysis of choice in
that ecosystem.
I think with Elixir I don't seequite as much of that paralysis
.
It seems like we've, I think,done a better job of unifying
for the most part, but there isstill a huge mountain to learn.
(09:12):
So you gave a really great talkand I'd love to hear more of
your thoughts about.
I think that the title was youKnow Nothing.
Is that right?
Yeah, I think this was-.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Yeah, yeah, it wasn't .
You know nothing, or do you, ordo you?
That was a question followingup.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah, and I think this kind of relates to what I
think was kind of the theme ofthat in some ways the experience
of not knowing things and howI've also seen some messaging
you put out around the like youare more than the sum of the
knowledge that you have, and Isee a lot of early career devs
(09:48):
get kind of discouraged bycompanies and people who make
them feel like that's what theyare Like if you don't know the
thing, you have no value, youhave no worth, and there could
be some, I think, very negativeexperiences, say in interviewing
for example.
So I'd love to hear what yourthoughts are with regards to
maintaining self-worth when notknowing things and just kind of
(10:11):
dealing with that feeling of,okay, I don't know things, but
that's okay.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, that is a very good question and, honestly, one
which I feel is a lifelongjourney working on.
I'm not going to take theopportunity to do what I said
earlier, to take a step back andfrom where I started with
Elixir and, in general, talkabout where I started with my
career, because I feel thatgives context to what you're
asking.
(10:36):
So I studied not reallycomputer science, I studied
scientific programming.
It's called.
It's like a dual studies coursewhere you both have like a
training and also studying andthat is like a very math heavy.
It's basically like computerscience, but with more math, and
I studied that.
I started doing that in 2010,like right out of school, got a
(11:00):
bit lucky with starting therebecause somebody else jumped off
, so I got kind of a head start.
But that was, all in all,pretty good for me because it
was more of not a traditionaluniversity experience, but you
actually had your day to day jobthere, right, but you also the
(11:24):
university stuff was also on thesame vicinity.
So like some days you haduniversity stuff, some days you
had work, and for me that waspretty good, because I also
mentioned that on Elixir makesand I've also mentioned it on
Twitter.
But I lived with ADHD and backthen I didn't knew, so this kind
of structured environment wasvery good for me.
(11:47):
Yeah, I finished in 2013, witha lot of support also from my
then girlfriend, now wife,writing my bachelor thesis.
I probably would have neverdone that if it weren't for her.
And then I started my first jobat also again like some some IT
agency house, and that wasworking as a software engineer
(12:08):
with Java for Volkswagen.
So I wasn't directly employedat Volkswagen, but like a
subcontractor basically, andyeah, that was just an in house
thing, building some softwarethat was used for building,
building builds betweendifferent departments not really
exciting stuff and but that wasmy first job out of university,
(12:28):
basically for two years, and Iinteresting tidbit while there
was a host of technical legacythere and also really horrific
technical legacy to this day,that was the team I've seen
using scrum the most efficiently, which is kind of unintuitive,
I would, you might think,because big cooperation, right,
(12:50):
I think, large amount of peopleworking together, but they
really had scrum down to a T, solittle tip that on that side.
And afterwards, because therewas more in the back end,
engineering, I switched to asuper small company, also closer
to home where I honestly didpretty much everything that.
We were like five engineers andthey are mostly built mobile
(13:14):
apps, but I also built some APIand APIs.
I even had some point doubledwith embedded development and I
had an opportunity to to checkout a whole slew of different
technologies.
But the thing is there, I mean,like you asked earlier, right,
like self worth.
That was also super stressfulbecause I mean, I was often the
(13:36):
only engineer responsible for acertain part of a project and
there was not a lot of guidanceat that place, which on one at
one one side is like kind ofcool to try things out.
But it's also like you kind ofwork and to avoid, so to speak,
right, like, is this the thingyou're doing?
Does that even make sense?
So I was, I work at, reallystressed out of that place, like
(13:59):
sometimes I even stayed at theuntil 10pm because a thing was
not working and that was reallyreally difficult on my mental
health.
And then I switched becausethat party.
Because of that reason, Iswitched to that agency I
mentioned earlier, right, whereI then first picked up a Dixie
because I realized, okay, this,super big companies not for me.
Super small companies also notfor me.
(14:19):
I would like a thing in betweenand I for me personally, the
sweet spot has been like 100people ish, not more than that,
and that was like the companyalso learning Lixie rat.
That was like work life balancewas a host to better, but it
was still not perfect because Ihad the tendency to I always
(14:42):
wanted to learn more.
So I picked up try to pick up acertificate for because we were
using as Azure's our cloudprovider and the company was
basically sponsoring Azuretraining and I tried to pick up
that like the certificate, andthey're sort of next to my work,
next to being with my wifewhich we just got our first kid
(15:04):
right, like I tried to juggleall of that at the same time and
then I hit my first burnout andkind of went into therapy and
all of that and that kind ofreally forced me to reevaluate
what the fuck am I doing here,like why am I trying so hard to
(15:26):
impress people?
Why am I trying to do so much?
And throughout therapy I workedout that, while the society we
work in, we live in, is reallymuch like a very performance
driven society, I mean that justbecause you are my performer
might not perform doesn'tnecessarily mean that you don't
(15:48):
have any level of self worth.
And throughout my therapy, butalso throughout the things I
take away from that and likewhat's my life as a parent, you
know, I realized that there ismore to me than just the ability
to write good code or just theability to work with technology
competently, but friends andfamily, they are a whole slew of
(16:11):
different qualities about methat people value, and at that I
mean at that agency, I also wasvery much involved in
organizing meetups and like justbeing also a teacher for other
folks.
I'm pretty good at explainingstuff, so there's a whole slew
of other things I could I couldstart to see as being valuable,
(16:37):
even again reflect in thecontext of productivity.
But beyond that, right like whatpeople, people like to be
around me in general.
So, and that is not necessarilysomething that makes me write
better code or I don't know,makes me wrangle of engine x
better in one way or another,but that makes that, I feel,
makes me an enjoyable humanbeing to be around.
(16:59):
And at the end of the day, thatmeans you as humans are social
creatures and that is whatmatters, I feel, like the
connections and therelationships we make along the
way, and not necessarily theamount of code we can write over
quality of code we can write,and it's a bit sad that it took
me basically a burnout, but Itook that also as an opportunity
(17:26):
to say maybe for example, Imean the talk you mentioned it's
on my website maybe I can, Ican talk about this and somebody
else doesn't have to go throughthe same hardship that I did,
if I, if I kind of, can comefrom an angle of an experienced
engineer and tell people youknow what, the technology you
know, that is not really asimportant.
There's some of everything likewhat kind of person you are and
(17:50):
if you are, if you're enjoyableto be around, that is allows
you more important than thelevel of technology and the
level of competence you have.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
When having that, I think, internal strength, to
feel that that kind of selfworth.
It really helps in the momentsin career where maybe you feel
like something is a struggle oryou're having a hard time
accomplishing a particular task.
I completely agree.
I think there is this societalpressure that your productivity
is your worth.
I have not resolved thatproblem for myself, to be
(18:25):
completely honest.
So we're very, very much protherapy.
On the election of the podcast,I take therapy as well and you
know I don't think I've hitquite the same place of feeling
resolved with it.
I think I may be mid thatjourney in terms of still
(18:47):
feeling that pressure to, youknow, produce as much as
possible, and I do think it atleast comes from a place of.
It's really not about likesatisfying other people, but I
do think there's an element oflike pushing yourself harder
than is healthy and things likethat that I've been trying to
work on lately, because I thinkI'm you know, burnout and me are
(19:10):
familiar friends.
Sorry to hear that.
I think it's better to like beas open about these things as
possible, because there are alot of folks who experience
these things, and I actually dida little bit of coaching with
someone who had never even heardthe term burnout and they
(19:34):
genuinely thought, even thoughthey were tired all the time,
exhausted, unable to just likebuild up steam in their life,
they just thought, oh well, I'mjust lazy or there's something
wrong with me.
Or and we did a lot ofconversation around like no,
like it's not wrong of you to beexhausted because you have like
three kids and financialstruggles and have been going
(19:59):
through these experiences atwork, and like that's normal,
that's a normal thing, there'snothing wrong with you for
experiencing that.
So that's part of what I hope tokind of normalize and I hope to
hit a more stable place incareer.
Right now I'm not sure how todo that with the amount that I'm
putting on my plate, but I dohope to kind of get to a place
(20:23):
of a little bit more morebalance there, because I see how
it impacts the other aspects oflife that do matter.
And the thing is, if you putall of your energy into work or
one thing, you don't have anyenergy left for the other things
that matter, like you said,like being enjoyable to be
around with your friends andspending time with the people
(20:43):
that matter, and I think that'sone of the benefits that can
come with having a kid.
From what I see from parents soI'm not a parent, but what I
see from the people who I knoware parents is that there's
nothing that will force you toreprioritize your life more than
a kid.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Yeah, I agree 100%.
I mean I have two kids I have.
My son is seven years old andmy daughter is three years old,
and I mean you mentioned earlierthat you are not quite there
yet.
In the same level of resolvethis, honestly, I'm also not
there.
(21:21):
The big change for me back thenwas to realize that work is not
as important as I made it out tobe, because I was putting in a
lot of extra hours and peoplewould have liked to have put me
even put me, let me put in evenmore hours right.
And I realized that this, thatwork in general, is something
(21:46):
you have.
You have a contract and insideof your contract that probably
states that you're employed for30 hours, 40 hours a week, so on
and so forth.
And I kind of started, afterthe whole experience, to make a
point of I'm gonna stick aroundfor this time.
I started to do time trackingfor myself to kind of get an
handle on like how much time doI spend at work?
And if I spend like one weekmore which sometimes happens and
(22:08):
it is okay then I spent lessthe next week and that kind of
really got very religious aboutspending not too much time at
work these days.
Honestly, I still keep track ofthat.
But also, if I spend a littleless time at work one week, I'll
still get my stuff done.
Who cares right?
So I'm really.
(22:29):
I basically changed myperspective from okay I need to
be a productive person back to Ineed to uphold the contractual
obligations I have with myemployer.
That still means I try to dogood work, but not more than
that.
You know, like there's more tolife than work.
Thing is, I mean.
(22:50):
That is why I feel like I'm apretty healthy place right now.
But to kind of give a spoiler, Ihad a second burnout risk and
that was not because of work orpartially because of work.
That was also because of mywhole living situation and being
(23:11):
a parent.
Honestly, I'm at the currentplace I'm working at.
I used to have a peopleleadership role the very first
time in my career and that is avery personal experience.
But I realized that this is notfor me, because I need the
(23:31):
structure that engineering workbrings to your day to day.
I mean, for example, I'm a verybig fan of doing test-driven
development and you have all ofthese very small, very tight
feedback loops and I need that.
And back then I realizedalready that this is something
I'm missing and that, while Ienjoy working with people and
also teaching people andcoaching people and mentoring
(23:53):
people, I was really, reallymissing those feedback loops and
I couldn't quite articulate why.
And that is also then where I,at that point, I realized, oh
wait, a moment, I live with ADHD, because I had the suspicions
about my son for a while andthen I looked into it and
realized you know what thatsounds like me exactly?
So, yeah, and that explained awhole slew of things.
(24:18):
But that also explained a wholeslew of difficulties I had in
my private life.
And to cut this long story short, because otherwise the podcast
would get way too long, butthere is well, like I said
earlier, that there is more tolife than just work.
(24:39):
Also, when it comes toself-worth and being able to let
go of expectations, there comes, there's more to that than just
work.
Again, I'm struggling still andI'm still working on wrangling
with expectations I have towardsmyself as a parent, as a
(25:01):
partner, as somebody that wantsto build a family, you know,
because I realized that some ofthose expectations I cannot
fulfill because I'm never adivergent, and that is something
that kind of contributedtowards the second level of
burnout, because I wasoverwhelmed at work with this
new role.
I realized that I couldn't,that there's some things in my
(25:24):
private life I couldn't fulfilland I really, really tried to
and I didn't understand why.
So, coming back to the verybeginning and what I said, this
is a lifelong journey.
This is a lifelong journeywhere we, as people, need to,
(25:45):
should be more compassionatetowards one's self and realize
that there might be someexpectations we might hold and
that, honestly, for good reasons, and we still think that as an
ideal we would want to achieve.
But sometimes life, life isdifferent.
You know, sometimes life isdifferent and sometimes life
tells you that this is notsomething you can achieve, at
(26:08):
least not in that fashion, andthat is not easy to deal with.
And the only thing, honestly,the only thing that has helped
me there is being compassionatewith myself, like looking at
what I've been achieving so farand career-wise I'm in a pretty
good place.
But also my kids, they love me,they enjoy spending time with
(26:32):
me.
I enjoy spending time with them.
While there is a whole slew oflittle things I could beat
myself up over, all in all,looking at the full picture, my
life is pretty decent.
There are still some big topicsto work on and, again, I'm also
still in therapy or rather,again in therapy but what I've
(26:55):
realized is that it's veryhealthy to also not only
challenge the expectations wehave at work, but also to
challenge the expectations wehave towards ourselves beyond
work.
I think it makes a ton of sense.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
I really appreciate you sharing that story and I
think that the pressure we puton ourselves to be the ideal can
be crushing, right, and Shelfarseems to draw a lot of people
who are not really in the rightposition to be the people who
(27:27):
aspire to some form of ideal.
Right, we have a lot of peoplewho are very self-improvement
focused, very productivityfocused, very.
We want to have goodrelationships, we want to have a
good relationship with family,and so I think the demand put on
ourselves can be, you know,massive, and so instead of
looking at, okay, what's the onething that you can work on
(27:49):
that's gonna make you a betterversion of yourself tomorrow,
it's like how far am I fromperfect?
Right, that is a crushingthought.
And, yeah, then you add familyinto the mix and it's a whole
can of worms, especially if youknow we all have, whether it's
(28:11):
neurodivergence or you know,trauma, or you know everyone is
working with something right,and so everyone is working on
improving something aboutthemselves, and that can cause
tension, struggles, difficulties.
So I'm really happy to hearthat you are.
I think it seems like you havea very healthy mindset about
(28:36):
those things, and so I reallyappreciate you sharing that
experience and also, I think, alot of folks in tech.
I've met a lot of people whostruggle with negative self-talk
, which I think is part of whatyou're talking about here.
Is that compassion towardsyourself, right?
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Yes, yes, very much.
That is a big part of also beingable to manage my mental health
.
It's not, again, not perfect,but who is right?
But that is changing thenarrative right.
That can be small things, likewhen you make a mistake, maybe
at coding.
(29:14):
Often people reach for alanguage like oh, I'm so stupid,
right, I'm such an idiot.
And that in itself is alreadyduty-meaning yourself right.
And what I found personallyvery useful.
There are two major things Iwould say.
One is a little hack.
(29:36):
At this point I'm very muchingrained.
It's like I would ask myselfhow would I react if somebody
else made that mistake?
And most of the time the answeris you know what shit happens.
Did you learn something from it?
Yes, good, nick, rinse andrepeat.
That is, in general, like errorculture at companies can be
(29:57):
very helpful there if you have ahealthy error, mistake culture,
like when stuff goes bad andpeople don't ask who's at fault,
but how do we fix it right andwhat can we learn from it.
But you can apply the samelayer of thinking to yourself.
Like you make a mistake, well,you're not stupid, you didn't
know better.
But what can you do to fix this?
What can you do to improve upon.
(30:19):
It can be something as small asoh, something it could change.
You made broke production.
It was just the day beforeyesterday I broke our staging
system unexpectedly because Imerged some stuff together.
There was a merge conflict inthat particular part where I
subgraphed my query inside oflike just a big string and
(30:41):
basically I merged that query inthe wrong way, so that
particular part of theapplication just broke.
Yeah, what did I do?
I mean, I fixed it prettyquickly.
I wrote some regression tests,but I didn't at some any point
try to beat myself up over itbecause, yeah, that shit happens
.
I wrote some regression tests.
Now this thing can't happenagain.
Right, I learned something fromit, because I assumed that this
(31:02):
particular part of theapplication didn't need those
regression tests because it'sjust strings, right, like I mean
, like I'm gonna change stringsonly in expected ways, but turns
out like merge conflicts canhappen and things can break
unexpectedly.
Yeah, that is the one part.
So trying to ask yourself, howwould you react when other
people made that mistake?
How would you be so hard onthem as you are towards yourself
(31:26):
?
And sometimes the answer tothat is yes, but I think then
there's a whole slew of otherthings you might want to unpack
as a person.
And the second thing is andthat might sound cheesy, but
mindfulness.
Honestly I was back then when Ihad my very first burnout.
One thing I did started to pickup was meditation, and my
(31:46):
meditation practice these daysis a bit wonky, honestly, and I
want to pick it up again, butthat has been a very it's a very
big help, very helpful in beingable to step away from negative
thoughts and being able to takea big of more of a holistic
view on where I'm standing,because, at the end of the day,
(32:09):
mindfulness and meditation isabout being in the moment and,
at least for me, burnout anddepression were very much
related to not being in themoment but being stuck in my own
head.
So, yeah, those are the twothings that has been really much
helping me to be morecompassionate towards myself.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
Mindfulness does not sound cheesy in any way.
I think it has tremendousimpact.
I have also been, I think,slacking on my meditation as of
late, but I'm very inspired byfolks like Renee Brown, tar
(32:52):
Brock, the RAIN method if anyonehas not encountered that, I
think is a really good tool forif you're ever having really
strong emotion for allowing that.
Recognize, allow, inspect,nurture, I believe, is the
acronym.
So it's a mindfulness processyou can go through to allow
(33:14):
yourself to experience things,because I think one of the
things that tends to make thosetypes of experiences worse is
one the I think there's a termfor it, but I can't remember
this kind of spiral, thinking oflike you feel bad about feeling
bad, right, and so that kind oflike you already feel bad, that
something bad happened.
You had an issue that happenedin production that doesn't feel
(33:36):
good on its own, but then youadd on to that and you're like,
oh, I am bad for making thathappen, right?
I've even seen people do thetriple, where they're like, oh,
I shouldn't tell myself that Ifeel bad about feeling bad.
It's like it's this endlessspiral of a negative talk.
So that can really, I think,exacerbate that issue.
(33:56):
I feel like I started thissentence by saying one, and then
I'm not sure what my two was,which I do often.
I can't very much think, yep,sometimes you get lost in the
middle of the thought.
But yeah, anyway, the core ofwhat I wanna say was that
mindfulness, I think, is afantastic practice and you see,
it affect your interactions withpeople, right, like I've had to
(34:20):
more and more start to accept Ineed to do the things that help
me take care of myself, becauseultimately it doesn't actually
make you more productive to stayup late, work super hard,
neglect your relationships,neglect your physical health.
Those things make you feelproductive for a day and then
the next day you pay for it, orthe next week or the next month,
(34:41):
or With interest.
Yeah, it usually makes things alot more With a very big
interest.
Yeah, despite knowing this, Ido still engage in some of that.
But that's something that I'mreally trying to get on lockdown
right now, because I see it andI think, especially in teaching
and maybe you've had thisexperience yourself if you're
not your best, you are lesspatient, you're less able to
(35:08):
kind of navigate the socialsituations of teaching well and
like it makes you worse, and I'msure the same is true in just
regular development life as well, but particularly in teaching,
where a lot of the job is social, I find it has a major impact
Whether or not I have sleptenough exercised and I'm just
feeling good in general.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Yeah, I'm not that, that's not about teaching
happening my life, but I canvery much say that the parenting
is like teaching on steroids.
So, yeah, they're very muchthere I can.
There was a period in Time,like at the end of last year,
where I quite like secondburnout and everything, where I
(35:49):
couldn't even Engage really withmy kids anymore because I was
just so beat from the day-to-daystress and that it is just not
enjoyable for anybody and it'skind of Sad sometimes that it
has to get to that point for youto realize that something has
to change right, which is againlike a minute was said earlier.
(36:10):
You're grateful for me talkingabout this, but I that is
exactly the reason I'm talkingabout Experiences like this,
because maybe at least oneperson hears this and takes a
corrective turn in their lifeand figures out Okay, maybe I
don't have to let it get to thatpoint, right, and then then the
world is a tiny bit better thanbefore.
(36:31):
And If we don't talk aboutexperiences like that, then
there, how would other peopleknow and understand that this is
not just them and this is notjust an experience they are
having, but even people thatmight look like super Successful
and productive and experiencefrom the outside, which I would
(36:52):
expect.
I mean, like I've been I'm nolexical mix for a while now.
So I would presume the peoplelooking at that podcast
Especially from a more earlygreat perspective might look at
Adi and and me and Alan as likethese Super experience engineers
, which kind of they shouldfigure it out.
And I'm here to tell you, well,no, we don't.
(37:13):
We're also just human people,but we've been on this planet
for a little while longer.
So, yeah, yeah, if you reallywant to to, if you want to
retain your ability to do a goodjob, then self-care is
non-optional, and that issomething you just said and I
definitely 100% agree with thatthe.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
That transparency I really appreciate and You're
completely right, talking aboutyour experience is the best way,
for I think it's it's mutuallybeneficial, right you get to
share your experience with otherpeople who can maybe learn and
benefit from that.
But I also think there'ssomething I have always
appreciated, which is theaccountability of Knowing.
(38:02):
I have to describe things.
Knowing I have to say certainthings like if I am I did this
with my manager recentlyactually, who's absolutely
phenomenal.
I Love my manager.
He is just an absolute wonderis is really like everything
that a manager should embody.
(38:22):
And I had to have a conversationwith him and say, hey, I'm not
sleeping.
Well, I'm overworking myself, Iam overstressed and like having
that, you know, like especiallyleading up to elixir comp and
got a lot of stuff on the plateand it's just managing that has
been frankly, very difficult andand knowing that I have to have
(38:42):
that conversation helpsencourage me to do the things
that will make me feel better.
Right, it's the Shining thelight on things can often make
them better, but if you justrepress and ignore and don't
talk about that's how problemsget worse.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Yeah, there's also been my, my experience and I I
mean I said, sadly, therapy isnot something that is easily
available to anyone.
But I've said in the past, Ifeel that everybody could
probably benefit from at leastsome therapy.
But even even if you can't, theExperience to talk to people
that truly listen, that yourmanager sounds like somebody
(39:22):
that truly listens right, thatcan be liberating in itself and
that is an experience that I Ifeel in today's society, and
especially in like the waysocial media is working right
there is, there is not a lot ofthat going around in general.
I Also, like I mean me as aEuropean looking into the inside
(39:43):
from the United, the culture ofthe United States, I feel
there's a whole still also goingon there with, like people not
necessarily talking about howthey feel, and I have opinions
on the question hey, how are you?
Because usually people don'twant to hear the real answer.
So it's refreshing when you endup talking and engaging with
(40:06):
somebody that truly listens andthat truly cares and that is a
Therapist, at the very least isthat.
But even even if figure againyou don't have access to a
therapist, a friend can be thator a Great manager can be that
I'm gonna see not sure what kindof point I'm trying to make.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
I think I love how this conversation is turned into
.
One of that, I think, hasEverything to do with software
and nothing to do with softwareat the same time, because I
think you and I have probablythought a lot about mental
health Quite a bit, so I'mreally glad this conversation
has gone in that direction.
I also want to say like, yeah,therapy is, is not accessible
for everyone, right, it'sexclusively acceptable to the
(40:47):
part of the population whoprobably not to devalue your
experience, my experience, otherpeople's experience but it's
exclusively available to theportion of the population who
probably needs it the least.
In a way, maybe that's a bit ofa hot take, but I think the
people who probably need thattype of like Mental health help
(41:07):
the most are those who are innot a great financial situation,
who can't afford it, whoProbably have very difficult,
complex relationships, you know,and or or Maybe even abusive
relationships, or like peoplewho are in a position where
Everything around them isworking against them.
(41:28):
Getting help and seeking helpare the ones who have the
hardest time accessing therapyand who really needed the most.
So Society I really think wehaven't figured that out
Absolutely.
The North American culture isone of this.
This like independent, pullyourself up by the bootstrap but
simultaneously, the only peoplewho can are the ones who are
(41:50):
already born with certainadvantages.
I'm part of the problem, like Iam one of those people born
with certain advantages.
I had some financial help toget into programming, I had two
parents who helped Support and,like I'm not part of the problem
, just more I can talk aboutthese things only because I've
(42:12):
had Certain privileges that haveallowed me to gain advantages.
And yeah, we really have not, Ithink, figured that out In any
real way.
So I hope that eventuallysociety and culture shifts
towards one of Caring aboutpeople, empathy towards people,
and for those of you who mightbe in a situation of kind of
(42:33):
needing Someone who will listen,needing Maybe therapy, but but
can't necessarily afford that,that's not necessarily a viable
option right now I Think one ofthe things you can do Is you can
also be that person for thepeople around you.
There's a phenomenal amount of IThink I don't know how to
(42:58):
describe the word, but I'm gonnasay help for yourself that you
get by helping other people.
So even if you have, you know,people surrounding you who maybe
aren't the type to listen oryou can't afford a therapist, or
it's just not viable for foryour, for whatever reason.
Being able to be kinder to thepeople around you, supporting
(43:20):
them, can be a great way.
It's not like I could pro quo,like reciprocal, businessy kind
of a thing, but I find that youtend to get from the world what
you put out into the world, andso, even if you can't receive
that yet, you can at the veryleast start giving that, and
over time I think that that willeventually find its way back to
(43:40):
you.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
Yeah, I agree 100%, and I think this is also a point
where we can kind of segue into, like technology, because when
you were in Elixir Mix, wetalked about the benefits of
teaching and helping people outbecause there's a whole slew of
things even experience ofengineers can learn from
(44:01):
teaching other people and fromhelping other people, and the
same holds true even if you'renot an experienced engineer.
Right, like you can help otherpeople picking up coding, or you
can help other people work withtechnology that you already
have a bit of a handle on andthat in itself can be first of
all, like just a nice experiencehelping people, like honesty.
Helping makes me feel all warmand fuzzy inside, but at the
(44:25):
same time you might learn athing or two, and that it's like
a kind of a double deal there.
Right, like you get, you gettwo things for free not for free
, but you get two things forprice of one.
So to add to what you just said, brooke, is that of course,
(44:47):
you're not obligated to helpother people out, but when you
are not in such a privilegedposition as yeah, honestly,
broken me are, then maybe, justmaybe, getting in touch with
folks and helping each other andbe it.
(45:08):
Learning to JavaScript, rightBe it learning Elixir is this
time that makes your personallife a tiny bit better and also
you as an engineer a tiny bitbetter at the same time.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
This has been by far the most heartwarming episode I
think I've ever gotten thechance to record.
This didn't even feel like therecording.
To be honest, I feel like youand I could have just had this
conversation and there happenedto be recording happening.
It pains me to say we arereaching the end of the time
(45:39):
that we have available for thisparticular chat, but I really
hope that we get to keepcontinuing this conversation
because I've had an absoluteblast talking to you and I hope
you've enjoyed this as well.
Speaker 2 (45:52):
Definitely, and there are a few topics I definitely
would like to pitch here at theend.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
But maybe we can pick it up another time.
I would love to do a part two,if you're interested in that.
We can definitely talk moreoffline about the specifics, but
I do want to ask is thereanything that you would like to
shout out to or just kind ofpoint people in the direction of
, before we end our episode here?
Speaker 2 (46:20):
Yeah, I can maybe use it as a spoiler of what I would
like to also get into, becausewe I mean, as I said just said a
very heartwarming chat alsoabout mental health, about to
certainly be true to yourselfand being accepting and
compassionate towards yourself,and I also talked about error
culture and there is a thing asa concept called psychological
(46:42):
safety.
There's something, if you lookat up there as a host of talks I
also gave a little lightningtalk on that, I think, at some
point and something in anutshell, the teams that are
most performing.
The one thing thatdifferentiates them from other
teams that are also performingis a little tidbit called
(47:04):
psychological safety, andpsychological safety is the
ability to somewhat be true toyourself but also to feel
comfortable making mistakes inthe team, and if so, basically
everything I talked aboutearlier, everything you did talk
about earlier, contributestoward making a more
psychological safe environment,first of all for yourself.
But if you end up being able tohave a team that kind of
(47:27):
believes in those values, thenyou can come to a point also
where you as a team and as asoftware developer can really
start shipping stuff and reallyget productive, because you know
other people have your back anda lot of the good work has been
done by Brinne Brown, which youmentioned earlier.
I'm also a big fan of her work.
But there's also, interestingly, the very much an overlap into
(47:49):
that and like the whole DevOpsspace and DDD community and like
it's like tangentially related.
But I would like to do a shoutout here for a book I've been
reading a while ago that iscalled Team Topologies and it
doesn't really explicitly talkabout psychological safety and
the likes, but it talks abouthow people interact with each
(48:10):
other and how that kind ofcontributes toward building
technological systems.
And that is a big interest anda big, big, big, big of a pet
subject for me, likeunderstanding how sociology and
technology intersect and how weas people build software for
(48:35):
people.
So you really can't removepeople from the equation when
doing technology.
So yeah, that would be my shoutout.
Speaker 1 (48:43):
I'll definitely have to give that a look through
because I'm very curious tolearn more about applying this
to kind of team management.
I think even just you speakingabout that.
I definitely see that atDockyard, so I'm really curious
to kind of learn more of thehard knowledge on that, as
opposed to kind of the softertheory or feeling I currently
have.
I want to give you a huge thankyou for being here and talking
(49:05):
with me today and I will includethat.
I will say I will include thelink to that book in the show
notes for anyone who'sinterested in checking that out
as well.
That is going to be it for thisepisode of the Elixir Newbie
podcast.
I want to thank all of you somuch for listening.
I hope you elixir newbies outthere enjoyed this episode and
learned a lot and grew a lot.
I feel like this was a verygrowing episode, as always.
(49:30):
I definitely know that I did.
If you want to chat, you cansend me a message.
I'm at Brooklyn J Meyers onTwitter.
Dockyard Academy is launchingits next cohort in November, so
if that's something you'reinterested, you can also see
more information in these shownotes there.
And, sasha, I just want tothank you again.
Thanks so much for being here.
(49:51):
It was a pleasure to be here.
Thank you for being here.
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